Ordinance Ready a breeze or problematic?

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Rebecca Talbot said: Ordinance Ready has been great for people who simply want to take a name to the temple and not worry about the genealogy behind it. However problems occur when there are no sources, only 1 source and duplicates. I think that these the three mentioned need to not be put on ordinance ready for reasons of temple work possibly already completed under a different ID number, wrong information or incomplete information. Rebecca Talbot

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Jordi Kloosterboer said: Yeah ordinance ready has ordinances that are not actually ready. Users should actually research more on these ordinances but rarely do in my experience of hearing other people's use of it. Maybe it should warn users about if there are sources and dates and places for birth, marriage and death or not (not that all these can be fully researched all the time--but as a precaution).

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Tom Huber said: First, welcome to the community support 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.

Supposedly, the only thing that is documented is that possible duplicates will not put the person's name on the results of an Ordinances Ready search.

But I have noted the other problems mentioned since the feature was first introduced.

Zero sources should disqualify any person from ordinances ready until at least one source is identified. However, there are problems with that approach with regard to adding a person to one's temple list.

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Christina Sachs Wagner said: "No sources" will likely never be a disqualifier as there are too many countries that do not have records to siurce from. I use OR to pull from my reserve list. This way I know that the names have already been vetted and I check them one more time brute printing them.

Ron Tanner has quoted statistics that indicate that duplication of ordinances are down significantly.

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Tom Huber said: Hi Christina. I hadn't thought about the source issue with respect to various locations. That is a very real situation.

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Christina Sachs Wagner said: I shouldn't comment from my phone.....so many typos!

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Alan E. Brown said: Ordinances Ready will only provide ordinances that are in a Ready state (the ordinances that show a green temple in other places in FamilySearch) or ordinances that have already been reserved and shared with the temple. In fact, it is even more selective than the basic green temple algorithm (it has a lower threshold for considering a person to have a duplicate).

So it doesn't sound like your complaint is really about Ordinances Ready, but rather with the criteria used to mark ordinances as Ready (green temple icon).

I certainly agree that users should do research, providing sources and specific dates and places, before they conclude that they have uniquely identified a person. A place and date is already required before temple work can be reserved. There's definitely a balance in determining the exact requirements -- if the requirements are too demanding, users will not be able to reserve temple ordinances when they have supplied all the information that is available, but if the requirements are too loose, then there will be more duplicates that slip through. All I can say is that the specific requirements have been carefully considered and approved by both FamilySearch and the Temple Department.

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Christina Sachs Wagner said: Great points, Alan!

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Christina Sachs Wagner said: Here is a great presentation by Gordon Collett that I use when training people how to maximize Ordinance Ready. https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/...

I try to help patrons understand that their temple experience will be enriched when they take a loved one to the temple instead of a stranger's name. The people we take to the temple know who we are. What do we know about them? I ask them to visit the page of the person and learn something about them, attach any records, look at the memories, if there are any, look at their families and any experiences they might find using the information available. How old were they when they died? Were they married? Did their spouse, child, or parent die before them? How old were they when that happened? How far did they travel in their lifetime?

The work is hastening and Ordinance Ready is making it happen. I have placed all my reservations, except direct line in temple share and messages are coming in from the help I receive through OR.

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Justin Masters said: Christina, you mentioned sharing with the temple, and I've heard numerous complaints (which seem to be validated by familysearch staff) that names shared with the temple can get "stuck", due to pre-existing software in the system that only allowed names to be requested by people in that temple district.

When people were busy taking their own names, they wouldn't "assist" others who have shared names in the temple, so they get "stuck" there. (This problem is being worked on so that names in ANY temple's "file" can get picked up from anybody in any other temple district.

Perhaps it might be worthwhile to unreserve it, thus making it accessible to other relatives using Ordinances Ready? If others don't pick it up, you will when you use Ordinances Ready.

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Christina Sachs Wagner said: A valid point. If I unreserve the names, then I risk receivung a name that I have not yet vetted. They are getting done, albeit, slowly for some. I am a first generation convert on the east coast and the work is slow, either way.

