Thank you (someone) for the Life Sketch - but...

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: For the first time ever, I have found a Life Sketch with something in. Not just that, but something useful! But I nearly missed its existence.

I have been entering some defensive records into my Ancestry tree because I have some distant DNA matches in Australia and I wanted to get the connection to them in correctly so that (a) Ancestry doesn't use daft Thrulines to make suggestions to me and (b) so that these people could see where their ancestry really fits in.

Of course, I got side-tracked into wondering why, when the family went out to Oz, why did they leave one child behind? Nor could I even find when they went out. I'd tried Ancestry, FMP, the Queensland Archives site - nothing.

Next on the list was FS Records and FS FamilyTree. Nothing. Fortunately, my obsessively tidy nature prompted me to reject a Possible Duplicate profile - the comparison between the two profiles showed... A Life Sketch on "my" profile of interest. And that Life Sketch told me about when they went out (roughly) and why "Aunt Harriet" had to stay behind (only 5 children allowed on voyage).

But there was no indication that the Life Sketch had anything in it until I tried to do that merge. I'm short of vertical space so there's no way I'm going to leave Life Sketch permanently open - but why not add a marker or the word "Present" alongside the header Life Shetch when there is one?

(I'm resisting the temptation for thread "necromancy" - but see https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea... of 2014)

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Paul said: Adrian

I'm afraid not directly related to the subject of your post, but you (via Life Sketch) have solved the mystery of why one of a family I was researching a few weeks ago got left behind in England. I found the family (in a census record) living in an embarkation compound, en route to Oz (at Devonport, I believe) but, later, one child living with relatives, back in Yorkshire. Thank you for sharing this - maybe I should have looked to see if another user had added anything to the Life Sketch sections) of this family!

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Adrian Bruce said: Yes, I have no idea whether the limit comes from the shipping line or from the colony not wishing to subsidise unlimited children on board - or both, of course. (I'm not certain but I believe that there was some degree of subsidy for Brits going out to Oz for some time.)

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Gordon Collett said: Excellent idea that I hope the programmers will seriously consider.

Some thoughts on options:

Current appearance when open:



Current appearance when closed:



Options:

1) Preserve first few words of text - would be most obvious:



2) Use open/close marker as an indicator - as with messages:



3) Use "count" marker - would never be more than 1, but would be somewhat intuitive since used elsewhere:

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Adrian Bruce said: Count would be good - the first few words takes up an extra line, which is why I keep the thing closed even though there's usually no text there.

And thank you for the mock-ups.

LegacyUser

Juli said: I agree with Adrian that the last version (the count) is the best option, as it re-uses icons/functionality from other parts of the page. The first version is the worst, because it adds a line, and besides, I despise that stupid "more" thing.

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Jeniann Nielsen said: Yes please, make it obvious there's a life sketch there somehow. Sometimes those are very important not to miss.

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Adrian Bruce said: Another thread on the same topic...

https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

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Vivien Penelope Brown said: I agree with the above comments. There needs to be something to indicate that there are items written there. Along with that, I personally don't think "Life Sketch" is a good title for this. When you think of a Life Sketch you think of a summary of a person's life, however, I put my research notes in Life Sketch because it's is the rare person who even checks "Collaborate". In Life Sketch I write justification for certain things and other useful information that someone just visiting that page might miss. For example something like: "On the 1911 Census is states that ............had 10 children and that 7 are alive and 3 are dead". There needs to be somewhere visible to write those things. I think just plain old "Notes" would be a better title.

