Suggestion to improve collaboration and document quality of record in Family Tree

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Tom Huber said: Wow, talk about taking this discussion thread to a new level. I really appreciate the comments and thoughts. I had a private (message) discussion with m on the idea of a rating system for quality and what he has suggested is a very good idea.

Hopefully, FS is taking all of this in and will implement some of this in the near future for the massive tree.

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Tom Huber said: Rather than post a comment to a reply above where it could get lost, I decided to add a reply here:

Right now, the change log needs some work. Besides the problem of grouping changes by record type (all residence entries, for instance, appear when residence is used to filter the log), there is also the problem that if something is added to a discussion (or changes made to a note), there is no change log entry.

The full profile change log needs to cover all changes, no matter where they appear.

I have long asked for a change log for ordinances, but that need is slowly fading into the past. There is still a need, but not nearly as much as several years ago when a number of changes were made to the ordinance information.

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m said: Link to getsat thread "under consideration" idea of Warning section:

https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

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m said: Werelate for Pieter Claessen Wyckoff has the "refuted father" under "other" in the Vitals section (technically Vitals/Events section).

https://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:...

I was thinking something like this could be easily done on Familysearch in the Events/Facts section.


"Refuted Parents"
"Disproven Parents"
"Refuted Parent or Parents !"

(Yellow or Orange or Red--visible)

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m said: This idea probably needs its own thread, and has to be further developed.

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m said: I have 2 fraudulent genealogy books like Anjous' on my lines, if I don't count Pieter Claessen.

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m said: Fraudulent genealogy books are infrequent.

The most frequent error is combining 2 different people into 1 person.

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m said: In Events/Facts:

"Commonly mistaken for another person !"

(Yellow or Orange or Red--visible)

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Robert Wren said: Hmm, I also ran into Anjou while researching another line recently. Westbrook in NY/NJ, if I recall correctly.

I'm quite happy having Tom Huber take care of our tee common Peter Claessen ancestor

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m said: A Warning would need to be placed where anyone accessing Familytree can see it to prevent the wrong merge, so we need Joe/an engineer to tell us where that is.

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m said: Please explain to me how the Write-In sections of Wikitree & Werelate are all "Notes," because I don't understand that sentence.

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Jeff Wiseman said: I'm confused by your statement. I'm not sure how to further explain it.

I could be misunderstanding it, but your request seems to imply that you do not believe the "write-in" sections are just a simple collection of notes for those records. So I have to ask the question "Why do you feel that the Write-In sections of Wikitree & Werelate do not contain Notes?"

I apologize if I'm on the wrong track here :-)

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m said: The Write-In sections of Wikitree & Werelate probably are not NOTES because they are fully-formed content written for the purpose of posting onto a public website.

NOTES in FS seem to me to me mainly half-formed thoughts/jotting down of page numbers and titles of books for private use in a personal computer genealogy program.

Furthermore, the Write-In section of both Wikitree & Werelate are free-form and therefore the person writing creates a Structure individual to that specific person, the point of which is collaboration---the Structure helps the viewer to better digest and understand the material presented.
I gave several examples above, I don't know exactly where, but to reiterate, it is free-form just like Findagrave, so you choose your Structure and present to the viewer what is important about that person. So for one Findagrave memorial you might just see an obituary. For another Findagrave person you might just see a listing of his parents and his grandparents and maternal greatgrandparents (because that is where the difficulty lies). For another Findagrave person you might see just a listing of his 4 wives and a listing of all the children from each wife. For another Findagrave person, you might see a description of his Rev. War experiences, which are numerous. For another Findagrave person, you might see a listing of all of his censuses because he moved from place to place and his name was John Smith. On another Findagrave person, you might see a warning that this is the page for so and so, not to be confused with another man of the same name who lived in a nearby town with a similar birth date. I think I have explained the point. Werelate & Wikitree Write-In sections are useful in that regard. Notes on FS of are just "things" that are uploaded as they are from personal computers to the internet; so that example of 43 Notes un-related to each other, ending up in a sort of jumbled "pile" on the internet that no one is going to ever click on and read through is a good example. NOTES are a jumbled "pile" of "random things."