Amy Archibald did an exoeriment, where she teased names and tracked them to see if they got completed in a more timely manner. Her results were very interesting and she geeky it was effective.

I may try moving some to my children's accounts in a more active temple district to see how they move along. My daughter attends weekly and I posted an issue recently about OR pulling the newest reeerve and not her oldest. I received no replies from employees explaining how names are pulled outside of the KA description.

I also have friends in the ward who find it difficult to find relatives that need work and I am able to share names with them. I'm not ready to release my family out from under my watchful eye. But I am willing to give these other options a try where I can still keep an eye on them. Poor Henry never gets picked up for some reason. OR would rather pick up James, the second husband of my relative's spouse than Henry, who is my great aunt's only husband. Even when I released James from my reserve.

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Justin Masters said: I'm puzzled by some of your statements, so let me try to address what I *THINK* you are saying.

When you said you risk receiving a name you haven't vetted, that's the risk of anybody who uses Ordinances Ready, however, per this document that someone set up, and is now in the wiki area:
https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/...

You can also see it here: https://www.familysearch.org/help/sal...

It shows the order in which names are taken up. (and I had not seen it prior to my original response to you earlier)

1. Your existing reservation list
2. Names you have shared with the temple
3. Related individuals that others have shared with the temple.
4. Related individuals with a green temple icon
5. Individuals that others have shared with the temple without a known relationship to you.

(Curiously, what I find missing from that list is this:
Ancestors (and their descendents) going up to X generations back and up to down Y generations. (which COULD be #3 or #4, but I'm not sure why it's not listed more explicitly, as that's how I've heard it presented a number of times))

What is helpful is if you are able to connect in to "the big tree" with your ancestors (further than 110 years back) which opens your ancestors (below that connecting ancestor) to having their temple work done by others. Being a sole convert (to your knowledge) in your family, makes sharing with friends or the temple a possibly more attractive option, if you haven't connected to "the big tree".

(The "big tree" is a name given to the "connected mass of names in family tree", with the understanding that there are people in familytree that ARE NOT connected to it and might not be found via ordinances ready. The last # I heard about the size of "the big tree" is 1.2 BILLION names - all connected together (and likely includes some duplicates))

Another area of confusion... What Amy found... You said:
Amy Archibald did an exoeriment, where she teased names and tracked them to see if they got completed in a more timely manner. Her results were very interesting and she geeky it was effective.

I don't understand what "teased names" means, and what "she geeky it was effective". Could you elaborate for us?

Another question I had from what you said.
You mentioned assigning some of your children's accounts to more active temple districts. LDS members who have familysearch accounts for doing temple work I would THINK are assigned to the temple districts in which they are known via church records, since those accounts have a membership record tied to them, and I would assume would be known to the church.

So I'm not sure how YOU would assign THEM to temple districts when the church would have them assigned already.

Unless you were meaning to say that you would share names with your children who would then share it with the temple districts in which they live to see how fast it gets done. (Keep in mind the order of names retrieved via Ordinances Ready, should they use that option after sharing the names with the temple.)

I don't know if I've confused things further. :-)

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Jessie Hearle said: If I go to my local temple without a family name card & ask for a name from the temple file, under the current system I will be given a name submitted by someone who lives in the geographical area served by this temple and shared with the temple.
Only if no ordinances are available from my area would I get a name from a different submitter location.

Once I have the card, I do not have the opportunity to view my relationship if any to the person, nor can I check for duplicates or sources.

Ordinances Ready, as pointed out, looks 1st at my own temple reserved list
Then searches for someone RELATED to me in some degree.
As I understand it , the temple district the submitter lives in is less important than MY relationship to the name on the card.

Because I have access to the name prior to entering the temple, I can see
How I’m related to the person
Who has provided information about the person & submitted the name
Sources or lack of sources
Potential duplicate records

I would prefer to have a “related to me” name than a random name.

