Suggestion to improve collaboration and document quality of record in Family Tree
Comments
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Tom Huber said: I spent a lot of time consolidating notes and discussions for Pieter Claesen and more could be done. But, I did not want to destroy original notes that were not fully covered by other notes and/or discussions.
At one time there were more notes than the system could handle, so it was necessary to edit one note so I could delete anther.0 -
Tom Huber said: Joe wrote
Notes were in PAF, so I'm guessing they exist in Ancestral Quest too.
Yes, they do. They can be marked private but in most cases they are public in nature.
The AQ - FSFT interface allows various types of material to be applied to notes in AQ including Memory "Stories" entries, the "Life Sketch" and of course, "Notes". Likewise, Memory "Images" can also be exchanged between AQ and FSFT.0 -
Robert Wren said: JOE,
Re comment above referencing: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
These attached 42 notes were basically a good example of what you were looking for, I think.
In their current state they are NOT that usable but consolidating them (AND making them "taggable') would be a good starting example of what a 'Research Notes' page might look like - and work. In their current state, they are not very usable.
(This note may have gotten lost as a 'buried comment above.)0 -
m said: 1) When we compared the pages for Jacob Cooke on Wikitree, Werelate, and Familysearch....
Everyone was in agreement that his page on Wikitree and Werelate were fine aka "functional."
Everyone was in agreement that on his page on Familysearch, the NOTES section was a MESS---aka "DYSFUNCTIONAL."
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
2) I pointed out that on all 3 websites there are sections for Vitals, Sources, Write-In, Public Talk/Public Discussion/Public Comment.
But all 3 websites didn't have NOTE section, just Familysearch has NOTE section.
Therefore, perhaps NOTE section on a public website is unnecessary/ is DYSFUNCTIONAL.
3) Suggest elimination of NOTE section.
4) If a note on a private computer is worthy of a public website, it can be added to one of these sections instead: Vitals, Sources, Write-In, Talk/Discussion/Comment.
Actual example 1: "Born 1617 or 1618. He was 56 in 1674. Death date: w.d. 11 DEC 1675. Burial date: inv. 18 DEC 1675." ---- more functional to put in Vitals.
Actual example 2: "!Savage Compendium First Settlers of N.E." --- more functional to put in Sources.0 -
joe martel said: FYI: There were millions and millions of Notes that were ported to from nFS to FT back in 2012. I'm guessing there would be some multiplier more today, probably about 5-10x. So there are lots of notes out there. If we got rid of Notes would we need to migrate them to another object, because there would be many unhappy users if that information were lost.0
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Jeff Wiseman said: Not sure what you are calling a "write-in", but it sure sounds like Notes to me. Just because it doesn't have the title "Notes" doesn't mean it isn't Notes.
And I don't really agree that the other two sites are "fine". They have some of their own issues. If all of the information currently recorded in the Notes on FS were put into those other sites, you would have just as significant of a mess there as well (if not worst. At least on the FS site the notes are grouped into independent pieces so they can far more easily be managed). Also, on the Werelate site it appears that there is no formal structure for citations at all. The source needs to be identified in a way that IT can be found and then when different parts of the sources are used for different references, different citations can be created for different parts of the same source.
The FS notes on the profile ARE a mess, but it all of that same information were carried over to those other sites, then they would be CHAOS.
You can't really compare the sites when one has a lot more information in it than the others. Removing lots of information from a record will always make it LOOK neater, but only at the cost of lost vital information.0 -
Adrian Bruce said: M - you are suggesting that the 43 Notes on the Notes section (tab) should be migrated to the Discussion etc section. I couldn't understand that suggestion because they were already on the Collaboration tab as far as I was concerned.
We are talking at cross purposes.
The sections or tabs that we see on an FSFT profile depend on the width of our screen. A full width screen will show Notes on the Collaboration tab, where you want them. As the screen narrows, what was one tab, becomes split into several. The Collaboration tab is split into a Notes tab and others. So your suggestion is already implemented if the screen is wide enough. Whatever wide means.0 -
ATP said: Thanks, Joe. I was thinking document quality in posting it here.0
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ATP said: Jeff,
What do you think about changing Other Information to Other Information And Notes by adding a Notes topics along with all the other topics that currently exist therein? What might be the mitigations? Could that be linked to Messages and or Discussions? Just wondering....0 -
m said: Right, move to sources.0
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m said: Adrian,
If NOTES section is eliminated, the Notes can be migrated to Source section.
