Canned Reason Statements. Helpful or Harmful?

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Yup. I'm present working in an area of SE Ohio where the families all liked to live near each other and share each other's names, spouses names, and parent names. And even duplicate names in the same family siblings.

Then someone drops a brand new discrete copy of some family parts via a GEDCOM file with no sources and no attempt to clean it up...

Merge City!

LegacyUser

m said: I have never been able to figure out the difference between the canned statements.

I doubt I am the only one.

LegacyUser

Kathryn Grant said: I was just doing some merges and realized another reason why "All vital information and relationships match" is problematic. Changes can be made to a person's vital information and relationships both before and after the merge. So in order to know what vital information and relationships the reason statement is referring to, the user would have to go through the change log to figure out what was actually true at the time of the merge.

On short change logs it wouldn't be too hard. But when you're dealing with dozens of merges and changes, it becomes incredibly tedious, almost impossible, to determine what the canned reason statement really means—making it no more helpful than "dupe" or "same person."

(This is similar to, but slightly different from, the concern I raised earlier that when you change a name or date on a Person page, the change populates throughout the change log on every hyperlinked version of the person's name/date, making it difficult to tell what the name or date actually was at the time of any given change.)

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Yep. Why can't we have a simple change log that showed exactly what the value was before and what the value was after, and then is never touched again by anything else that is done. After all, it IS a Change HISTORY.

Although it would be the first time people tried to rewrite history based on some odd personal agendas :-)

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Another point on merges -- one of the problems that I continue to have is reviewing the history of merges. If I open a merge-deleted record, there are a number of things that I cannot view without restoring the record. These include family relationships and while I can look at those via the deleted person's change log, if there are a lot of merges that have taken place, the lack of family relationships is a major problem.

FamilySearch -- please, please expand all deleted records to include the entire record, as if I had restored it, not the truncated version we have today.

LegacyUser

Don M Thomas said: Kathryne Grant, you make some interesting points in your above Feedback. I like your feedback. Guess FamilySearch did not like it because you do not have a golden star or any points. Kind of think the golden star and points are a dumb thing anyway. It is like china regulating their people in a book with good citizen (who follows the CCP) in orange and bad citizen in black (who does not follow the CCP).

LegacyUser

W David Samuelsen said: Took me a while to understand and now able to know which one of 4 statements is true.

Sometimes I use "same person" without further explanation when the record is very clear.

LegacyUser

Juli said: Don, the stars are given by other users, like you and me, not by FamilySearch. You can give Kathryn a star by clicking "good point!" below her message.
I have no idea what you're talking about with "points".

LegacyUser

Don M Thomas said: No matter who gives the stars or points - (numbers) - DON'T LIKE THEM!!!!!! It is a form of compliance. (Like I can't think on my own?, - I need stars and points (numbers) to decide for me).

LegacyUser

Robert Wren said: Don, personally I find them mildly helpful.

I've even posted topics herein with a listing of "Trusted Respondents" (based on stars)

If you don't like them, simply ignore them. BTW, you have 254 of them, so some users appreciate (some of) your comments. : )

Compliance??? China??? How about appreciation and thanks!!

I can look at the top of this topic and see that Kathryn & Gordon Collett both have "stars" - as they both often DO on many topics.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: In this specific forum, if a person raises an issue that many people agree with, the large number of starts may get FS's attention a little faster as it stands out in the topics list.

LegacyUser

Don M Thomas said: To each his own Robert & Jeff - I don't like them. It is a form of compliance.

LegacyUser

Robert Wren said: Don, Do you mean:
"Compliance??? (WITH) China??? How about appreciation and thanks!!"?

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Robert, I think that Don might be confusing the number of Stars by a person's name with a person's participation statistics.

Starts are acquired on a specific comment a person has made by the number of people that agreed with a comment and clicked on the "good point" star -- this is the same as a "like" in other social media places like the FamilySearch Communities.

Participation statistics are what you see when you hover your cursor over a person's icon.

FS doesn't assign any "awards" or recognition to individuals on the forum.

LegacyUser

Kathryn Grant said: Agreed, Tom! On complicated cases, I typically undo the merges in beta (beta.familysearch.org) so I can see all the necessary information before I make changes in the live system. I usually see a lot more information on a record once I've unmerged or undeleted (restored) it.

LegacyUser

joe martel said: I don't notice stars, or likes. I look for observations and critical thinking and where lots of different users chime in. Typically the most important posts come from those users that post infrequently and have thought it through and post a thorough background and idea. Personally the more verbose posts get skimmed over whereas the specific to-the-point ones grab my attention - because I have a small attention span

LegacyUser

Paul said: The main reason I choose to use one of them is that the two IDs are then recorded. If things get messy later on (e.g. multiple merges by other users) at least the two IDs involved in the merge I made will be clear. Other than that, you might as well continue using statements like, "Same person / parents / event" in cases when, say, different IDs have been created solely based on different sources for the same (christening) event.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I understand that. Although sometimes I have found that when the problems are complex enough, if you don't spell it all out, the engineers can't find them :-)