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m said: What we need is FS to "take all of this in."

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Adrian Bruce said: "the Write-In section of both Wikitree & Werelate are free-form"
That's why we are talking at cross purposes. To many of us, perhaps especially people like Jeff and I, "free-form" means exactly the same as Notes. The purpose of the Notes, their structure, the possible use of a template to start them - none of it matters - it's all free form text, so we call it Notes. Compare that with a name item (say) and while there is some ability to write what you want, they are limited and there is validation, so it's not really free form. In addition, most importantly, there is a single purpose to that item in the database - namely to hold that component of the name. Which is why some of us get so uptight when people stick words like "Not Married" in a place name and expect everything to carry on working. It will - but only up to a point.

Are we being too pedantic? Actually, no. The software of the system is totally and utterly pedantic. That's just how it is.

I reckon that we're actually all in violent agreement about the impossibility of reading through 43 single line notes and getting any sensible impression.

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m said: Write-in section of Werelate & Wikitree could be described as "the main block of text on the page that is visible when visitors arrive on the page where the overall description of the person goes (as opposed to vitals)."

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m said: Is anyone not in violent agreement that no one will ever click on and read 43 separate notes?

Is anyone not in violent agreement that having to click on and read 43 separate notes hinders/does not enhance collaboration?

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Adrian Clift said: Just a few thoughts on this.

I REALLY like the idea of unified person records and relationships in a single place here. I also like immediate links to sources so that the truth can be verified by any and everybody.

The "wiki" concept has its pitfalls, but I must also say that I trust Wikipedia to give me good if not the best information on any topic I choose to research.

I DO agree that accuracy is paramount. On, the other hand, none of us is getting out of here alive, and as I am transitioning I doubt I will be worrying about someone else messing up my work on FamilySearch.

If you have unique family records, by all means share them. But recognize they are not NECESSARILY totally accurate, either.

Maybe the best solution is the one employed by other social media platforms: simply report problems to "the authorities."

Just my opinions, of course.

I admire your passionate interest!

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m said: There are no authorities on FS to deal with problems to report to.

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ATP said: Thanks for your reply. I've had mixed results with duplicate records, some with the same data reference and some not. But, I still would like to know if there is really a need for 15 marriage records for the same couple? : ) No need to respond to that!

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ATP said: Adrian Bruce,

Count me in as one of those who also agrees that "free-form" means the same as Notes. Maybe the heading should be Free-Form Notes! Hadn't thought of the software being pendant! But, it certainly is! Great description!

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m said: The text of the 43 NOTES is never read by anyone and is not visible unless clicked on individually. The text in Wikitree & Werelate is visible when you open the page and is read by everyone. They seem opposites to me.

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Jeff Wiseman said: They ARE opposites, and the ability to compartmentalize individual notes is a distinct advantage that FS has over the other two sites.

If you were to copy the content of all 43 of the notes in FS and put them all into the one common text area on each of the other two sites, it would totally get in the way of using that page. You would have to scroll up and down to get to the references and vitals, etc. And all this because you are FORCING everyone to see EVERYTHING at once!

The single "use it for everything" text block in those records is overly simplistic, and when needed for more complex genealogical proofs, biographies, research notes, etc., etc., it becomes horrendous to try and maintain. Furthermore, if you are searching for a specific piece of information in it, it is awkward when it gets to be 4 pages long.

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Tom Huber said: True, but reporting a problem in this forum will sometimes get the attention of the people who need to look into whatever issue is involved.

Getting back to

What we need is FS to "take all of this in."

with Joe Martel adding his thoughts some sixteen days ago, I'm sure some, if not all of the thoughts expressed are being considered.

I least I hope they are.

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m said: I hope they are too!