Right now, NOTES is dysfunctional.
Uploading GEDCOMS from private computers to FS has proved dysfunctional; same for NOTES.
Jeff,
Write-in section on Wikitree is the section where people write whatever they want called Biography.
Write-in section on Werelate is the section where people write whatever they want called whatever they want to title it.
Public Discussion section on Werelate is tab called Talk, just like Wikipedia.
Public Discussion section on Wikitree is Comment section.
I don't see any reason to eliminate the NOTES section without migrating the NOTES to the Source section.
I don't understand what you mean when you write: "Werelate site it appears that there is no formal structure for citations at all." Could you please re-word that so I can understand it?
It seems to me like Werelate has the best source system of the 3, because there is not much on the page to click on, so beginners might click on the numbers next to the Vitals and it takes them to the source for that vital.0 -
Jeff Wiseman said: Since notes have frequently been used by different folks as "informal" sources, treating them as I already pointed out would be the most consistent. The source list for a person is in the "Sources tab". The notes list for a person should be in a "Notes" tab (with NO Discussions in it). Items from EITHER list should be taggable to vitals.
The "Other Information" is for other events and facts (i.e., conclusions) that help uniquely identify the person in the record. Notes may OR MAY NOT be either. No sense in cluttering up that area with non-events and non-facts. Since most of the events in that area are technically vitals anyway (even though many may not consider them as such), if they ever set up the proper ability to tag sources to those (e.g., census records to Residence events), by being able to tag Notes to them as well would make the entire system look and function far more consistently, more intuitive, and would keep the main details page far more uncluttered.
And there is the reason that they removed the sources and notes from that page in the first place which was primarily to improve download speeds. Moving the full lists back onto the main details page would be a step backward from the major work that FS did to that page 1.5 years ago. It would be counter-productive to the benefits that FS was trying to get out of those changes.0 -
Jeff Wiseman said: Not all notes are Sources so that would be inappropriate. The main reason people used notes to document sources in the past is that they didn't want to go though the hassle of creating a formal source for everything when they could just put a rough text regarding it in a note.
Only notes containing sources should be moved to sources, but a lot of them didn't contain enough information to justify that.0 -
Jeff Wiseman said:
Write-in section on Wikitree is the section where people write whatever they want...
Yes, those are all notes.
Write-in section on Werelate is the section where people write whatever they want...
The "Public Discussions" are collaboration areas. The "Discussions" in FS were intended to provide this same capability, but it hasn't worked out really well. The messages feature in FS tends to support this better, but it needs some refinement.
A source is a "thing" that contains information. E.g., a digital image of the US 1910 Census is a source. When you make a reference to a source, you do it by creating a CITATION (or context specific reference) to that source. It identifies what the source is, where it can be found, etc. E.g., a digital image of the US 1910 Census stored in a particular computer server location is a source
However, the ENTIRE source is not always applicable to every thing that mentions it (e.g., the record for a specific person that exists in a census). So the reference to a source (i.e., its citation) is frequently specific to volume numbers, image numbers, page numbers, line numbers, etc. So a given source could literally have thousands of citations to it.
In the werelate example you gave, in the References section, those are all Citations and not sources. I didn't check, but you should be able to go to what appears to be a link to the full source description in the References section and by clicking on it, go to the actual source. From that source, you should be able to see ALL of the citation type references to it.0 -
Jeff Wiseman said: Ok, I suppose that I should leave well enough alone, but I wanted to share the following :-)
I was recently perusing through the GEDCOM X standard (that supposedly FS is implementing) and I came across the formal definition for the "Conclusion" Data Type. Notice that in addition to the optional list of citations (ie. SourceReferences), it also includes an optional list of Notes about the conclusion!
In fact it ALSO provides for a reference to a specific Analysis Document (Proof Statement?) supporting the Conclusion.
In our current FSFT, we already have the list of "SourceReferences" for many (but not all) vital conclusions in the form of tagging to the vitals.
In our current FSFT, we do have general Notes, but those associated with a specific conclusion (such as a vital) can not yet be listed for that conclusion. I.e., there is no way to list them like we can the SourceReferences via tagging.
And also in our current FSFT, we do not have the ability to reference an Analysis document containing the detailed proof for a conclusion. I believe that that is something that FS has planned for the future. However, most people have long been using the Notes for this purpose. Again, if FS simply provided for the Notes to be tagged to conclusions in the same way that they are supporting the list of sources for conclusions, a single Note could now ALSO be used as the analytical proof document for the conclusion as well.