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Alan E. Brown said: Justin,

Just a quick clarification on "the big tree": I don't have completely current numbers, but the total number of people in Family Tree is on the order of 1.2 billion. However, the "big tree" -- the largest subset of those people who are all connected to each other somehow -- is on the order of 500 million people.

As a practical matter, the "big tree" is likely to be the only helpful tree for establishing relationships for Ordinances Ready. I suppose it's possible that there is some small tree that is big enough to establish some relationships, but once a disconnected tree gets large enough to be useful for establishing the relationships used in Ordinances Ready, it is also likely to somehow connect into the "big tree."

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Jordi Kloosterboer said: Yeah I definitely understand that.

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Amy Archibald said: Justin,

This is what Christina is talking about in relation to me:
http://revealingrootsandbranches.blog...

I did an experiment over 6 months where I released everything I had reserved and tracked what happened to those names.

Then in October last year, after the release of Ordinances Ready, I went back through my released list and everything that had not been reserved by others, I reserved back to my list and then shared with the temple.

Since October, I've watched dozens of names get pulled via other users using Ordinances Ready and more ordinances get completed.

I had this feeling that I had done all the research and added the person to the Tree, then started the temple work with baptisms/confirmations (done by youth in my family) and then I just released them back to be found by others. It was an uneasy feeling - like I had built a relationship of trust with this deceased relative and then I just let them go back to be found again. So once Ordinances Ready became available, I gathered up those that weren't found by others and shared them to the temple file and temple work is being done for many of them.

Also, earlier this month I reviewed the list I had kept of those who had reserved the names I had released and some of them had released those names back to the Tree as well. I had this hope that they would do the work and they didn't. So I put those names back on my list and shared to the temple.

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Christina Sachs Wagner said: Justin, Am I the Queen of Typos or not?!! Using my phone to respond makes it even worse. Autocorrect is not my friend. I will try to translate my post later tonight. Sorry!

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Christina Sachs Wagner said: Thank you for the follow up results of your experiment, Amy. And helping to clarify my typo littered statements!

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Christina Sachs Wagner said: Rewritten for clarity and answering the questions asked by Justin, and hopefully no typos this time:
If I unreserve the names, then I risk receiving a name through OR that I have not yet vetted. If it is pulling from my temple reserves, I have already added all sources and effectively eliminated any hidden duplicates. They are getting done, albeit, slowly for some. I am a first generation convert on the east coast and the work is slow, either way.

Amy Archibald did an experiment, where she released names and tracked them to see if they got completed in a more timely manner. Her results were very interesting and she found it was effective. (Please see her response on this thread for updated tracking results and you will understand my reluctance to release my reserves.)

I may try sharing some of my reserved names with my children living in a more active temple district to see if they move along faster.

My daughter attends weekly and I feed her names. I posted an issue recently about OR pulling the newest reserve and not her oldest. I received no replies from employees explaining how names are pulled outside of the KA description. The issue I was addressing (which I cannot find) was that the names she had in her reserve list were all shared with the temple (so red icons). Using OR, the name pulled was the one with the most recent reserve date, rather than the one with the oldest reserve date. I am aware of how OR finds and pulls names, but how are they pulled within that matrix? Why is OR not pulling the one reserved the longest on her list when the icons all match?

Similarly, using my boys' OR, it pulls James, the second husband of my great uncle's wife, rather than Henry, another great aunt's only husband. Both James and Henry are on my reservation list and sport red temple icons. Henry is the oldest reserved male endowment on my reservation list.

I'm not ready to release these names from my reservations list, but I am willing to give another option a try where I can still keep an eye on them, using Consultant Planner.

I hope this helps explain my points and questions.

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Christina Sachs Wagner said: I am connected to the big tree, I just don't have a lot of distant relatives working on these lines. I have met a few distantly related members, but most of the names I have added myself and they are rather low hanging fruit. They are not being picked up as often as I'd like through Ordinance Ready, so it's quite a thrill to see it when it happens though. This may be another reason I am reluctant to unreserve.

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Justin Masters said: Thanks for the info, Amy and Christina!