Ability to organize sources by event

LegacyUser

AmberLee Standring said: Do you know what would be awesome? Source groupings. So instead of a huge, overwhelming list of sources, they could be organized into folders so that birth sources are all together, marriage sources are together, parent-child relationship proving sources are all together. That would make it so much easier to see what is known and what still needs to be verified.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I agree. However the problem is that everyone had a different idea on how they should be organized, so FS never implemented a "Categorical Source" type sorting.

So they have the current chronological sorting (which I believe is the default when a person first gets an account) that is automatic. However, for very long lists, this is (in my view) pretty clumsy to use.

So since a decent automatic categorical grouping mechanism will likely not occur, you might consider some of the suggestions that I made in:
https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

I have found that it is fairly easy to remember, and folks that aren't real serious about organizing sources tend to stay with the chronological sorting and leaving the custom sorting alone.

LegacyUser

Robert Wren said: At the top of the source list, you will find a drop-down called "Options" which will allow you to sort them however you'd like.

This was the system BEFORE they changed to chronological sort of the PID sources. Many users had various system they used, but most now seem to prefer the current dates. But the choice is yours.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: First, welcome to the community-powered feedback forum for FamilySearch. FamilySearch personnel read every discussion thread and may or may not respond as their time permits. We all share an active interest in using the resources of this site and as users, we have various levels of knowledge and experience and do our best to help each other with concerns, issues, and/or questions.

Both Jeff and Robert have provided some responses that should help in what you would like to do. The choice is yours and many people will not mess with a grouped sources when they never use the custom option.

LegacyUser

Liz said: Not everyone likes Sources grouped in Categories

Just like not eveyone likes Sources in Date Order

But, having an Option to group Sources in Categories, is not a bad idea, provided that you could still choose the existing, Chronological Order; and/or, Custom Order; plus, and this is important, the Sources stayed how they were set in each Option when you change between them.

Just something else to add to the 'wish list' ... but, very low on the priority scale.

LegacyUser

AmberLee Standring said: Thanks! I didn't know about the custom option. I'm excited to try it. Jeff, your article was so well written and easy to follow! Thanks for putting that together.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I understand that folks have preferences. That is why BOTH of these capabilities are already implemented in the site to some degree or another.

The terminology can be a bit misleading here. These are both labeled as types of "Sort" under the options button. The "Custom order" is the same as the only way it used to work before the "Chronological Order" was added. When you select the Custom Order setting, it lets you see the sources displayed in the order that they are saved in the database. You can manually move these around with drag and drop.

When you turn on the Sort "Chronological Order", it only sorts how the source list appears on your screen. The actual (custom) ordering in the database is not touched. So with chronological order, things will always come up in the same places on the screen regardless of whether the internal ordering in the database has been changed. The only way to change the order in the chronological setting is to change the actual source event dates on the sources (and normally people don't muck around with those).

Neither of these orders are unique to your account. Everyone with Chronological Order turned on will see the source list in any given record displayed identically. Everyone with Custom Order turned on will see the source list in any given record displayed identically based on their position in the Database. Also, since you can change the order around in the Custom order, if you do move a source, EVERYONE using custom will see that adjustment you made, and anyone else can change things as well.

Normally that last item isn't too much of a problem since the fans of the Custom order are already attempting to group categorically. So small variations might occur. The only time I've seen it as an issue is when someone wants a chronological order displayed but don't realize that they have the Custom order turned on. They will go in and totally try to re-arrange all of the sources by date--not realizing that they could have done it with one button push, and that they have scrambled all the sources that the categorically order group has it set up as.

So that is all there now. My 'wish list' only has the added ability to have fixed Categorical groups with fixed labels that automatically sorted within themselves. But again, there are too many different opinions of how those groups should exist, so it will likely never happen (which is unfortunate).

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Yea, I like that approach because it goes from the most significant sources at the top of the list (i.e., those contributing directly to the main vitals), to the most significant full family related sources (basically censuses), then to the lesser relationship sources (basically where the prime person is included in an event source for someone that's related to them such as their children)

Think about when it is that you are actually searching for something in the sources. Chances are you don't already know the date some source occurred at. You are actually looking to discover or vet the date. So way would you use a sorting method that requires the one piece of data that you DON'T know (i.e., the date) as the primary key to search on? The answer is usually "because the chronological view doesn't require any effort on my part and will always come up the same". It's convenience--and that is ok.

But when you start looking at 60-100 sources that you have to repeatedly go through while looking for additional information, the chronological ordering does become a problem. And as people use it more and more on long source lists, they start to see the benefits of the Categorical grouping.

If have a person who outlived most of his children. His death certificate is located down in the 40-50th position in the list (about 4 pages in from the front anyway) after all of his children's births, marriages, deaths, etc. with categorical grouping it'll only be down 3-10 items from the start of the list. Without going to the vitals and seeing what the recorded death date is (assuming it's correct) I will have no idea where to look in the list to find his death certificate.

Benjamin Albert Walton KLLZ-84Y had a family with 10 kids and they all had a reasonably good set of sources. Have a look at it and see if you can detect the categorical groupings. Remember that in each category the sources are chronologically sorted (e.g., deaths before burials, oldest children first, children records chronological as well, etc.).

RonaldDinkel

The problem is needing multiple data sorted different ways. This flexibility I solved by 1) Assigning my own numbers to a fan chart. I was 1.1, parents 2.1 & 2.2 etc. 2)Then with an Excel spreadsheet, I listed FSL ID with my ID along with whatever column data I wanted to track. This allowed me to sort on any column dat I wanted. I kept 1/2 of my screen in Excel and the other half in FS. Easy to transfer data from FSL to Excel. 3) Then I copied Excel to Word for my finished document.