lengthen Discussion feature - with example!

LegacyUser

m said: I suggest lengthening the Discussion feature...and I even have an example for you to look at:

LBZQ-9PK. Discussion title: "Alonso Garcia (m to Teresa Varela) -- debunking online claims that Ana Francisca & Andres Garcia are his parents -- proof."

I had 4 characters left.

(I successfully made it fit by truncating sentences.)

Please read it first....and then come back here...and imagine if I had been able to end it with a "summary" like the following (which I had to leave off):

Therefore, there were 2 different men of the same name: Alonso Garcia the adult living in NM in the 1650s with wife Teresa Varela and kids; and Alonso Garcia the baby living in Mexico in 1657 with parents Ana Francisca and Andres Garcia.

(This is a typical "disambiguating" type discussion that I create explaining problems such as 2 siblings with exact same name, etc.)

LegacyUser

Robert Raymond said: m,

First may I applaud you for your work.

In my opinion, proof arguments are enhanced by images, tables, headers, clickable hotlinks, text formatting, and footnotes. Your proof might be more influential if you incorporated these elements, saved it as a PDF, and uploaded it as a document. Then create a discussion about the document's proof argument.

--Robert

LegacyUser

m said: Thank you for applauding my work, Robert.

Did you read the Discussion and then come back to this thread and read the above "summary" sentence that I had to leave off because it didn't fit?

(To see if Discussion feature could benefit from being lengthened by looking at my example and determining if the Discussion would have been better if I could have added that "summary" sentence?)

Your point strengthens my argument that the Discussion feature should be lengthened, because I have proof that this particular Discussion is my most "influential" contribution to FS to date: this particular discussion is far more "influential" than my other Discussions and PDF uploads in the Memory section and Stories--and I have many of those with "disambiguation" information.

In fact, I have proof that this particular Discussion represents my greatest Collaboration on FS to date.

So, since I have proof that this Discussion is my most "influential" contribution to FS to date, and my greatest Collaboration on FS to date; then if this particular Discussion is worth lengthening to include the above, "summary" sentence, then the Discussion feature can benefit from lengthening.

(Because the reason I am requesting lengthening of the Discussion feature is because I am aware of how "influential" it is, that many people have benefited from this one particular Discussion and that it is an excellent example of Collaboration. And that this particular Discussion will be more understandable to the reader if that "summary" sentence can be added---and with that many people reading at this Discussion, understandablility enhances the experience of many other patrons.

And that as just one patron, I realized that I really had to work hard to truncate sentences to fit---I only had 4 characters left---and that if I'm having that problem, other patrons might have the same problem and just give up and not make a discussion at all when they have something that takes space to explain.Truncating sentences to make it fit is less than ideal--understandability is enhanced when there is room for explanation.)

LegacyUser

Robert Raymond said: While I have no say on how long discussions should be, I know the decision makers follow this forum.

For my own responsibilities, I encourage users to follow best practices in the Tree. May I have permission to point people to this discussion as an example? If you are willing to share the URLs of a couple of other examples, including PDF examples, I would appreciate those as well.

You are welcome to send them directly to Robert.Raymond@familysearch.org, or share them here.

LegacyUser

joe martel said: Great work on doing proof statements.

There was desire in the future to support genealopical proof statements but I don't expect there to be much movement on that.

So for the time being a couple approaches is to create a Note on the Person, or to Create a Source and attach that to each Person. The Note was used for that in the past, but unfortunately moved to the collaboration tab. The Discussion feature was designed as a conversation-like feature where people could discuss stuff, more researchy. It was not meant to be conclusionary, and is considered as transitory.

LegacyUser

m said: Privacy is very important to my family, so please do not use this as an example. But thank you so much for your kind comments.

LegacyUser

joe martel said: All these posts are public. If you do not want to have your comments public you or an admin here can remove them.

LegacyUser

m said: Joe, Robert Raymond asked for my permission and I am responding to his question.