Clearing up ambiguity with help article

LegacyUser

Scott Joseph Gillespie said: One of the help articles needs to be changed regarding how to index multiple spouses or parents. This sentence is confusing. "For multiple spouses, index only the present or current spouse." I have Asperger's and my thinking is very literal, very black and white. To people like me, that sentence is ambiguous. When it says "present or current spouse," to me, that means the spouse is alive. It should read something like "the last living spouse." This clearly indicates that it is the last surviving spouse.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Welcome to the community-powered public 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.

Put the statement in the context of the record, not the present time.

The "present or current spouse" would have been living at the time the record was made.

LegacyUser

Juli said: Not necessarily, if the deceased was a widow or widower.

LegacyUser

Scott Joseph Gillespie said: Tom-

What I'm trying to point out is the problem that people like me have with how that is written. The help article does not say "living at the time the record was made." With high-functioning autism, my brain works differently. Someone without autism cannot understand this. Trust me when I say that the help article is ambiguous. I only see exactly what is written and, because I cannot ask questions of the writer, I can only go by exactly what is written. My brain has problems thinking in context without more information to explain the context. With the chat feature gone, I cannot ask those questions.