temple icon color change.
Comments
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hthalljr said: Yes, Greg, that would indeed fix the problem. In any digital system, every state must have an exact definition, with only one outcome possible. The fact that "green" can now mean two different things is an intolerable ambiguity.0
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Tom Huber said: The problem is the green icon indicates (and always has indicated) "available to reserve and take to the temple" and Jim basically says that in one of his points in his response. Prior to the update, we did not have the option to "grab and go" with any ordinance that had been shared with the temple system. Now we do.
The state of the reservation is not being considered and that is where many people see a problem. I had not realized that one could reserve ordinances from the (pedigree view of the) tree. Having to open the flyout is not a good thing if one is looking for green icons to explore what else needs to be done for that person, or if they have finished fleshing out a profile and no longer want to see the icon. I don't know of any way to do that.
As Jim indicatesNevertheless as we go back and examine all that has happened with the release and with your comments I think we now have the information we need to decide if we need to change some of these changes or not. Please be patient with us, as this review and then react process may take some time.
I am very happy that I am not involved with that process.0 -
Jeff Wiseman said: If they do change this, they will need to ALSO change how the display colors in Ordinances Ready work, since those colors have also been functioning on exactly the same principles and meanings as those now being discussed. Persons that are Shared to temple have been showing up as green for many months now in Ordinances Ready!
What really concerns me here is that all of these workflows that have "broken" by these changes are based on the assumption that a name shared with the temple doesn't need to be investigated and is somehow a lower priority.
It has been repeated across a couple of recent topics in the forum here, that it's all about easily seeing in a pedigree or descendancy chart whether or not a name has been submitted to the temple. This is SPECIFICALLY so that the person investigating the records doesn't have to "waste their time looking into the details just to find out that the person has been shared to the temple" (i.e., they want to skip any records that have been shared to the temple)
In my experience, this core assumption is incorrect. When a person's name has been shared with the temple, because it is that much closer to having ordinance work complete, that is all the MORE reason that it should be checked for accuracy! Why are people assuming that because a name has been shared with the temple that it is any more correct than those that are just ready to be reserved?
I have seen many places where people have just copied names in from books or area records and immediately submitted them all to the temple. Many of those don't have sources, have minimal vitals, and frequently are not even attached to the correct families. They have incorrect siblings and parents.
So unless it really was a FACT that any name shared with the temple was completely correct and vetted (which they are NOT), I really can't understand why there is such an insistence that a workflow based on that faulty assumption should be specifically supported by the system.
Especially when it comes at increasing the complexity of a system that has specifically been simplified in this very area.0 -
JimGreene said: Jeff, that is why including relationships into the equation is so important, not just for places where there are no records, but also for places where there are families that have lived in that location for a long time and reuse names a lot. A grandfather, father, son lineup is more likely to be unique.0
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JimGreene said: Great experiment Greg, are you still tracking these two groups? The reason why I ask is to see if you can track them and share the results at least through endowment, and maybe until they are all completed. Please let me know I would love to see and share the data!0
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JimGreene said: Hi Jeff, I feel one of my long posts coming on....:)
As I have mentioned in one of my prior posts, there is a temple standard and a genealogical standard, and the temple standard is not as rigid. Why not? Because, while duplication of ordinances can be annoying, what is more damaging is waiting for the sometimes non-existent source to appear and making the person on the other side of the veil wait. The minimum standard is: do I have enough data points to be reasonably sure that this person existed, and do I have them in the right place in the tree? With a common tree, one and only one one person can exist in each spot, and it allows us to use relationships in our qualification process. As an example: How many Jim Greene's are there in the world? Having run into many, I can tell you there are a lot. How many with a father named Gordon and a mother named Phyllis? I know of at least 2. By adding one more generation I can guarantee 99.9% uniqueness and only have one date and three places and no sources other than living memory. And that is enough to perform the ordinances.
Now, and this is the really important part, we have built those qualifiaction algorithms into the temple qualification process. We feel confident, the brethren feel confident, and you should feel confident that if it has qualified and shows green, then you can take it to the temple, without any further work--though we would love to see you do some investigation and get to know the person if you can before you go. We love the fact that you are filling in blanks and verifying data and adding sources. Keep doing it. But know that it is not necessary before performing the ordinances. You could just as easily do it after the temple work has been done. Now, I am not blind. I know that many times subsequent research and investigation identifies duplicate records that when merged (correctly) show that the work done was duplicated. That is acceptable as long as the flow was followed as it is written in the system. No time in the temple is wasted. And a green temple is a green temple = the work can be done.