This is just another view on how adding the ability to tag NOTEs to vitals in the same way that sources are already handled is a good implementation of the inherent structures that need to be supported.
And when this is done, it would be compliant with the new GEDCOM X standard structure!
And lastly, regarding the "Quality level" that gasmodels was discussing in his original post to support the confidence level on a given conclusion...it is ALSO accommodated for in the new standard. So it appears that many aspects of the natural essential model for a genealogist's workflow is already incorporated in the new GEDCOM X standard. It just remains to be implemented and used :-)
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ATP said: Jeff,
Thanks for providing the reason of download speed and especially for time frame of 1.5 years ago for the change out of Notes in Other Information was a very helpful reference, since I was not aware that Notes once existed there....0 -
Jeff Wiseman said: Yea, the change happen the first week of September 2018 and raised a lot of hackles
:-)
(look for topics such as "Words cannot express my extreme disappointment and frustration with the new layout of PERSON page!" in 9/11 of 2018 :-)
I wasn't thrilled with moving key person details off of the "Details" page either, but with the continued increase in re-indexed sources occurring, I'm seeing person records with upwards of 60-100 sources attached. Having those in their own tab allows me to open the list in a separate window while looking at the other vitals on the details page. It tends to be better than before but with the undesired side effect that the windows can get out of sync with each other as you work in them and requires frequent manual refreshes to be performed.0 -
gasmodels said: Jeff, I have followed your comments on this thread and I believe your overall suggestion of using notes that can be linked to vital information for a person would satisfy much of what I was attempting to accomplish with my original suggestion. The only additional suggestion would be that notes probably have to be such that only the submitter could edit/delete them. If they were left open edit those users who convert one record to someone else could trash all the arguments and conclusions associated with any of the vital pieces of information. It does seem to me that simply allowing notes to be linked to vital information very similar to the way sources are linked would be a tremendous step forward in allowing users to justify and/ or comment on the validity of specific information. It would also I believe encourage collaboration when there is either disagreement or questioning of rational provided in the note.0
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Jeff Wiseman said: I believe the reason this implementation would be good is that it implements components of the natural problem domain that currently are not being implemented, or are being attempted in a very deviant way relative to the essential model.
Regarding your concern:notes probably have to be such that only the submitter could edit/delete them. If they were left open edit those users who convert one record to someone else could trash all the arguments and conclusions associated with any of the vital pieces of information
Since the "conclusions" are really just the values assigned to the vitals, this problem already exists as a unique problem in its own right!
Using something like Discussions instead of notes in order to write protect the contents will do nothing to prevent values assigned to all vitals, relationships, and sources attached there from being randomly changed and destroyed by persons on the system that don't know what they are doing. in order to avoid that you would need to write protect EVERYTHING which takes us back to the "My Tree" vs. "Shared Tree" concepts.
This is about having data structures in the system that are sufficiently correct so that essential capabilities are provided. So I would advocate just sticking with the shared tree concept, and implementing the mitigations needed to avoid the destructive behavior of unknowing or uncaring patrons.
I would, of course, mandate that notes are another item that is tracked in the change history logs--especially for recovery purposes. I would also suggest that tagging or untagging of items also be visible in the change history logs since a note or source attachment to a vital is significant. If someone detaches it, they have destroyed related information to the vitals.
Of course, those mitigations are a totally different can of worms and have been difficult to deal with. Ref: GEDCOM files.0 -
Jeff Wiseman said: BTW, I didn't pursue it further but in the GEDCOM X conceptual model for Conclusions that I attached above, the Analysis document resolves to an instance of
http://gedcomx.org/v1/Document
which I suspect is a generic document structure. I suspect that having ownership control on the document itself could provide some protection against mass destruction since such a document might involve a tremendous amount of research and documentation, making it a significant artifact.0 -
m said: I've been working on a rating system for sources to identify record quality, but a bit different than gasmodels' idea, which I plant to put in a separate thread.0
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m said: They can be called "Legacy Familytree Notes."
If you see one that is not a source, then you can add it to the appropriate section and delete it from the Source section.0 -
m said: Please explain to me how the Write-In sections of Wikitree & Werelate are all "Notes," because I don't understand that sentence.
