Standardized dates and places
LegacyUser
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Carl Taylor Cox said: I notice that when the birth dates are not standardized, children in a family do not sort correctly. But there is no way to tell that a date of just a year, or May with only 3 letters, is standardized. Even when you click the button that says click here to standardize, the date and location are not standardized. I would appreciate feedback to be able to tell when I have finally convinced the program that the standard information has been accepted, from both the edit screen and the final display.
The program is getting better all the time!
The program is getting better all the time!
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Heather McPhie said: You must select the date from the drop down menu. Even if you type the date or location exactly the way it appears in the standardized menu, it will not necessarily be standardized until you actually select it from the drop down menu. Just get in the habit of always selecting it from the drop down menu, and you'll always have standardized information.0
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Carl Taylor Cox said: I am trying to correct information put in by others, or entered from my computer by the interface program from Legacy, and either way some dates cannot be identified as standard, and the same for some locations. Also, I can see the standard information in the box, but that does not mean the program sees it as standard. I cannot find a way to determine if the standard information in the programmed box is what will show when I exit the edit screen.0
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Gordon Collett said: If there is an entry in green in the the Standardized Date and Place boxes, the program does see that as the standard.
There are so many boxes. When you say "I can see the standard information in the box," which box do you mean and what do you see there? (Pictures really help!)
Do you have an example of a date that "cannot be identified as standard"?
Can you explain what you mean when you say "I cannot find a way to determine if the standard information in the programmed box is what will show when I exit the edit screen"? If there is an entry in green before you click "save," that is the information that will show as standard. Have you found cases where that does not happen?
There is a bit of a glitch in that if you type in a date or place then just click "save," there will be a momentary flash of green in the standardized box, but that does not get saved as a standard. You do have to click one of two places to set the standard, either
1) on a selection on the drop down menu which will change what you typed to the standard,
or
2) anywhere else on the page, which will keep what you typed and select the first choice on the drop down menu as the standard. If you don't like that choice of standard, then you can click on the green standardized entry and change it to a different one on the list.
One way to check that the standard did stick after you close the edit screen in to hover your mouse over the name or date on a person's individual page. A tool tip box will appear which shows the standardized value.0 -
Gordon Collett said: Going back to your original question, you state, "Even when you click the button that says click here to standardize, the date and location are not standardized." This is so that you can have the displayed date and place be anything you want, most commonly to include additional information, such as a cemetery name, that the standard does not have. This is a very important function that I use all the time.
I look at it this way. Each date and place has two components, the display value and the standardized value. The first is what people see, the second is what the program sees. People are smart and so can interpret what they see and understand a variety of presentation methods. Computers are dumb and can only compare two values and see if they are the same or different, which is what is going on in the search, find and match routines. So having a standardized value is important for those to work correctly.
But it is just as important to be able to fine tune the display value to say exactly what you mean, that is why the display name can be different.
When you are trying to change the display name to match the standardized name, you can go to the display name entry box, click at the end of the name and type a space. This will open the drop down menu of standardized names. Clicking there will change the display name to match the standard and set the green standard to that value.0 -
gasmodels said: Very nice explaination Gordon0
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Carl Taylor Cox said: Just to make sure there is no mistake, I am viewing the "Person", all vital and marriage information.
I find a date and place,
10 Oct 1915
Galveston, Galveston, Texas, USA
as an example. Because the Oct and the USA is not standard, I click "edit".
The orange box says "click here to select a date". So I click the date that appears just below that box and the correct date is transferred into the box, now green, and I think I have selected the correct date. I also click on the location box. But when I save it the date is still 10 Oct 1915 and the location is corrected. I need some indication that the standard date is correct before I save it so I don't have to go back for an extra click when I have no idea if it is necessary,
You asked for an example of a date that you can look at and not tell if it is standard. Any date of just a year, or any date with May as the month can be either standard or not. When you go to Edit, the standard box will tell you the date is not standard, but the dates in your box and in the standard box are both identical. I can click around, but there is no indication if I have entered the correct clicks until I save it and then go back to edit. Of course if the date is birth in a large family, the proper sequence will only be determined on standardized dates.0 -
Gordon Collett said: Aha! Carl, I think you have come up with a great idea. As I have thought more about your post, I think I now understand the problem. I hope you don’t mind me restating it. If I have gotten this wrong, please correct me.
