Attach individual to source in someone else's Source Box

LegacyUser

Brad Hurley said: I've come across unindexed sources that have been attached to individuals by other researchers. As I've reviewed these sources, I sometimes notice that the source is not attached to every person mentioned in the source. I'd like to correct this, but I have found no way to attach anyone to these sources, because they aren't in my source box.

My only option is to Copy the source to MY Source Box. Since the copy isn't attached to any of the people that were attached to the original source, I then attach the copy to everyone that was attached on the original record. Then I attach the source to the person (or people) that were missing. Lots of steps.

Here's my alternative. On the page that lists the individuals the source is attached to, could you just add a data entry field to enter an individual ID, and a button to attach the source to that individual?

LegacyUser

Robert Wren said: That is being 'somewhat' covered by the relatively new ' missing attachment??' Prompt on many attached sources - a helpful new feature.

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Paul said: Brad

I don't know what you mean by "unindexed sources". To me, FamilySearch sources are either indexed or "image only". In the case of the latter, they can be attached to multiple individuals as, after the source/URL has been attached to one person, it is still available for attachment to anyone else mentioned on that page.

See https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/619.... I have added this to one individual who appears on this page, but it can still be attached to other IDs.

Sorry if I am misunderstanding your problem. It would help if you could provide a screenshot of a source of the type you are talking about.

LegacyUser

Juli said: Brad is talking specifically about _unindexed_ sources.

LegacyUser

Juli said: I believe Brad is talking about the "linked set" of attachments that is possible with unindexed (i.e. image-only) source citations. If I remember to check the (dratted) "add to my source box" checkbox when I create and attach the citation, then I can add that same citation -- with the same transcription/notes etc. -- to other profiles later on. However, if I didn't remember the checkbox, or if the citation was attached by someone else, then I cannot add further instances of that citation. As Brad points out, my only option is to copy the citation to my box, which explicitly breaks the link. Then I have to either live with my additions being separated from the initial instances, or I have to re-do all of those previous instances, attaching the citation from my box (and removing the previous nearly-identical citation). It would be much better if one could edit the list of attachment points and add further profiles, and it seems like it would be a simple thing to implement.

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Brad Hurley said: Juli is correct is saying that I am talking about "image-only" sources from Family Search. In addition, I am also talking about any sources created manually in other people's source boxes, which they would do whenever they want to reference sources that are not in Family Search at all. Believe it or not, there are a lot of sources outside of the Family Search web site!

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Roger Moritz said: I too would like to be able to attach a source to alternate-account-source-boxes as well. By the user CODE would be the best way.

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Roger Moritz said: Might be a privacy issue though...

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Brad Hurley said: As for privacy, we can already see and edit sources in other people's source boxes. We just can't attach the source to someone else who is listed in the source.

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joe martel said: Think of it this way: A Source (the thing with Title, URL, Citation, Note) is an independent object. It can be attached to one or more Persons. It can be "favorited" by putting it in your SourceBox- just a list of URLs.
There are behavioral peculiarities regarding FS (indexed) Sources that force making a copy of the Source first.

LegacyUser

Juli said: Joe, no, putting a source citation into your source box is not quite as simple as "favoriting" or "starring" it.

If you are the one who's creating the initial object, and you remember to include your source box as one of the places "pointing to" said object, then you can make other pointers to it by using the pointer in your source box. Done this way, the destination of all of those pointers is the same object, so if you edit your notes or title or whatever, all of the pointers will show the updated information.

If you're not the one who created the initial object, or if you did not remember to put a pointer in your source box, then it is impossible for you to create any more pointers to that object. You can create a copy of the object as it currently stands, and you can create pointers to your copy, but you cannot point at the original in any way. This means that either you have to replace all of the pointers to the original with pointers to your copy, which is a lot of extra work and gets highly confusing very quickly, or you have to live with disconnected pointers: editing the original will only be reflected in the old pointers, and editing the copy will only be reflected in the new ones.

What we need is a way to add more pointers to the original object, regardless of who created it and how. One seemingly-simple way is Brad's suggestion of allowing additions (as well as the currently-possible deletions) when viewing the list of profiles that point to the object (source list - View - "Attached to" - Show all).

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Brad Hurley said: Hi Joe - thanks for your reply. I have no problem with needing to copy an indexed source to my Source Box before I attach it to anyone else. But for UNindexed sources, which is what I'm talking about here, it is very cumbersome to have to recreate all the attached people, as Juli pointed out.

LegacyUser

Robert Wren said: You might consider using RecordSeek, which is a browser add-on which creates link attachments of any webpage to any FS PID (or Ancestry Tree person).

https://recordseek.com/

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Paul said: With threads like this, I realise how little I really know about the workings of Family Tree! With regard to this topic, I guess it might help if I ever used my Source Box - well, tell a lie, I probably do use it once or twice a year.

So I still don't understand this problem, I'm afraid. Whilst I'm on an "unindexed image" page, I just add it (the URL) there and then to the individuals to which it applies - job done. If I've missed something / someone I go back later and there it is still available to be attached to the sources section of any other ID I choose.

