FS internal messaging system isn't working correctly.

LegacyUser

Chas Howell said: Both of course, the quality of the underlining genealogical database aids in engaging family members.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Mm.

Is FamilySearch solely meant for publishing and defending research regarding our ancestors?

First, who am I to decide what FamilySearch is for?

My understanding is that FamilySearch was developed for several reasons, one of which was to reduce and/or eliminate duplicates and the associated temple proxy ordinances.

As part of that, it also offers us the opportunity to fulfill of scripture, which is often cited

Let us, therefore, as a church and a people, and as Latter-day Saints, offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness; and let us present in his holy temple, when it is finished, a book containing the records of our dead, which shall be worthy of all acceptation. (D&C 128:24(part)

My response is no, FamilySearch is not solely meant for publishing and defending research... -- Any good family tree management program or site can do that.

The reason I say no is because it is and should be much more than just for publishing and defending research, but goes to the declaration in the Doctrine & Covenants. It allows us to paint a full and complete picture of our kindred dead (each of our relatives in our ancestral lines).

Is FamilySearch also meant to engage and uplift our living family members and relatives?

Not when the effort is misguided as the "discovery" messages so often are, at least for me and for a number of the participants.

If that "meant to engage and uplift" is a goal, the FamilySearch Messaging has failed miserably.

Like conversion, only the spirit can convert, and so it is with researching and uplifting family members, this time with the spirit of Elijah.

In considering these two questions, I have to wonder if someone has not lost sight of turning the hearts of the fathers to the children and vice versa, and fulfilling the promise made to the fathers before the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

Participants in performing research for their ancestral lines are driven not by anything that can be written or sent in a message, but by the spirit of Elijah though the power of the Holy Ghost.

So my response to both questions is no. Those, like many political polls, are asking the wrong questions.

LegacyUser

Don M Thomas said: QUESTION back at you Tim Cross. How could my ancestry be, engaging and uplifting to my living family members and relatives if they were like some of the saints in the book, Volume 2, No Unhallowed Hand, 1846–1893, Chapter 3, Page, 41, who "stole, cheated, criticized the Apostles leadership, and refused to pay tithing."

Anyone can tell positive and uplifting stores, but are the positive and uplifting stories about their ancestors the truth?, or can just living through this life be a positive and uplifting story?

In my book, you can NOT,"engage and uplift our living family members and relatives," unless you defend the CORRECT research. Defending the correct research seems like an impossible task in an open edit and shared FamilySearch "Family Tree."

How will my ancestry look 100 years from now when every week I am sending out messages against incorrect changes made to my ancestry.

I know you-all get tired of me talking about the open edit or shared FamilySearch "Family Tree," but I see the open edit-ness of the "Family Tree" as both for good, and for bad. For good in that one can enter his/her data into the "Family Tree." For bad in that in time the tree will become corrupted.

The best FamilySearch "Family Tree" would be one that is open edit and shared, and one that is also closed, (so the research can not become corrupted in time), which is a dichotomy and can't be done.

Setting the above aside, FamilySearch can not be engaging and uplifting to our living family members and relatives unless the stores and research about our ancestry are correct. One will not know if their stories and research are correct unless they do the research themselves, and most don't want to, or don't have the time.

Sorry, I know this is a downer reply.

LegacyUser

Don M Thomas said: QUESTION back at you Tim Cross. How could my ancestry be, engaging and uplifting to my living family members and relatives if they were like some of the saints in the book, Volume 2, No Unhallowed Hand, 1846–1893, Chapter 3, Page, 41, who "stole, cheated, criticized the Apostles leadership, and refused to pay tithing."

Anyone can tell positive and uplifting stores, but are the positive and uplifting stories about their ancestors the truth?, or can just living through this life be a positive and uplifting story?

In my book, you can NOT,"engage and uplift our living family members and relatives," unless you defend the CORRECT research. Defending the correct research seems like an impossible task in an open edit and shared FamilySearch "Family Tree."

How will my ancestry look 100 years from now when every week I am sending out messages against incorrect changes made to my ancestry.

I know you-all get tired of me talking about the open edit or shared FamilySearch "Family Tree," but I see the open edit-ness of the "Family Tree" as both for good, and for bad. For good in that one can enter his/her data into the "Family Tree." For bad in that in time the tree will become corrupted.