There needs to be some way to tell directly from the person page if a date or place has been standardized, or more properly phrased, we need an efficient way to tell if the Display Date or the Display Place has had a standard value associated with it. Or, to put it in completely different but even more accurate terms, if the Display Date has been tagged with a calendar date the program can use and if the Display Place as been tagged with a geocode. You cannot tell by simply looking at the person page. Needing to open the editing box to check each value is a waste of time. Needing to hover the mouse over each value and wait for the tool tip to pop up is a waste of time.
Look at these two examples:
Which one has had a standard value applied? The answer will be in my next post since only one image is allowed per post.0 -
Gordon Collett said: Only the first example has an associated standard value. The second one, although the Display Date and Display Place look just like the standard values, does not have associated standard values at all as seen here:
Since the standard value is so important for underlying programming processes to work properly, it would be very nice if the person page had some type of marking to notify you that there was no standard value chosen.0 -
Gordon Collett said: Here is one suggestion:
The caution icons could act as a notice that no standard value is associated with a Display value.0 -
Gordon Collett said: But, Carl, right now the only way to see if a Display Date or Display Name is tagged with a standard, is to open the edit box and see if there is a green entry or to put your mouse on the name so you get this:
The other part of your comment had to do with getting the Display Date or Name to look like the standard value. To repeat, the only way to change the Display values is to change them in their text entry box. Changing the standard in the green box or selecting a standard from a yellow box only changes the standard tagged to the Display Value, not the Display Value itself.0 -
Adrian Bruce said: Gordon - your explanation has been very useful to me. Let me be clear about what I think part of the issue was for me. I had absolutely no idea that FSFT kept two versions of the place-name (or date or whatever).
To me, the drop-down list when first entering a place-name seemed to be duplicated by this green thing - and this green thing also seemed to have no function, since whenever I clicked on it, nothing changed on the one value that is left on the screen. (Typically, the punctuation or spacing is wrong in the visible name - I click on the name in the green list to correct the punctuation or spacing - and nothing happens).
Rather shamed by this, I've just read the help on "standardized" - and this simple insight (keeping two values) is simply not present in the FAQs - at least, not in the ones I've found so far. Instead it gives motherhood stuff about why standardised names are important but not the how, resulting in my failure to understand the on-screen behaviour.
To me, the solution is simple - show both values, labelled sensibly (e.g. "Standard value is for searching" could appear somewhere???). Only in that way will we understand why there is both a drop down and a green list on data entry.0 -
Gordon Collett said: Adrian, I'll have to admit that I have come to my conclusion from many helpful comments by Family Search employees and managers on this board and somewhat by trial and error but I hope that my view is really what the Family Search people intended. The current system does give Family Tree a great flexibility to display whatever a group of users conclude is most appropriate for the historical records of an individual they are interested in and still gives the program the ability to compare and match data points. I agree that it would be nice if the user guide was clearer on this point, that the Display Data can be anything you want for accuracy, the drop down menu is primarily to set a standard but can also be used to speed the entry of data, and the green box is what the computer will use in search and match routines.
What I really, really do like about the way the system works now, is that when you do understand what is going on, you can, if you want to or need to, have entries like this:
I am actually in favor of having the standard hidden unless being edited, because once it is there, you never have to look at it again. That way, the standard can be whatever name most easily identifies one square foot, or so, of the globe but the Display Name can be whatever is most historically accurate. In other words, a small town in Europe that has had 10 different names and been in four different countries over the last two thousand years can have one hidden standard for matching but any of its 30 different names displayed for accuracy.0 -
Marty Greenlief said: My question, and I don't think this has been addressed, is the mechanics of standardizing a date/place.
When you come across a non-standard date, such as "21 Jun 1914" as above, you should be able to click in the green "Standard: 21 June 1914" box, and have it populate the correct date under Date of Death. It does not.
As a second choice, you should be able to click on the "21 June 1914" option just below the green box, and have it populate under Date of Death. That also does not work.
In order to update this to standard format, you have to click next to 21 Jun 1914 under Date of Death, backspace over the "4", re-add the "4", and choose the Standard Date that pops up under that option.
This is my experience in the Chrome Browser.
I'm getting really frustrated trying to standardize all my dates/places this way.