In conclusion, what you are doing, and the flows you are following are your own. They are not bad, but they will eventually lead to breaks like we have just experienced. And please do not think that I am denegrating research, or sources, or any other means that strengthens a person's record and memory. Those tasks are vital, please keep it up. But when your workflows for genealogical standards cross the workflows for temple standards there will eventually come the day when there is a breakage.
Thank you for all you contribute to the tree, and to the process. Thank you for your ideas. I will take them all seriously, and try to explain mitigating factors where I can.0 -
R Greg Leininger said: Jim, re your question to my "experiment":
I put 5 male and 5 female names into a sandwich "baggie" and marked it as Baptism/Confirmation "unreserved". I did so similarly for 5 male and 5 female for Initiatory, and similar for Endowment.
Then I repeated the process but in this group I "shared w the temple" all these names.
So a total of 30 persons in each of two groups.
I actually waited for one year to follow up on them.
Out of the 30 "unreserved" persons, only one person was claimed and had their baptism/confirmations done. Interestingly i saw about 3 where someone claimed them but immediately "shared them w the temple!"
However out of the 30 "shared w temple" group, about 20 had their B/C done w/in that same year. It is interesting though , since i have hundreds shared w the temple for close to two years, but it almost seemed as if the ones getting done are ones that i MORE RECENTLY shared w the temple.
I have also noticed that if i share w the temple persons who have had their B/C done and now need their initiatory, work done I have seen many done rather quickly.
The system seems to "bog down" when you get to persons only needing their Enowment done. I have seen very few if any picked up by someone else to get the Endowment done, whether unreserved or even if shared w temple. They just don't get done as fast (for obvious reasons, needing 2 hrs of "work" for each name).
I usually do the sealings myself if they just need that done. I Hope that answers your question. I don't plan to monitor it any longer. The answer already seemed fairly clear to me: that sharing w temple gets the work done a LOT quicker if for B/C or initiatory.0 -
Christine said: Just a thought for those who don't want to spend time researching a person who may or may not have been already shared with the temple: often I find someone who has been shared who has no sources, no spouse, no children, etc, I research them and then search for new duplicates which are not always found by the system without new sources or dates I have found. Many times the person has already had temple ordinances completed. I feel like merging those records, this saving precious time in the temples, is as valuable as adding new people. Just a different way to look at things.0
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Jeff Wiseman said: Thanks again for the insight Jim. I basically do all these things now, although I didn't have a clue that the vetting algorithms on a record to give it the Green "Go" icon included a lot of relationship checking. That would increase my confidence some, although my experience from just a couple years back was showing me plenty of Green icons where parents, children, and spouses were not correct. I certainly didn't want those getting by into the temple. But that was the last time I looked closely at them. I'll need to watch them more closely now to improve my confidence in them.
In general, I never use icon colors in any of the research and vetting work I do. I go through families vetting ALL data REGARDLESS of icon state. I put the same effort into vetting records that have long been completed in the temple as I do new records that are still yellow. I'm not so worried about duplicates as I am records that are being incorrectly merged. When I'm done on a record and it seems minimally sufficient for ordinance work, I'll reserve and share it with the temple if it has not already been. But if there are some significant doubts as to which family or spouse a record belongs to, I will leave it until further information appears. However, I have seen that in most of those cases FS marks them as Green and away they go to the temple.
So in general, the color of the icons have no effect on my vetting data and researching since I constantly see significant errors in records or all color icons. None are really more needful of investigation than any others based solely on their color. That's why I just haven't understood why this has been such a big deal recently.
But thanks again. It's nice to know when the mechanics "under the surface" have changed over the last little while so I can adjust my assumptions on the system operation :-)0 -
Tom Huber said: Same here, Christine. Part of that problem goes back to the record coming in from nFS where sourcing was not emphasized (and much harder to set up).
The same problem existed for the ingest of an uploaded GEDCOM into the massive tree. If the upload and compare function was performed before the last round of modifications, then duplicates are very easy to create. If the upload was done since the last round of modifications (at least a year ago or so), then creating duplicates still can be done, but ti takes a lot more work to process the GEDCOM, since the Add, et al, is now mixed in and the GEDCOM is processed with everything mixed together.