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m said: Maybe Joe can comment on this?

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m said: The 43 NOTES on FS are un-usable in their present form. No one will ever click on them and read them.

So I propose NOTES be imported into the Source section where they can be examined and if they are Sources they will stay, and if not, the info can be placed in Vitals/Events or wherever they belong.

The purpose of this thread is to discuss rating of sources for the purpose of stopping the wrong merges. Wrong merges happens on FS. Wikitree & Werelate do not have a big wrong merges problem because they have Prominent Warnings:

Werelate for Pieter Claessen:
https://www.werelate.org/wiki/Person:...
"Refuted father."
Wikitree:
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Claesz-4
"disputed parents." "!"

I suggest to stop wrong merges BOTH 1) rating system for Sources and 2) Prominent Warning placed somewhere everyone will see, whether accessing FS from Ancestry or from a phone or directly on the website. Such as:
"Refuted Parents"
"Disproven Parents"
"Refuted Parent or Parents !"
"Commonly mistaken for another person !"

Today I detached fake parents and wrote a custom fact. "Do not attach so and so as parents because baptism gives real parents such and such." The baptism is already attached--it's not enough. We need warnings.

Pieter Claessen has info on his FS page explaining about Anjou fraud--it's not enough. We need warnings.

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joe martel said: Yes, I'm still reading these. This is an excellent discussion. A couple points:

The 42 notes - I checked a few and most were ported from the Notes that existed in nFS. It took a long time to migrate, like sometime in 2013. You can also guess they were migrated because they have the name273482 type of attribution. I agree that there should be a UI to "expand all" like we do in other places so you don't have to click each.

When FSFT was designed there was talk of having a Note on a conclusion, but it was hugely complex and would have taken 10x more time to port. They erred on the side of getting it done sooner, plus most those nFS notes seemed low quality anyway. So moving FT Notes to FT Sources wouldn't be the best.

nFS sources also came over in migration but there were order of magnitude less Sources in nFS - users never spent the time to create them. 

Warning sections. I'd like to see more thought about this. Today the Person's LifeSketch is your billboard, used for warnings. If you were to embed those everywhere then you would end up with the "Disputes" of nFS. It was a UI disaster. So we would need to refine that model and make it so it doesn't become a noisy page of red. THis is a huge additional complexity to the UI and then the next step is to have "my value" - i.e. the assertion model of nFS which had to be replaced - but the open-edit single conclusion model of FT. The werelate and wikitree idea is interesting but the UI is not coherent nor pretty (see below)

Also realize, as is pointed out above, that this crowd is very detailed oriented and not the masses of users that visit, and do little contribution. Remember the 90-9-1 participation rule. You are probably the 1 that are doing 90%+ of the hard work. But part of attracting new users and retaining the casual user is to have "beautiful" pages - not dense page with a millions things on them (yes, don't shoot me - just conveying the real-world aspect of UI for the masses). 

I'm not sure if this crowd is in agreement yet. I could use a roll-up summary. I still like the idea of a Note on the conclusion value, even though there's pushback on that. And the warning thing is interesting to work out. Thanks!

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Jeff Wiseman said: The many to many relationship between derivation logic and the conclusions (vital values) needs to exist in some ways. A single note may contain the derivation for MORE than just one conclusion or vital. Therefore, there needs to be a way to relate a given note to multiple conclusions in the same way that a single source can relate to multiple conclusions.

Having one note per conclusion will necessitate duplicating of notes that contribute to more than one conclusion. If you had a note that was deriving vitals for multiple people (or just multiple vitals for a given person), and it is being based on family oriented data (such as in a published book), it will be far easier to maintain if everyone is forced to have only one note per conclusion.

Again, I feel we could go a long ways, just by introducing the tagging of sources to conclusions the way sources are tagged today.

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m said: Joe, what do people see when they visit FS through their home genealogy programs? through Ancestry? etc. The "refuted parents" or whatever warning would have to be seen by those people.