ADDED SUGGESTION:
Why not have a radio button that says something like, "I'm not changing any of the information here, but just standardizing the date and place names" - It's monotonous to have to type in this reason over and over and over again...0 -
Cynthia Louise Van Dam said: Marty is correct. I have hit the green bar and not really looked to see that it is not changing the date posted. I didn't realize that the bar is not working in Chrome0
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Gordon Collett said: You don't have to erase and retype the "4," just hit the space bar. That will open the list of standards so you can use the "speed entry" feature to re-format the dates. What you are describing really is a very useful feature, not a bug, as I tried to convey in my post just above yours.
Personally, if all I am doing is re-spelling a month or place, I don't put a reason.
Have you considered enlisting a spouse, child, grandchild, friend, youth group, etc. to take care of this admittedly tedious task for you?0 -
Adrian Bruce said: I *think* from what I've read here that it *is* working the way it's designed. You have to effectively kill the existing visible-date before the standardised-date will over-write it. I suspect the logic may be that doing it otherwise would make it too easy to over-write the visible-date with the standardised-date, and if you've deliberately entered a non-standard date or place, that is *not* what you want to happen.
Personally, I think the user-interface in relation to visible and standardised dates (and places) over-simplifies and misleads. I didn't even realise the visible and standardised dates (and places) were two different concepts that were *both* kept until I read this site. If that's so, how could I possibly understand how it's working?0 -
Jade said: Nothing happens at all when I click on a green-box "standard," whether date or place, in FF or IE. This does not function to modify data.
For dates it is essential to click on the one in the drop-down list (black type) to make the program sort by birth dates. You will often see the program jump to a correctly spelled-out date in the green 'standard' box after you input the genealogy-standard date -- but if you do not click on the drop-down list the date will not sort properly.0 -
Gordon Collett said: Since this topic comes up every few weeks, I thought I would offer a possible change to the date/place entry box that might clarify matters and solve some complaints. I'm going to let it stand without explanation, since if it needs one, it is still not straightforward enough:
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Adrian Bruce said: Thank you, I'll buy that. (And you're very right when you say " I'm going to let it stand without explanation, since if it needs one, it is still not straightforward enough".)0
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George Scott said: This is a great idea. I have recently been using FindaRecord.com (a new FamilySearch affiliate) to find dates and places which are not standardized, so I can standardize them. In the past 2 months, I have standardized thousands of dates and places in my family tree which lacked standards.
I was amazed at the large number of dates and places which lacked standards. Most were in records contributed by other patrons. But some were in records which I had contributed, even though I ALWAYS select a standard from the drop down box. I think some standards might have been lost when data was transferred from New FamilySearch to Family Tree. Also, sometimes the standard isn't saved when you click the Save button--it just doesn't work perfectly.
The lack of standardized dates and places is a significant problem, since that hampers the search engine from finding Possible Duplicates, which impedes our ability to merge records, which results in duplicate temple ordinances. So, a caution icon at non-standardized dates and places would definitely help.0 -
Tom Huber said: Heather, your response is incorrect and at the present time, this does not work consistently. If the date was brought in via a third-party software package, it cannot be corrected by selecting the date from the drop down menu. I have over 7,000 persons in the system, all imported from Ancestral Quest, which was and is a certified program to use with FamilySearch.
However, at the present time, all those entries that came in while synchronizing the records between Ancestral Quest and FamilySearch FamilyTree are now flagged and clicking on the correct date from the drop down list does not correct the date in the field! The only action is that the banner was turned from yellow to green, but the date in the field remains unchanged.
The only way to change the date and standardize it is to start typing the date (such as the last digit of the year) in the field, select the standard date, and then save the change, making sure that an entry is made for the change.0 -
Tom Huber said: There are some major problems right now and a great deal of instability surrounding this feature. Over the past seven days, I have seen all of the places, including those syncrhonized via a third-party certified software package, flagged as a data error and yellow banners displayed.
Clicking on the yellow banner brings up the standard places. If the actual location, such as a cemetery, is not listed, or incorrectly listed, I have to go to Place Research to provide feedback to have the place corrected or the cemetery name added. This is a pain and needs to be incorporated as an option when the standard place is not listed.
Second, when the place has been added by others or is the result of being imported via a certified third-party software package, and is flagged as a data error, there is no way to click on the correct standard place and have it update the field. This is very frustrating. Even double-clicking or right-clicking on the correct standard date or place does not correct the entry in the field.
This causes me to ask why even bother with flagging these entries. I've entered this as a problem and have been given the runaround by support, and in some cases, even "blown off" by FamilySearch support.
The idea of flagging data problems is a great idea, but where it comes to being able to actually correct the data problem -- that is, the corrected date or place put into the field) with a click of the mouse button, that just isn't there. This feature, when it comes to dates and places is decidedly not ready for prime time.