The best FamilySearch "Family Tree" would be one that is open edit and shared, and one that is also closed, (so the research can not become corrupted in time), which is a dichotomy and can't be done.

Setting the above aside, FamilySearch can not be engaging and uplifting to our living family members and relatives unless the stores and research about our ancestry are correct. One will not know if their stories and research are correct unless they do the research themselves, and most don't want to, or don't have the time.

Sorry, I know this is a downer reply.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I really don't consider your response a downer, Don. My wife posted a number of photographs tied to her relatives. One of the sons of her relatives complained that her very commonly used nickname, which the person used themselves, was wrong and he wanted her to change it.

We (my wife and I) have run into instances where what was posted was questioned, even to the point of telling (me, in this case) to enter my conclusions as alternates.

So uplifting? In more than one instance, the experience has not been uplifting for the person wanting things differently. On rare occasion, people will tell us they appreciate what we've done, but that is very rare.

LegacyUser

David Newton said: Depends on who the audience you are talking about is.

For its Mormon audience the answer will be different than for its non-Mormon audience. Now the latter will be the minority in numbers of participants but I suspect they may well be disproportionately important in terms of number of contributions to the system in terms of non-duplicate profile creation, source attachment etc.

For the non-Mormon audience I believe that it is the tree itself that is by far the most important bit. Ordinances are of course irrelevant to this audience segment. The uplifting of family members is also fairly irrelevant as well I think. For us it's a hobby and so when it comes to engagement of family members it's the same as any other hobby. It's a topic of conversation in the same way fishing or model railways or music or cookery is.

LegacyUser

Chas Howell said: Is it possible to just save the captured image to your desktop and then delete or to you have to save the image to memories for the messaging system to work which is what I do for the GetSatisfaction forum?

LegacyUser

Tim Cross said: I suspect when an image is posted to GetSatisfaction, the image is stored on a server so that others are able to see the image while you are not online.  I appreciate that storing all images shared in FamilySearch Messaging in Memories may not be ideal.  We may need to provide an option to indicate whether or not the image should be part of Memories.

LegacyUser

Tim Cross said: Thank you for responding.  This is very helpful.

Thank you for all the work you do on FamilySearch.

LegacyUser

Juli said: To expand on David Newton's thoughts: I quite frankly haven't a clue what is actually meant by "uplift our living family". I prefer to think in much more concrete terms.

Messaging on FS should be for collaboration; it is, after all, supposedly a collaborative tree. Messaging is where preliminary communication can/should take place when branches meet (an exhilarating discovery, in my experience), to discuss the bits that haven't yet been (or can't yet be) posted on the tree, to offer different interpretations/conclusions, and to work out any complications, so that what goes on the tree is as straighforwardly correct as we can make it.

FS of course is much more than just the tree; many people never go near the tree and yet use FS daily for the source materials. Messaging doesn't apply to them; records-only users may need communication from FS regarding things like the index correction feature, or a forum where they can report weird search results, but they don't need to be able to communicate with any other specific users.

For non-Mormons like me, the FS tree is not a good way to share with non-genealogist family, because you need an account to do/see most things. Most people are resistant to Yet Another Opportunity To Forget Your Credentials. Other sites (such as WikiTree) can be better suited to the "look, Ma!" aspect of genealogy.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: David is absolutely correct. A non-member's response will not be my response which goes into doctrinal matters involved with the supporting organization behind FamilySearch -- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The questions themselves are religious in nature and for non-members (most of whom who do use the site do not use Family Tree) are almost meaningless. They are, in my opinion, like polls conducted by one political party or another -- intended to skew the thinking of the persons taking the poll and looking only for positive feedback for their party.

That's the way I viewed the questions. While I am sure your intent, Tim, is not political in nature, even for Church members, such as myself, they are . . . well . . . confusing, especially the one about engage and uplift.

The real issue for me is unwanted "campaign" messages (which one can treat as political, as in political campaigns). I not only do not want to see such messages, but they are distracting and in the case of the ones I most recently received, raises serious questions about those who put together the campaigns.

I haven't mentioned this before, but the internal messaging system, when it comes to campaign "discovery" messages is avoiding having to deal with the opt-out for receiving such messages via email. They are, they way they are now being used, avoiding being called what they really are: Unwanted solicitations to have me, the recipient do something, or SPAM.