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Glenn P said: I like the idea of having something to indicate there is a Life Sketch to be read on the Person Detail Page. I like Gordon Collett’s options, especially the sub-line with just a few words of text and the ‘more’ indicator. Perhaps that sub-line with ‘more’ would only show up when there is an actual Life Sketch to read. It is consistent with other parts of the individual’s records, where it is used, though the count method is good too.
I like Life Sketches, I like reading short ones. I have created sketches a few times and am working on another right now. It helps others to understand a bit of who this person was.
I also like Vivien Penelope Brown’s comments about research notes. How about this, adding a part just under the Life Sketch part on the person detail page for ‘Research Notes’, which then allows people to add research notes about that person? It could be opened with a ‘more’ indicator, just like Gordon Collett’s ‘more’ for the Life Sketch, or by a count number.
Yes, I know that there is the ‘Notes’ section and the “Discussion’ section under the Tab for ‘Collaborate’. My impression from following recent posts is that few people go there or know what they are for.
An example in favor/favour of ‘Research Notes’: I am researching an ancestor and I ask my sister, she says, “I’ll have to go check my research notes”. I ask my nephew and he says, “I’ll have to go check my research notes”. (Both of them are very active on FamilySearch). I find a Family Group Sheet prepared in 1952 for this ancestor and her family and there I find, research notes. Where do we put all those research notes for that ancestor in FamilySearch? Do we keep on keeping our own research notes? I suggest we use Vivien’s approach, but create a second line on the person detail page called ‘Research Notes’. Let it work like ‘discussions’, but be specific for research notes and put it on the detail page (or link it directly from a main line called ‘Research Notes’ just under the Life Sketch line, to a separate page for Research Notes). People understand ‘Research Notes’. Genealogists understand ‘Research Notes’. 20 years from now people will know what research notes are. Let them be permanent to the PID and let more than one research note be created by many researchers/users. Yes, this is like ‘Discussions’ in that way.
I appreciate your thoughts.

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Jeff Wiseman said: The Life Sketch doesn't belong on the vitals page. You can have multiple life sketchs depending on the person who put it together. I would far more prefer that life sketches be put into memories and attach to the person profiles than have them constantly in the way when working with the actual "vitals" on the main page. At the very least they could be given their own tab. Furthermore, I don't want to have to go and "tidy up" someones's lengthy narrative every time I see mistakes in them based on corrections that I've had to do in the actual VITALS themselves.

The vitals area should never have duplicates of the same information in it. The minute that one doesn't align with the other is just another mess that someone will have to research and fix. I consider the individual vitals and their events to ALWAYS be the primary information record source. A Life sketch is totally secondary. As such, I usually don't care what they contain, right or wrong.

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David Newton said: The other massive problem with the life sketch is that since it isn't procedurally and algorithmically created it doesn't change when corrections and alterations are made to a profile. That means it can get horribly out of date very quickly on a profile which is edited fairly often.

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Jeniann Nielsen said: I actually see the life sketch not changing automatically as one of the real benefits of it. So often I am putting in a life sketch for commonly confused or mixed up information. If it's still in the life sketch, even someone comes along and makes a mess of things (again), someone else can see that life sketch and know quickly what the problem is and fix it.

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Adrian Bruce said: It's tricky, of course - if Life Sketch and Vitals etc are out of step, nothing says inherently which is correct. If you have prefaced your Sketch with the statement that X1 is commonly confused with X2 and these are X1's values, then that's different.

But whether FS actually intended Life Sketch to be used that way, I have no idea without my Time Machine. I suspect that it's more likely that they thought of it as a biography, a receptacle for stories. And in that case the Sketch and Vitals are liable to get out of step.

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Adrian Bruce said: Sticking narrative notes against each event or attribute - just like virtually every GEDCOM based program that I've seen - would, in my personal view, have been better than a Life Sketch for biographical purposes because you only need to compare the value against the one much smaller piece of text in order to keep it in step.

Or, a biography could be entered as a Memory.... Or.... (too many choices!)

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Juli said: I agree that Life Sketch belongs under Memories, if it belongs anywhere on a supposedly-genealogical site. (Genealogy is not at all the same thing as biography.)

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Jeniann Nielsen said: I suppose I'm using the Life Sketch differently than some other people. I use the Life Sketch for brief notes that are very important for people to not overlook. It is much more effective for preventing bad changes than anything else I've tried. I put the information in the Notes, Sources, and Discussions as well, but people overlook those quite often.
One of the problems with the FamilySearch tree is there is no place to put important notes that will stand out to people other than the Life Sketch. The Life Sketch is at the top of the page front and center, so people don't miss it as much as when the information is buried in other areas.
In my particular tree, there are many lines of my family that were researched years ago and done very badly. So people get out their grandma's information or whatever they have and continually change things back to the wrong traditional lines. There needs to be an easy way to have a statement for people to see that they won't overlook, and the Life Sketch does this quite effectively.
For this reason I believe that the Life Sketch should stay right where it is and it should show up on the page if there's something in that box.

