Be able to choose historical facts

Crystal Staudt Black

I was adding memories to my 18 yr old's page and checked his timeline for historical facts. From 2003 to now the 2 facts that popped up were Hurricane Katrina and the 45th President. Of all the things that have happened in the last 18 years, I can't see how the 45th president is more important than some other events. I would think that the Iraq war would be relevant. The invention of the smartphone would be relevant. The first female Vice President would be relevant. An insurrection at the Capital would be relevant. The 2008 recession, the first black president, COVID-19... you get my point.

I presume a human researches/creates the events and then an algorithm applies them to each individual. I think an algorithm is a great start, but that users should be able to choose from a 'Historical Facts' archive the events that better reflect that person's story.

Julia Anne NC

Your thoughts and ideas are very insightful and we welcome new ideas. We are sharing some info from an article in the Help Center which explains how FamilySearch presently chooses an historical event. In Family Tree, the Time Line section lists this person's information vertically in chronological order. You can also turn an optional map on or off to see your ancestor's life journey on a map.

The time line also shows you the available record hints in context of the other life events. When you can see where the record hint fits in your ancestor's life story, you can more readily decide if the hint is about your ancestor.

The map lets you see places of significant life events. You can switch the view to a satellite picture, and zoom in to see what a place looks like today.

Timeline Options (website)

Open timeline

1. In Family Tree on the FamilySearch website, display a person page.
2. In the menu bar below the person's name, click the Time Line link.

Customize timeline

1. On the left, click Show.
2. To add or remove features, click in boxes. When the box is blue, you see that information on the timeline.
   1. The system randomly selects historical events. You can see up to 8 historical events on a timeline.

Map

To turn the map on or off, click Map. To make the map full screen, click the box icon to the right of "Show".

Add to timeline

To add new information to the time line, click Add, enter the information, and click Save.

Edit information

1. Click Edit to the right of a piece of information.
2. Make changes.
3. To tag a new source to this information, click Tag, click the check box of each relevant source, and click OK.
4. Click Save.

Delete information

1. Click Edit to the right of the information you want to delete.
2. Click Delete.
3. Enter an explanation for why you are deleting this information.
4. Click Delete.

Record hints

To review a record hint, click Review and Attach. Then proceed as you normally would.

Print

The timeline lacks a built-in print option. But you can use your browser print option.

1. If the map is open, click Map to close it.
2. Use the standard command to print in your browser and operating system. For Windows, press Ctrl + P and for Mac, press Command + P. For more help, search the Internet for specific instructions for your browser and operating system.

Timeline (mobile app)

The Family Tree mobile app does not provide a time line. 

Timeline (Family Tree Lite)

Family Tree Lite does not provide a time line.

dontiknowyou

If I could, I would remove all those random historical events from "my" portions of the tree. They are at best filler and depending on context they can be highly inappropriate.

Gordon Collett

Just turn off the historical events and you should never see them anywhere again:

I don't particularly care for them, either, so I don't have them show on the time line. This is a global setting, so you don't have to turn it off on each person.

dontiknowyou

That feature controls what I see, not what other visitors to the website see. What others see is my concern.

Gordon Collett

I looked at the article referenced and it doesn't actually say anything about "how FamilySearch presently chooses an historical event" that I can see beyond "The system randomly selects historical events. You can see up to 8 historical events on a timeline."

Playing around a little, I see that the events vary somewhat between my record and my siblings' records. Also, when I signed out of FamilySearch, cleared cookies, then signed back in, a couple of the events had been removed and some new ones placed.

Then I looked at my Norwegian mother-in-law. She only has one historical event which is about Norway in WW II. Finding a random person in Family Tree who only lived in Japan, I see that the two events listed are both events that occurred in Japan. A random person who lived only in New York has one New York event, one genealogy event, and the rest are US events.

So the routine does change the events presented although it is not clear how often. It also takes into account residences listed on a person's detail page. I must say there does not seem to be too much weighting regarding relative importance events, although that would be very subjective and will vary widely from person to person depending whether an event is viewed as the best thing that ever happened or the worst thing that ever happened by a specific user of Family Tree. If everything is weighted equally, and if there are hundreds of thousand of events in whatever database they are pulling from, then there will be a mix of important events and trivial ones. And the chance of one of those eight being something you personally want to see is going to be pretty low.

After looking more closely at this feature, I'm more impressed with it even though it could use some fine tuning. I'm still going to leave it off for now.