It might be nice to have a "Maybe" option when attaching sources

LegacyUser

Jason Cannon said: It would be great to be able to have the option of saying a record is "Maybe" a match instead of having to decide yes or no (like what Ancestry does). I often find myself in the situation where something could be a match, but I am not confident enough to attach it. It would be nice to have a separate category for the "maybes".

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Tom Huber said: 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.

This has been suggested before. I recently ran into this and had to do some additional research to make sure the source was for the person (and not someone else). Eventually, I was able to determine that the source did not apply to the person, so I dismissed it with a reason statement.

Many users are in a hurry to take care of sources. In the case I just cited, the source was for an 1860 census enumeration, but there was already one that I had attached. Eventually, I realized the problem with the source and that was because the woman was married twice, but the second marriage did not take place until after the first husband had died.

While it would be nice to have a "Maybe" option for hints, the time really needs to be taken to fully explore the existing record (and even "flesh it out" with other sources) before a decision to attach or dismiss the hint.

FamilySearch is not Ancestry and the massive tree and the routines surrounding it on FamilySearch are not fully developed. So no comparison should be made, especially since trees are individual to the owner and not part of a single massive tree that covers all of mankind.

In an instance where I don't have a source in FamilySearch and do have one in Ancestry that is questionable, I will not spend the time with the FamilySearch hint (and hope no one else does, either). The FS tree profiles are the last thing that I will do when "fleshing out" a relative's record. Since I am largely working during the time covered by U.S. Census enumerations, more and more records are becoming available from a number of different sites, so for me, I do not often see a hint for a source that is questionable.

I played around with the feature in Ancestry a while back and at the point where I declared it "maybe", the hint disappeared. It was almost impossible to locate the same source afterwards.

I don't know if that is still the case, but the disappearing act is likely related to not knowing if the source is applicable or not. Therefore, the "maybe" is really a type of dismissal, at least the way it acted back when I worked with it in Ancestry.

LegacyUser

Erika Campbell said: No, either it matches your person or it doesn't, maybe will only confuse and we cannot trust the hints anymore.
Either it is or it isn't a match, no maybe for me.
Erika

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Juli said: One solution for "maybe" is to simply leave the hint in place, undismissed but unattached. Perhaps the next person to encounter it (which may be me, some time/research later) will have a better idea whether it belongs or not.

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R Greg Leininger said: I agree, i think a Maybe will create a lot of matches that others will believe who come along later to look at it.

what might help in that type of situation of a "maybe match" would be to leave it alone but have a "sublink" that allows you to leave a comment on why you think it might be a match and why it might not be a match. That way the next person coming along can save himself/herself some time by reading what you wrote. At the same time they may have additional info that you did not have, that lets them to decide (after reading your post) to go ahead and say it is a match and tell why they feel so.

LegacyUser

Juli said: I agree that some sort of attachable note would be helpful. This is a broader need than just hints, of course: we need a Collaborate tab that actually works, with taggable, easily visible notes.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: Exactly, just because something is offered doesn't mean you actually have to do something with it.

LegacyUser

D. Llewelyn said: If you attach using "record seek" (you can google and add it to your tool bar), there's a box where you can put a note that carries over to Family Search.

LegacyUser

Juli said: If you attach a source, there's a Note field, yes. (You don't even need to go to an outside app like RecordSeek.) But the whole point here is, what if you're too uncertain about it to actually attach it as a source yet? Where do you record your thoughts then?