Suggestion for the "collaborate" section
Two observations:
1. As expected, people are complaining that moving the Life Sketch to the bottom keeps them from pre-empting it for collaboration notes.
2. When I first looked at the new design in Beta, it took me several minutes to find the "collaborate" link, exiled to the top corner.
Combining these things, perhaps what we need is a collaboration section that behaves in some respects like the old Life Sketch did: would it be possible for there to be a preview or title showing by default if the section is non-empty?
(Suggestions for formatting it better are welcome.)
Oh, and while we're on the Collaborate section: can the side panel please show both notes and discussions at once, or failing that, can it default to showing whichever kind is non-empty? (I still haven't ever figured out the point to having two different kinds of collaboration note.)
Comments
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I love these kind of ideas.
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I completely agree about making the Collaborate thing more obvious when there's something there to see. Mayhaps something like:
This was an extremely ugly quick-'n-dirty using a shocking color not in the UI palette, but you get the drift.
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Here is what I have posted elsewhere about Life Sketch and Collaborate:
Please do not move the life sketch. One of the BIGGEST complaints about FamilySearch is how people can change each other's "correct" information. This will continue to get worse if you make it MORE difficult to see any form of communication intended for other editors of the person in question. You need life sketch BACK TO THE TOP, and while you are at it, please quit trying to hide collaboration. Some people think that comments about the life of the person don't go in the life sketch, they go in collaboration. Now you have moved the collaboration link even farther away. I would put the life sketch back at the top and to the right of it, add all the collaboration threads as a list, most recent at the top. See how you have "latest changes" listed? Do that with collaboration.
FamilySearch, you have a serious problem with people not working together. Enable cooperation. Don't make it harder.
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@Gail Swihart Watson, I can make two inferences from your continued desire to hijack the Life Sketch: one, you find little or no use in your genealogy work for an actual life sketch, and two, the old presentation of that panel worked for you as a collaboration note area. Oh, and a third: neither the old nor the new presentation of the actual collaboration note area works for you.
I think the fix for this situation is not to put Life Sketch back at the top, but to give the collaboration section the features that made the Life Sketch section appealing to you. I'm not certain which ones of those were most important, though: was it the placement? The flexibility and ease of use of a single large text field? Something else?
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I agree with Julia that the Collaboration Notes are shunted to a location on the screen that is hard to find. And, once found, those notes are no longer properly formatted. I have added over 800,000 source notes (and over 131,000 persons) into Family Tree over the years, all notes with proper spacing and formatting. The new version of the page now displays the notes as one continuous unbroken body of verbiage. For example, look at KVRZ-NL6 and compare the old with the new notes. (And if you are wondering why all these source notes are included in Collaborate rather than having the records attached: I began all this forty years ago with PAF before Family Tree was even a dream in a programmer's mind, so my sources remain as notes and not attachments, updated from time to time.)
Fortunately, it is early in the launch of the new page, so changes hopefully are easily made.
I suggest:
- Returning the Collaboration to a central location on the page; and, even better, eliminate the heading of "Collaborate" and replace it with two headings: "Discussions" and "Notes."
- Return the formatting as it was in the earlier version. Scrunching everything together into one unformatted mess is unacceptable. I feel strongly enough about this point that I will consider abandoning further donation of my research into Family Tree if the formatting of the notes is not reintroduced.
Adrian J. Gravelle
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gravelleus I see how terrible the collaboration notes are now. They will be used even less and it is clear that functionality is not being respected by FamilySearch decision makers. This brings up the point that grieves Julia Szent-Györgyi so much: hijacking of the Life Sketch for things other than telling a story about the person. Hijacking will get much worse if the current collaboration functionality is retained. However it will be below, highly truncated and no one will notice. I get back to my original point that communication between editors on a specific person now will be even less and the whining in the help community will be even more.
I say this: enable greater communication. Not less.
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Just throwing out another idea. Research Summary section that contains Warnings
Any other ideas out there?
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I like the research warning idea. I agree that putting these warnings in the life sketch was always inappropriate but it was the best option available to try and put such cautionary statements where they had a chance of being seen and actually read.
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Julia Szent-Györgyi To give better perspective to your question above, I think the feature most missing is the ability to see right up front if there is doubt or a question associated with any part of the life of the person as reflected in the data. Real life examples I have recently dealt with: I discover a new long-lost child; I believe 2 children listed are the same; I intentionally list 2 similar children because I can't determine if they are the same or who is correct; or I believe one spouse is incorrectly attached. If you would like, I can give you PIDs for each of those 4 scenarios. I try not to delete the work of others if I am not 100% sure who is correct, but I will add my information and I want to SOMEHOW call attention to it so that the situation is crystal clear to others. I am - if you will - leaving breadcrumbs for others to research. I appreciate when others leave breadcrumbs for me.