I do not remember if Jim or anyone else from FS said that unsourced profiles are having their ordinance reservations cancelled or not. I do not think that is the case, so unless FS decides to run a routine looking for duplicates, no sources, etc., and then unreserves the ordinances, we are likely to continue to find ordinance reservations for people that have no sources, etc.0 -
Christine said: Right! And to be honest, I have seen at least one person who consistently overrides the "is this a duplicate?" to submit names. Somehow we need to get past the feeling, thought, quota, etc, that the only way to participate in family history and temple work is by submitting names to do the temple work. Every hour I spend indexing is family history and temp!e work. Every hour I spend cleaning up a family in the tree is family history and temple work. Every hour I spend helping a friend or ward member learn how to search is family history and temple work. It all counts!!!!!0
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JimGreene said: Tom, as I said in another post, the requirement that there be a source is not coming from FamilySearch, to have this requirement would disqualify half the world from fully participating in the work. I am not sure where this requirement came from, but one of the reasons we set up a common tree was to get around the need to have sources attached, where relationships could form the identification--sufficient to establish a unique person. Genealogically speaking having sources is necessary, from a temple viewpoint, and qualifying for ordinances, it is not a requirement. I would plead with each of you to please not apply genealogical standards to temple work. In order to make sure the work is performed for everyone, we are willing to accept some duplication. The more we tighten the requirements the more likely that we exclude people. We prefer no duplication, we are working to have a system that eliminates duplication, but we understand the reality of things. My hope is that we can earn your trust so that there is not the feeling that our system is faulty by those doing the heavy lifting.0
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Jeff Wiseman said:
one of the reasons we set up a common tree was to get around the need to have sources attached, where relationships could form the identification--sufficient to establish a unique person
I understand the desire to use relationships as a major part of identifying an individual in the world. Many times without those relationships correctly identified, the person being taken to the temple has not been uniquely identified. We certainly see this over and over.
However, conclusions are conclusions are conclusions. The presence of a person record, the name of the person on that record, values given to vitals on that record, and RELATIONSHIPS between that record and others are ALL CONCLUSIONS. Without conclusions about persons, there would be NO temple work at all since there would be no person records.
And it is physically IMPOSSIBLE to have any kind of conclusion without a reason, basis, or source of the information from which that conclusion has been drawn.
However, it *IS* possible to have any kind of conclusion WITHOUT having the reason, basis, or source of the information that it has been drawn from formally documented.
I suspect that this is the real difference between the "genealogical standard" and the "temple standard" that you are referring to. They both MUST have a minimal set of conclusions, but the temple standard doesn't require the evidences and proofs for those conclusions to be documented for the work to be done. The genealogical standard REQUIRES those proofs and evidences to be documented in support of the conclusions.
So "the requirement that there be a source is not coming from FS" issue is kinda moot. It is a fact of life. It is a law of nature. It is the core basis of the entire deduction process. By definition, you cannot draw a conclusion from thin air. It MUST always come from some kind of source evidence.
If the "temple standard" is that you do not have to actually document the evidences that contribute to the conclusions going to the temple, that is fine, but it doesn't change the FACT that it is still impossible for those reasons not to exist--even if that source is nothing more than a personal memory of what they heard their mother say 40 years earlier or something that they saw in a dream.
And since it is impossible for conclusions to exist without some kind of source evidence, a suggestion that comes up here occasionally is to disallow a person from entering conclusions in the system without providing the reasons for that specific conclusion, since the person entering the conclusion already knows the source information that they are deriving their conclusions from.
So although, sources and the other reasoning and derivation for a person record's conclusions don't have to be included in order to submit a record for temple work, it seems kinda silly that we should even have any of those conclusions without their associated reasons and sources attached in the first place.1 -
JimGreene said: I was referring more narrowly to attached sources in our system. You make good points. I agree with most
. What I mean to say is that to be qualified for the temple a record does not have to have a source attached or reasons for conclusions. There does need to be a standardized date and place somewhere in the relationships presented. 0 -
Jeff Wiseman said: I was pretty sure that was the case :-) Thanks for the confirmation!0
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Irvin Mark Scott said: Temple icon colors
Please explain why my temple reserved list has just two colors Pale Blue and Dark gray. I've shared several hundred names with the Temple, Ward, Stake and Family. How does Family Search think I can possibly manage a large list with just two colors. Grey and Pale Blue , for my sanity and peace of mind rethink and add more colors.0 -
JimGreene said: Hi, thanks for the question. There are actually four colors in total, so if your list does not have green or orange it is because you either don't have any that you have reserved to do yourself, or you have a filter on. Future enhancements will help you with your sharing to ward, stake, and family. If you pull up your reservation list there is additional information next to every ordinance, and there are many filters that you can apply to see just what you want to see.0
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brian.lundgren said: I like the changes and am hoping that they will lead to fewer people sharing everything with the temple.