That means, that I view them as an attempt to avoid living and obeying the law regarding email in the United States -- the CAN-SPAM act

Despite its name, the CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t apply just to bulk email. It covers all commercial messages, which the law defines as “any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service,” including email that promotes content on commercial websites. The law makes no exception for business-to-business email. That means all email – for example, a message to former customers announcing a new product line – must comply with the law. -- https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/busin...

Hopefully, Tim, you can pass this on to the teams that oversee the ethics used with respect to methods used to engage members into researching their families. The Opt-Out so far, has only applied to email deliveries. But in reality, if the campaign is going to be ethical and comply with the principle behind the CAN-SPAM act, then it will honor the opt-out, not only for email delivery, but also for internal message deliver using the FamilySearch messaging system.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: By the way, FamilySearch is not a private site, even though it requires an account to access all of its feature. It is a free site, but that does not change its classification and as such, emails from any site fall under the jurisdiction of the CAN-SPAM act. In my opinion, there is a strong legal argument (that likely has not been litigated in any manner) that could be made that FamilySearch, in its enthusiasm (and what spammer is not enthused to spam) to engage Church members. is violating the principle of the act and therefore subject to its requirements, even in its intern messaging system.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Tim,

On the FamilySearch Communities, if you delete an image anytime after it has been used in postings, they will immediately disappear from that posting, even if the posting was made months prior to that. I really hope that this is not the case for messages!

When you attach an image to a message for collaboration type conversations, it is almost ALWAYS a one-off. You don't need the image for anything else and so it makes no sense to be forced to have to keep a bunch of images sitting around simply due to the fact that if you delete them, they will disappear from every message that they were used in and needed for.

Again, the more appropriate way is how it works with e-mails. This is the way it works on GetSatisfaction.com. This is the way it SHOULD work for messages. This is how a person can always go back and look at a conversation thread months later and STILL see any of the images that were attached supporting those e-mails or topic replies.

Some of us will simply hand draw a quick sketch or grab a screen shot of something that we are trying to explain and then scan it to use in a message or email for description purposes. Memories are RARELY (if ever) used for this purpose. If I had to actually KEEP a copy of every attachment I made on emails so that they wouldn't disappear, that would just be a lot of useless maintenance simply because of the idiosyncratic way the system was designed. Why should I have to load reams of images into my memories simply so that I can attach them to messages? Especially when they haven't got anything to do with my memories? I am only loading them there because the messaging system forces me too. And for what purpose?

Please do not force us to maintain permanent images somewhere in the system so that the histories of our collaboration conversations are not corrupted by accidental deletions or updates of those images months after the fact.

The way this works on FamilySearch Communities is a total nuisance. I have a whole raft of images stored there, almost none of which I will ever use more than once, and certainly NONE of which have ever come from memories. If I had an image that I had prepared for a particular description of something and I need it for a different topic, I will simply upload it again from my PC (but again, that is RARELY needed).

This is not a chat system, and it shouldn't use chat systems as a model for its development. What is needed is a custom, intra-FamilySearch type e-mail type messaging service that is capable of supporting groups. I should always be able to go back and see messages to or from others with all attachments shown exactly as they originally occurred. It should NOT be possible to remove any of them from the original messages (obviously this would exclude any messages or threads that a person wants to intentionally delete)

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said:

We may need to provide an option to indicate whether or not the image should be part of Memories

It may be useful to simply provide a CHOICE where a person can upload a throw-away image, or reference a memory.

LegacyUser

m said: I have many ancestors who were among the very first LDS converts.

I am on FS mainly for DNA purposes.

My DNA matches are mainly LDS--so FS is the appropriate website for me to be on.

I correct the tree so that my DNA matches are looking at correct information online (so they will post accurate trees onto DNA websites and give accurate info to DNA project managers).

I make discussions, custom facts, images, stories, etc. prevent wrong merges by presenting accurate genealogical info in a way that is understandable to the viewer.

I also research documents on FS constantly and attach sources constantly and fix giant messages created by wrong merges constantly.

Because I am so busy putting accurate genealogical info for my DNA matches to see and presenting complex info in a clear and understandable manner, I don't spend much time on messaging other patrons, because really I am communicating constantly because I am constantly presenting genealogical info onto the pages.