Collaborate has been too hidden to satisfy me. If a list of the most recent discussions and notes could be visible (like Latest Changes) without having to click or scroll, I would gladly use that. However, collaborate is moved even farther away and I have seen where previously formatted notes are now scrambled into one long text paragraph. It is now even less useful. That is terrible and unacceptable. I feel with Life Sketch moved, people will never see it and we will have a big increase in the "they touched my data - who let them do that" squabbling that is so prevalent now.
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I too like the idea of a research warning, because it can help people that are close in name and dates. I think the reason I occasionally use Life Sketch for current warnings is because it is seen during the merge process while collaboration and notes are not. So if you start using a warning please make it visible during merges, to slow and stop bad merges.
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From comments here and elsewhere, it seems to me that the property of the old Life Sketch section that particularly made it appealing as a collaboration note area was its placement and visibility during a merge.
First observation: the merge process hasn't changed. The Life Sketch, if present, is shown right at the top in the first two merge steps, just as before.
Second observation: no matter what happens to the redesigned person page, the actual collaboration notes will not be shown during a merge unless the merge process is revised.
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In order to make the above two observations, I needed to create some Life Sketches, Notes, and Discussions on the randomly-found duplicates I was merging. In the process of creating and then cleaning up those additions, I made the following further observations:
One: while the side panel was nice for notes based on the details page, the return to the previous style (tab/page on its own, with both Notes and Discussions showing) works for me. (Granted, I was making stuff up for testing purposes, which I could do anywhere.)
Two: thank you for basically restoring the previous functionality for note/discussion entry. Fewer clicks is always better.
Three: there's a bug on the new Collaborate tab whereby you can't delete the last entry. I tried deleting the last discussion half a dozen times, and every time, the page would be empty, but the count would still be at "(1)", and if I went to a different tab and then back to Collaborate, the discussion would still be there. I finally switched back to the old format and was successful in deleting the discussion.
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Great comments. I've created a bug report for deleting the last discussion. Thank you.
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Restoring the Collaborate tab to its original position AND restoring the formatting of the notes is a great relief to me and is much appreciated! Thanks!
Still, you should consider eliminating the heading "Collaborate" and replacing it with two headings: "Notes" and "Discussions." The heading "Collaborate" just doesn't intuitively suggest that a searcher will find notes and discussions thereunder.
Adrian J. Gravelle
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Thank you for restoring the Collaborate tab to its original position.
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The text of each “discussion” still doesn’t display making them useless. Only the subject line is visible, which used to be a hyperlink to the discussion, but no more.
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@EricShelton, hmm? I could only find one short discussion, with no replies, but it displays just fine.
This is in Firefox 103.0.2 in Windows 10.
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@Julia Szent-Györgyi See: https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/128970/collaborate-tab-doesn-t-display-text-of-discussions#latest. Notes and Reason Statements have a display problem in Safari. I have not checked this out in a discussion.
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I like Lyles recommendation for a number of reasons:
- Lifesketch main intent is to "summarize" a person's life. It is totally subjective typically (funeral). It can be a list of facts - derived from Person and their Relationship conclusions, but is just a different view of Person Details, similar to Timeline. Who's to say what is "right"? Even my definition here is up for disagreement.
- Lifesketch other intent is as a banner/warning to other users - typically because the person has alot of churn and confusion with a like-named other Person. So users have "overloaded" lifesketch to support this banner intent. It was positioned at the top of the Person page, so other users would see it, and not have to hunt for it.
Option 1: So Lyle's recommendation creates a new feature, prominent at the top to facilitate #2. We would need to convert the banner existing today to that object.
Option 2: If we keep what we have, if you recall in the previous version to today, a user could move the Person Detail sections as a per-User preference. We lost moving section in the current version. It doesn't fix #2 but seemed to kind of work.
Option 3: Move to top
Option 4: Keep at bottom.
My order of preference:
Option 1 in the long run. But as a temp fix do Option 2 because it worked before. Option 3. Option 4 is the worse.
Opinions?
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Has anyone actually measured the number of times the Life Sketch is used "inappropriately" for warnings?
I do a lot of work on my own lines and the lines of those in my stake (I'm a stake consultant). If I had to make an estimate of the number of times a warning is placed in the Life Sketch, it would be probably less than 5%.
Sometimes assumptions take on a life of their own: we believe what we see others post online without any proof. If we look at the hard data, it doesn't hold up. I really don't believe the supposed misuse of the Life Sketch was nearly as pervasive as some seem to believe. But seeing hard data would settle the question.
I'll answer Joe's thoughtful post in a separate comment to avoid this one getting too long :)
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When I have used the Life Sketch, 100% of the time it is for a Warning!
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Regarding the solutions Joe Martel outlines in his post:
- I also really like Lyle's suggestion of adding a new Research Summary section where Research Warnings can be displayed. This seems like a win-win: it doesn't affect the Life Sketch, but it's prominent and visible.