And to be honest, I don't know what to do about it.0 -
Gordon Collett said: I would encourage you to post several examples of IDs for these individuals as a new feedback post since this sounds like a potential major flaw int the synchronization between Ancestral Quest and Family Tree. The software engineers need to see specific examples to be able to figure out where the problem is and how to fix it. Either that, or two different issues are being talked about here0
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Tom Huber said: This feature has an even bigger problem. When a FamilySearch indexed source is attached to the record, there is no check to make sure the dates and places are standardized. For instance, if a person uses the 1940 U.S. Census as a source, the place may or may not be where the person lived because the header information used during indexing was not correct. I don't know if the records could be corrected or not, but the last time I tried, I was told no, patrons could not correct the indexes (unlike Ancestry, which allows for alternate spellings, etc.).
When a 1940 census is used and the person lived in the "same place" in 1935, the residence for 1935 is added to the person's record in the tree, with "same place" as the place. "Same place" is _not_ a place!
The yellow banner flags the place (but there is no "data problem" flag) as "No Standard Selected. Click here to select a place", but clicking to select a place does nothing!
One would have to look at the original record and then find out if "same place" is valid for where they lived in 1935, and then manually enter the correct place into the field. Once that is done, the "standard place" has to be selected, and the change documented (really???? - for something like this???) and then the record saved.
Like I said, I don't know what to do about this or even how to code the problem through feedback, because it is attached to both indexing and Family Tree.
Talk about not ready for prime time. At least we are told this is a work in process, but right now, the tire that has been put into place is severely unbalanced and unstable.0 -
Tom Huber said: I have contacted Gaylon Findlay and also opened a case in regard to the problem. I also have a case open about not being able to click on the correct place or date when it currently exists in the record and not having the place or date updated.
I entered a number of cases about this and related issues and many were simply "blown off". I was very frustrated by the level of support provided, but understand that most of the support is provided by missionaries who have little, if any computer support experience from before their mission.0 -
Tom Huber said: Gordon, further down, you illustrate possible solutions to the issue by adding functioning buttons to make changes to the record. I don't know if the team will consider those or not, but right now, I have just opened a case indicating that I will not being making any changes or entries to FamilySearch because of these problems and that this change was not well thought out.
As you may have noted, I found even the instructions contained in an article to be misleading, which Heather (above) basically repeated. They do not address the issue of an existing entry that matches the standard entry, but is not recognized as such.
While I was being frustrated with the support team over the problems I had reported, someone ran a routine against the database that eliminated the yellow banners for the place problem. Unfortunately, and I didn't have time to check if they recognized the proper standard place or not, because it appears that the routine was reversed.
I really wish that FamilySearch would be better at communicating when they are working with this kind of problem.
Thanks for your responses.0 -
Tom Huber said: Hi Gordon,
The space bar is a nice way to handle the issue and make the correction. I'm glad I read through your comments.
However, I have over 7,000 entries to deal with. My family members who are actively working with their family histories are following other lines and added work to be done to the system. They really don't have spare time to dedicate to exploring and correcting all the problems involved with this issue.0 -
Tom Huber said: The green box is non-functional for changing anything. If nothing else, it should copy the information into the field, but even that could be a problem if the date or place in the green bar was incorrect.
The sorting issue is another matter and hopefully, it has been fixed. I haven't see that problem, but that is likely because I work in Ancestral Quest and not FamilySearch, which can be very cumbersome and being an internet application, if it is a bad or unstable connection, it is not as responsive or easy to navigate as some of these other programs.
In addition, FamilySearch has no way to work with living relatives, which is not a problem with an independent program like Ancestral Quest.0 -
Tom Huber said: I would like to see an additional button, one that will provide feedback to the standard list when the place is not in the list. That action should pop open the same feedback window that appears when I press feedback while in Place Research.0
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Tom Huber said: Just an update. It is now almost 11:00 pm in Utah, and aside from FamilySearch having been hacked and attempting to contact a malicious web site (caught on my system with Malwarebytes), the problems associated with partner software in working with standardized dates appears to have been resolved. I just updated a set of dates from Ancestral Quest to Family Tree, and everything worked as intended. This included all instances of the vital records, so that part for places is now working, and includes those places that had additional information (the name of the hospital where the person died).
I am not a very happy camper.0
This discussion has been closed.