Marriage tag
I found a legacy report that suggested I add a new idea. Although not new, I would like to bring up the request to tagging a record to "marriage." I didn't understand the issue when explained in that old request, but I sure understand the need to be able to tag a record to the couple's marriage. It sure would make it easier to find the source someone used for the vital information submitted. So bringing this around to the top again.
Kathy N.
O'Fallon, IL
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Agree totally. However, it may be a while before FS ever fixes this.
Several months ago they chose to implement these things in a way that you were supposed to attach a marriage source to the Couple Relationship record (i.e., NOT to the person record). But since Marriage records ALWAYS contain information about other vitals (e.g., name, birth date and location, residence, etc.), it will ALWAYS already be attached to the person record itself and tagged to the different conclusions in that record.
All of the Parent Child relationship records also have the exact same problem. The way it works now is that for a family on a given census, that census would need to be attached to every parent child relationship in that family (as well as the couple relationship for the parents if they are both there). What a nightmare…
I understand some of the reasons that they attempted this (some of it is based on the GEDCOM-X model--which is a logical model and should NOT necessarily be used directly as an actual implementation model). But they made a mistake by not taking the tagging route. Yes, allowing Relationship records to have tags coming from two different source lists (e.g., the source list on each spouse in a couple relationship) is not currently supported and would need to be worked out, but it is nowhere near the complexity of issues that they now have by creating separate source lists for every single relationship that exists in the system! What's worst, the only reasonable way to fix it is to back out the entire infrastructure in the software that they implemented supporting those separate source lists. What do they do with all the sources people have already entered into those lists? They would have to throw it all away.
To be continued…
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Part 2
But it does certainly appear that they've hit a wall with the implementation that they chose. When it comes to indexed records, all indexes are for persons in the original document. Since they are person indexes, they would normally only be attached to PERSON records and not relationship records. That creates the situation where you need to attach TWO index sources to a given relationship. One for each of the spouses in the couple relationship.
When they were trying to automate this, they attempted to "simplify" it by only using one of the two sources necessary and hide that fact my monkeying around with the titles to kind of "fake" the source. These mucked-up titles still exist in various places in the FSFT. By looking at the title, you can no longer tell which spouse it was for. I am constantly having to edit the titles and put the information back in that was removed by FS so that you can tell what the source was actually all about.
There are other complications to supporting the separate sources lists as well. For example, an index source should technically only attach to a single record in the tree, but now it must attach to that single person record and ALSO to a record that isn't even a person (i.e., the couple relationship record). So FS appears to be in a situation where they can't really go forward much further, and they won't go back.
So while they muddle over how to correct the problem that they've created, the rest of us must deal with an incomplete implementation. So we may be stuck here for quite a while.
I really hope that they do NOT persist in trying to push through the support based on every relationship in the system having it's own source list because I can think of several other complications that that will produce. But since the whole thing is volatile, I do not use it at all. All I do is add a Reason of "taken from XXX Marriage records YYYY-YYYY" from the title of the sources and then I'm done with it. I don't care whether sources are attached to the actual Couple Relationship record or not since they will ALWAYS already be attached to the individuals in the relationship. And If I go through the grief of attaching them to the relationship, they are now redundant for the person.
When they were about to do this many months ago, I raised the issue to try and get it stopped, but it had no effect. So now we are here.
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I find it very strange that we cannot tag sources to marriage events. Please could this be implemented. Thank you.
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I know it is a major job to tag to a specific marriage event. But it would be beneficial if you could at least tag it to the Relationship Area. So any source relating to any of the couple relationships could at least have all those sources gathered together in one spot.
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I can understand the programming challenges. However, having a second place to add sources creates unnecessary complexity that inhibits patron ability and willingness to add sources in that location to support the marriage data.
I do the same as Jeff -- in the marriage record box, simply refer to the main source page, and then add the source to each spouse (and edit the names in the source title as needed).
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@Julie Melville Hite, Yes that is what I do now just put the source on the individuals and there is already and has been for a long time a second place to add relationship sources separate for the individual’s source section. I'm not suggesting an additional one.
What @JohnBennett11 wants is to have the ability to Tag a source to an individual marriage event, which you cannot do currently.
I was offering an alternative that should be easier to achieve. Just like we tag to a vital, have the ability to tag to the “Couple Relationship” section so that if I edit on that area I get all the sources that relate to all Couple Relationships, the same as if I edit a death, I can see all the sources that belong to death. Now his is not as good as tagging to each individual couple separate event, but it should be more easily done. It would make it easier to view only those sources that relate to couples, rather than sorting through the individual's sources looking for marriages, divorces etc. Just my thoughts.
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