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Adrian Bruce said: Mmm - different people use it in different ways, for different purposes - that is, at the very least, a potential problem.

Marking it up if there's something in it would help everyone, especially where people like me run with it closed.

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Jeff Wiseman said:

I put the information in the Notes, Sources, and Discussions as well, but people overlook those quite often. One of the problems with the FamilySearch tree is there is no place to put important notes that will stand out to people other than the Life Sketch

This is one of my biggest gripes about how FS has structured things. When you want to document the derivation logic (or proof) for a given vital, no-one knows where to put it--so they put it everywhere! Now you have duplicated information all over the place. Which one contains the correct information? And are those Life Sketches completely referenced with all of the sources that provide proof for their contents? That's all duplicated work from a vitals standpoint. For vitals data, it should all be put into a single location where everyone intuitively knows where it's at.

Instead of reinforcing the Notes (the appropriate and traditional place to put these things) by being able to tag them to vitals and make them easily available from the main vitals page, they have diluted their use by scattering data that would normally be put there across multiple other custom and proprietary locations that are not common across the industry, and can't even be conveyed to other places and databases via sync or GEDCOM.

The main reason that people tend to be using the Life Sketch is for shoving Genealogical PROOFS of their vitals into the faces of anyone attempting to work on the vitals pages (and totally getting in the way of that work as well). That's why many people (myself included) just turn it off. The annoyance factor of having a non-vital on the vitals page is just too much (for me anyway)

The main reason that people tend to be using the Discussions is for posting their personal opinions of reasons for the values of vitals in a way that can't be deleted or modified by others (i.e., the "My Tree" approach to things--I put something into the tree and nobody else can modify it)

If the Life Sketch was move to another tab, page, or memories, a large part of them would no longer be used. If Discussions were made read/writable (as notes are now), they also would see their use dramatically reduced. In both cases, this is because the Life Sketches and Discussions are mainly being used for purposes that they were not intended for.

FS has totally destroyed the concept of central Notes for this type of documentation by creating numerous proprietary and other divergent features which have diluted the use of Notes to the point that people don't even know what they are supposed to be used for.

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Jeff Wiseman said:

if Life Sketch and Vitals etc are out of step, nothing says inherently which is correct

Because the Life Sketch, by DEFINITION is not a vital, the actual documented vital would always be consider to be the most correct. Just another reason that the Life Sketch doesn't belong on the main page. There are far greater reasons that Notes or Sources should be visible on the main page than the Life Sketch.

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Jeff Wiseman said: My GUESS is that the addition of the Life Sketch to the tree is likely because the church leadership seems to have a strong focus on Family History. Although that does contain genealogy, it does involve much more. The Life Sketch (if used correctly) provides support for the more general Family History concept.

I personally feel that I do understand why it was added to the system, however, I don't have a clue as to why it is considered far more important than even the person's vitals (i.e., why it is put there to be front and center over everything else related to that person). It's not even a vital. Maybe it could be considered a source if it were well referenced. But even then I don't see many well referenced Life Sketches.

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joe martel said: LifeSketch is utilized by different users for different things. It's inherent to free-form text entry fields, but having it at the top makes it more visible and open to interpretation.

This feature was pushed out after the initial FSFT release about the time Memories came. It's original intent was to describe the Person in a narrative form, but was not really integrated into the existing features. The various cases weren't considered, like it being empty or would get out of sync it as is mentioned above. 

The bubble UI is interesting, but it would only have a 0 or 1 in it so it's kind of odd. The first-few-words idea is interesting but I wouldn't want it taking up more vertical space. Maybe it should be next to the name in the panel, but that is odd because no other panel would have that.

Moving LS to Memories, or Discussions, or... would break the "Warning" banner intent that many user have put in there. And if you moved to say Memories, how is that different than a Story, would I see that in my Memory Gallery...

LS overlap intents of Memories, OtherInfo, Notes, Sources and Discussions. I think the real question is how to structure all these overlaps, and remove redundancy and features.