It is good for family members to be able to do ordinances for their own families.
Just because you don't see a family member doing the work doesn't mean they won't join in a few years or in a generation or two and be very excited to see work to do.
If it's all been submitted to the temples and done when they get there, they may feel disappointed that the opportunity was lost. Lots of my family work was done by someone sharing everything with a temple and by name extraction.
I am grateful to those that did the work, but would rather have my family have the opportunity to do it for our own family.0 -
Jeff Wiseman said: Brian,
It kinda sounds as if you (like many, many other people here) are misunderstanding these changes. The changes in color are simply reflecting a major change in the way reservations work.
If someone (anyone) has shared a name with the temple, then ANYONE (including yourself) can request/reserve that name from the temple queue, print it, and take it to the temple.
As of this recent change relative to color icons, the limitation that you are talking about that existed for several years NO LONGER EXISTS! That is why names shared to the temple by others will show up as Green icons to you. It means that you can take those names and go to the temple.
So to you, it doesn't matter that people are sharing names to the temple, since now you can grab any of them and take them to them temple yourself.0 -
R Greg Leininger said: Brian
We all know that for almost any topic there will be people with strong opinions that are diametrically opposed to each other.
In this case, I do not agree with your philosohpy. Here are my thoughts and biases:
1. I have found over 2000 NEW names to submit to the temple in just 2 years. I cannot do all those names in my lifetime at this rate of discovery. My immediate family and extended family have their own, and cannot help me.
2. So I have two options:
a. Create the new names for Fam Tree and leave them unreserved for someone else to claim (possible years later), OR
b. Share them w the temple.
If you read about my little "experiment" above, from that I have come to a reasonable conclusion that they will get their work done quicker if shared w the temple. Maybe they only get their B/C/I done early on (and the endowment may take longer to get done), but these B/C//I ordinances are getting done quickly. If you subscribe to what one Fam Search missionary believes and shared w me, is that once they are baptized and confirmed, you might logically assume that they now "have gotten out of spiritual prison." ( personal belief, nothing official, mind you). I'm sure most people would rather have that happen sooner than later.
Sharing w the temple means that members from around the world are helping you and your family. I like that idea.0 -
R Greg Leininger said: and Brian, one other thing:
if ANY of my extended family need new family names, I can Unshare w the temple any of those 2000 names and give my family members as many as they want. But the number of 2000 is not a fixed, finite number. If I keep my rate up, I will continue to find 1000 new names each year. That means "lots to share" w anyone, including family.0 -
Tom Huber said: Life is full of disappointments, Brian, but in the case of our deceased relatives, it should be one of rejoicing that they have had their temple work performed. I am very happy when I find that my relatives have had their work done. But then, since I am getting older, it is more and more difficult for me and my wife to attend the temple.
For members with young families, it is very difficult for them to attend a temple session, as well. There is the cost of hiring a baby sitter, as well as unforeseen circumstances, such as a sick child.
There may be a few who wanted to do a close relative's ordinances, but when it comes down to it, that relative is going to know of their intentions and will still appreciate those. The blessings are not lost, but actually shared with other members.
However, as Christine mentioned (above), she has seen at least one person who consistently overrides the "is this a duplicate?" to submit names. That person is not in compliance when they act in such a selfish manner. However, it is their choice and as such, the most we can do is to go ahead and clean up after them.0 -
Harold Lloyd Christensen said: Now that we are home from Peru I can not wait to give the 70 PERUvian missionaries longer sentences and more substance as we teach them English while they are in "la quarentena". "I have a tie" "I have shoes". "I have a shirt" " I have orange shoes" "I have yellow shoes" Now that we are back from So America and see the above we can teach them......."I have a tie that used to be color coded and now I do not know if I have a red tie or a green tie but my companion has a purple tie and I know that it is not my tie". No do not think me sarcastic or light minded---just wanted to give everyone a light moment and take a breath for a moment. To all just be thankful that you are not learning English and in doing so only get 80 minutes a week to do so. Keep up the good work and keep it simple (if we can). Elder H Christensen Y Hermana L Christensen0
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Julie Ann Moriyama said: I, like many people, do descendancy research. Researchers have complained about the "shared with the temple" color changing to green, and the difficulty that causes by having to go all the way to the ordinances page before you find out that the ordinances have already been shared with the temple. I have a suggestion that may help. What if, on the descendancy view, when you click on the persons name, and view the summary, when you hover over a green ordinance icon that has been shared with the temple, that is says something like "ordinance may be requested for immediate use, has been shared with the temple"? This would notify everyone that the ordinance has been shared, without having to go all the way in to the ordinance page before you find out that the ordinance has already been shared. This would also let people know right away that their request needs to be finished in three months, not two years. By the way, I think it is great that ordinances shared with the temple are made available for immediate use.0
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Tom Huber said: That is an excellent suggestion. Hopefully Jim will pass this on to the developers so they can consider over what has been previously suggested, two different shades of green.