Juli talks about the: ".. 'linked set' of attachments that is possible with unindexed (i.e. image-only) source citations". Maybe if I knew exactly what that refers to (would I necessarily have encountered these in my work?) I would better understand the problem being discussed here!

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Robert Wren said: Good descriptive explanation, Juli!

However (he says facetiously) isn't FSTree designed as a "collaborative" operation- wouldn't you naturally use FSMail to contact Steve and collaborate/cooperate with him to insure you both agreed?

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Paul said: Juli

I think I partly "get it" now. I guess I'm just applying my thinking to how I carry out my source attachments - and they would rarely involve any translation of text in another language, for instance.

So, disregarding the foreign language factor, if I came across such a record, I would contact anyone to whom I thought it might be of interest and provide the URL. All they would need to do is add a suffix (say name of person) in front of the existing Source Title and attach it to the applicable ID.

Sorry for being so thick, but - apart from the transcription / translation situation that applies in the example you provide - am I missing something that would give me / another user extra work if the source was just, say, a parish register entry in our common (English) language?

I'm not downplaying the usefulness of Brad's suggestion, just still confused as to how this would necessarily help me, and most other FT users.

LegacyUser

Juli said: Well, there's the tedium of adding a date to each instance individually, versus only having to do it once. True, a parish register entry seldom applies to more than three people, but that's still thrice versus once....

But more fundamentally, the current setup is half-baked. It's no wonder even experienced users like you are confused. Source attachments get halfway to fully flexible and collaborative, and then abruptly stop.

(Granted, even this half-baked setup is vastly better than anything on Ancestry or other tree sites, where you have to enter each citation from scratch on every single profile, using insanely ill-suited database fields.)

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Juli said: Communication is only one small part of it. True collaboration involves being able to _do_ things together, not just talk about doing them.

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Brad Hurley said: I don't think it matters whether a translation is involved or not.

I think your example is very different from what I'm trying to do. This isn't a situation where I'm "coming across a record" that I think should be placed online that I want other people to know about. This is a situation where I'm coming across a source that has ALREADY been added to Family Search and is already attached to a number of people, but not to everyone that was on the original record.

As Juli pointed out in her example, I can make edits to sources added by other people, with one exception: I cannot attach that source to any other individuals in Family Tree.

Let's take your parish register example: let's say that someone found a baptism, created a source, and attached the source to the child, the father, and the mother. Then I look at the image and notice that the godparents/sponsors are listed, that they are relatives, and that this gives an important clue about the family so I want to attach the source to them as well. I can't. If I copy the source to my inbox, I would have to attach the copy to five people: the child, the mother, the father, the godmother, and the godfather. Then, there would be two sources listed for the same baptism for the child, father, and mother -- someone might come along and say "this source Brad added is a duplicate" and detach it, because they didn't realize it had additional information. I could avoid this problem by detaching the original source from the child, father, and mother, but that adds to the work.

With my suggestion, I would simply attach the godmother and godfather to the original source. And there would only be a single source listed for the baptism.

You validly point out that I could try to reach out to the person who created that source, and to ask them to make the change for me. My experience is that I get less than a 50% success rate in getting a response from other people, and I think that rate will keep going down as researchers continue passing away.

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Brad Hurley said: Thanks, Robert, I didn't know about RecordSeek. I think that is a useful idea, and I'll use it. But I think it solves a different problem than what I'm trying to solve here.

RecordSeek looks like a good solution for making it easier to create new sources, even though there will still be effort to attach that source to all of the appropriate individuals in Family Search. With this, I'm trying to make it easier to attach individuals to existing sources that were already created by other people in Family Tree, without creating duplicate sources.

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Robert Wren said: Here's another idea which might solve some of the problems of attaching a "source" to multiple PID's. Create a .png or jpeg image of the document, add it to memories.
You can then attach that image/memory to as many PID's as you like.

A 'sample' that I added a few days ago: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...

If you prefer to have it also listed in the PID Sources, one can easily be made through "Add Source / Add New Memory Source" on that source page. (See the "sources" for the same person, it's the second listed source.)

You might also take a peek at the source dated 1714 re 'Will of Samuel' which someone else had attached (view/attached to) to 50+ PID's. (Note that the title was changed - which affected those 50+ PID source entries, as Juli mentioned above)

The Source Linker does a reasonable attachment job, but it ONLY WORKS for INDEXED records. As you are likely aware, only about 30(?)% of digitized records in the catalog have currently been indexed (per a forum post some time ago.)

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Paul said: Thanks for your comments. I guess I will have to experience the practical difficulties myself to fully understand! I don't really find it too much bother to add a prefix (not "suffix", as I said above!) to the already-inputted source title, e.g "John Wrightson in the burial record of George Wrightson...." then repeat this if, say, George's mother is also named in the record. (I add the date to the Date field after the source is placed in the source section of the person, so do not include it in the title.)

The only time I tend to use the source box feature is if I can't identify the "George Wrightson" to whom the source refers, so add it there for later use. Perhaps my methods are a little long-winded but, as I have never had trouble in attaching a source to multiple IDs, the current procedure does not seem to affect me.