In all 3, Wikitree, Werelate, & Familysearch, there is no formal structure for sources. You see some people putting a URL, some people just write the title and page of a book, and I've seen some people even just write a film number and nothing else (all on Familysearch). And the same goes for Wikitree and Werelate. People write what they want to write.0 -
Jeff Wiseman said: Based on the GEDCOM X conceptual model that several companies are contributing and building to, they have at least already defined the recommended confidence levels associated with a conclusion.
Now they just need to find a way to implement it.0 -
m said: Look at the Vitals section of Werelate for Pieter Claessen:
https://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:...
Notice they have in red so that no one can help but notice the warning: "Refuted father."
There's a number next to it, when you click the number, it takes you to Source for that at the bottom of the page.
I really like that warning.
Compare to Wikitree:
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Claesz-4
Notice they have a big yellow box with an exclamation point that is a giant warning about "disputed parents."
In the Comments someone wrote that they used the "disputed parents template."
I really like that warning too.
(Doesn't take you directly to a source like Werelate, but I assume there is something in the Source section of Wikitree.)
I had started a thread requesting a Warning section and it's "under consideration" but I think an ability to add an "official FS warning/disputed/refuted something or other" like either Werelate or Wikitree would be a very good addition along with a rating system for Source quality--and both together would really help cut down the bad merges on Familytree.0 -
ATP said: Jeff,
With 60-100 sources attached, are you seeing duplicates? Almost all the extensive number of Sources attached to the lines I'm working on have been multiple duplication of records! I mean, does one really have to have 15 records of the same marriage? : )0 -
Jeff Wiseman said: No, I will check for those, but normally they are not duplicates. Note though that many citations may be pointing to the same source image. Some people consider those "duplicates" but they definitely are not!
Consider a family of 2 parents and 8 children on the same 1910 Census. Now also consider that there wasn't quite enough room at the bottom of the census page to list all of the children, and so 3 or 4 of them were placed on the next page. When that source (i.e., the census) gets indexed, Each name is individually indexed and points to a different place in the census, some on one page and some on the other. When you "attach" a source such as a Census to (say) the father in the tree, what you are actually doing is creating a citation unique to that specific father's indexed data and attaching that CITATION to the father's record. When you do the same for the mother, the citation that you create and add to her record is totally unique to HER. So even though both citations ultimately lead you to the same Census, they are different citations since they point to different people in different places in the Census.
That is why you cannot copy the citation off of the father's source list and paste it into the mother's source list if the citation is to an index file for a source. Because then you would have a source reference (i.e., a citation) made specifically for the father in the mother's source list (not what you wanted or expected).
It gets even more complicated when more than one company indexes the data on the same document image. Now you have two index files owned by two different companies but if you attach the father's data reference for each of them, they will look similar and point to the same place in the same document image but they are two DISTINCT sources. They are NOT duplicate sources, they are physically different and exist under different licenses.
And if you DON'T attach them all to the correct person records, someone else will pick them up and attach them to some incorrect record which confuses the hints engine.
So even if they look very much alike, they are almost always NOT duplicates
Note that in the case of unindexed sources, it works differently. When you attach an unindexed image to a person record, the source citation created just points to the ENTIRE Image. In this case the CAN copy past the citation to other person records of folks that are also in that image. However, it is now YOUR responsibility to fill out the citation details to identify where the person is in the cited record.0 -
Adrian Bruce said: I liked the idea of a Warning section - however that might be defined - with something like a warning count easily visible. It appears to be one of the purposes that the Life Sketch is misused for. I also like the idea of templates for the most common issues.0
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Tom Huber said: I like the idea of a warning box where a disputed issue exists. Pieter Claesen is a perfect example, especially where a fraudulent published genealogy is involved.
m -- can you provide the link to the GetSat discussion thread you had started? The "under consideration" flag is something that is sometimes applied, but not consistently and certainly not currently.
Thanks.0 -
Tom Huber said: Wait, I remember the Warning section discussion. In this discussion, the warning could be applied to individual entries in the other two shared tree sites (I think).
I suspect that a lot of early personalities in FamilySearch could use this kind of thing.
I have an ancestor against which many people claimed D.A.R. (and S.A.R.) connections, except for the fact that the timing of where my ancestor lived and the revolution, especially where the claimed ancestral soldier served, does not "compute." That is another area where a disputed ancestry (similar to Pieter Claesen's) could be used.
There are other areas where I have an end-of-line ancestor and no connection across the Atlantic that are similar, but not as much of a problem.0
This discussion has been closed.