One to indicate that there is at least one unshared available ordinance to be reserved and the other that all are shared ordinances, but available to take to the temple.0 -
hthalljr said: Brian, I'm curious about what you consider to be a "family name." Doesn't the gospel teach that we are all of the same family? Indeed, since our goal in FamilySearch is to link the entire family of Adam together, sooner or later, FamilySearch will recognize *every* person as your "family name."
I share my great-great grandparents who joined the Church in 1831 with about 5,000 other Latter-day Saints. Which of all these cousins "owns" them?
Since our Church leaders invited us to research the descendants of our ancestors, I have been doing exclusively "cousins" research and share all my discoveries with the temple. I know that it's the most efficient way to get the work done. It's easy to lose temple cards, but the temple will never lose its file.
I'm not "harvesting" existing names from the tree: in almost every case I'm adding new names and new relationships to the tree, and I don't submit an ordinance until I've exhausted all resources at both FamilySearch and Ancestry.
I live in the Provo Temple district, and all ordinances that I have shared with the temple have usually been completed within two years. (Since the pandemic closed the temples, "my" list of uncompleted ordinances has risen from an average of about 8,000 to today's total of 9,773), but every one of them is a "family name" that can be identified with the "find my relationship" tool.
So when I go to the temple, I always ask for a temple name. Sometimes, I'll be working on "my" own backlog, but if not, I know I'm helping someone else with "his" backlog.
And always, always, that temple name is a "family name," even if FamilySearch doesn't yet know how we're related.0 -
JimGreene said: Just gonna jump in and say, in Brian's defense, what he is talking about is a family that is fairly new to the church, and there is great joy in doing work for those who are close to you, who you may have even known. And great sadness when someone else who at best has a very distant relationship, or none at all that can be substantiated, has done the work--I believe that is what he is talking about. Yes we should all rejoice when the work is done. But why rob someone of an extra special experience? And it happens all the time, we get calls almost every day, which is why some of the changes we are making are happening.
Names in the late 1800's and back, fair game for any documented family member, no matter how close or distant the relationship is. No one alive will have known them. No documented relationship? Move along, nothing to see here, unless all you are doing is adding documentation. One final question, and I only ask it to perhaps prompt a pondering, not to judge in any way. Am I taking blessings from others in any of the things I do as far as gathering Israel on both sides of the veil? Is other's contentment in allowing me to do the work for them, of discovering, gathering and connecting my family, preventing them from receiving additional blessings, joy, and experiences? Again, no judgement, just food for thought.0 -
hthalljr said: After long experience, I believe that there is no problem with close relatives being preempted by others sharing names with the temple.
I used to receive, on average, about one request every two or three months from someone who was more closely related to the person whom I had shared with temple: this probably amounted to about one name in 1000. I was always happy to hear from this distant cousin, thanked him for contacting me, and immediately released the ordinance to him.
But I have never received a complaint from someone for "stealing" their relative. (The name of the person sharing the work with the temple does disappear after the work is completed, but the history always shows who was working on the name.)
Now, of course, anyone can reserve work shared with the temple without having to ask. And since, on average, it takes two or more years for the temple to complete that work, there is plenty of time for any closer relative to reserve it.
Finally, of course, we have the protection that is offered to close relatives by having to obtain permission from next of kin for people born less than 110 years ago.0 -
Tom Huber said: Taking my response a bit further, the idea of seeing what the state the individual ordinance is, should be implemented (available to reserve, or shared). I was speaking of the temple icon itself and should have responded accordingly...0
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R Greg Leininger said: thanks for the explanation Tom. I have frequently encountered persons and entire family groups that have very specific birth dates and locations, but no sources to support that data. I wondered how this person could have such specific info in their bio w/o having any sources to back it up. If their temple work was not yet done, I have been reluctant to claim that related family name, wondering if it was truly an accurate submission.0
This discussion has been closed.