- This new section also makes it feasible to move the Life Sketch back to the top of the page. The Life Sketch, as I understand it, was meant to serve as an intro or overview of the person's life. So again, it doesn't make sense to bury it near the bottom of the page where few people will see it.
- If the decision is made not to move the Life Sketch to the top of the Details page, then it should probably be moved to the top of the Memories page, not left down in Other Information.
- The downside to returning to the previous model of movable sections is that people could unknowingly miss important information by moving sections lower on the page.
I'd also love to hear other people's thoughts on these ideas.
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I have tried to stay out of this as I am going to live with whatever FS does. BUT, "Has anyone actually measured the number of times the Life Sketch is used "inappropriately" for warnings?" kind of got to me. Why would putting a warning - which of course is information about the person in the person page - be a misuse? I guess unless I type a little ditty about Jack and Diane in the Life Sketch, it is considered a misuse?
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David, I have to admit it's similar for me :) I've only written a few Life Sketches (though I'd like to have written more--unfortunately, most of my time is spent cleaning up the bad merges I keep finding). I've posted more warnings than mini-biographies in the Life Sketch field.
That being said, I have posted probably less than 10 warnings total. Out of 1.3 billion people in Family Tree, it's not a huge percentage. Even if someone were to post 100 warnings, it would still not be a huge percentage. I guess that's the point I was trying to make.
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Lyle posted some numbers a few weeks ago on the Life Sketch thread: https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/465714/#Comment_465714
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Here is an example of a warning I have in my Grandfather's record.
"This is John William Stover that died on Feb 24 1926 cause - Right side Lobar Pneumonia / Influenza."
( It is NOT the John William Stover 22 August 1894 – 19 November 1969 • G9VZ-3WS)"
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My experience has been that Collaborate notes/discussions have largely been ignored; not necessarily by design, but due to lack of understanding the way things work. Relying on the Follow option has been the only tool that helped me be aware when a correction is needed after the Collaborate gate was ignored.
Life Sketch (https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/465714/#Comment_465714) use in unintended ways has been resorted to as another gate, but is most often ignored also, but enjoys a more prominent place to warn. I have been know to use it in a similar fashion as is currently used by the timeline (now under the About page of the New Person Page beta), because it seemed a life story was a bit much to include there. I have succumbed to using it for warning messages in order to double up and supplement ignored notes in the Collaborate notes/discussions.
I have felt that the About tab, Life Sketch tab and Memories tab have so many things in common, and should be reduced to 1 or 2 tabs after giving some careful thought. I'm still thinking about it....
The Collaborate notes/discussions tab, I feel should be included on the Details tab, preferably where the Life Sketch currently (not at bottom as in current New Person Page beta), and infused with attention getting enhancements, many have already been suggested.
Anyway.... Carry-on Community! We'll soon(?) have this 5000 piece puzzle in order!
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Funny how we use Family Tree features so differently! I have never used "Life Sketch" to place "warnings" and (perhaps I am doing wrong here) don't use it in general and keep that section of the Person page collapsed.
I have always looked on the purpose of Life Sketch as being a place to write a brief biography of your relative, in order to fill-out detail that dates and places (inputted to Vitals, etc.) does not provide. I choose to prioritise my time on the "dates and places" data, but will probably add facts from my personal notebooks when I have more time.
I like the idea of a new box, at the top of the page, specifically designed for "Research Warnings". Until then, I will continue to use the Collaborate section, together with adding brief notes in the reason statement fields for the Vitals. I know many users will never bother to read my comments, wherever I place them, but at least - years later - I can go back myself and read the justification of why I made a particular decision.
I can't tell how many other users have been deterred from making changes to IDs I have worked on because of the way I have added warnings, but I am sure that anyone determined enough (or just plain inexperienced) will continue to confuse my "John Wrightson" with their "John Wright", an example of which I am trying to deal with right now, alongside making these comments.
As I have illustrated, as long as the "Life Sketch" section (along with others) can be collapsed, it is of little importance where it is placed on the page - any warnings / advice placed there can still be easily overlooked / ignored - especially by users who would not link it to any wider purpose.
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I prefer Lyle's option number 1. I like the idea of seeing the 'banner/warning' notes in or above the Research Help.
Let's go ahead and move the data out of the existing Life Sketch field into this new super note. I have created only a dozen or so narrative sketches, and I will manually move them back to the Life Sketch field.
I oppose placing the Life Sketch field at the top of the record or allowing it to be there because this will allow the current behavior will continue. If there is a desire to use the contents of the Life Sketch on the About tab, future development will be seriously complicated if the software engineer has to write a lot of code to parse the life sketch from whatever is not really a life sketch.
My last objection to displaying the Life Sketch field at the top of the record is a screen real estate issue. For small screens (e.g. my 11" tablet), the important vital information needs to be at the top of the initial display. Anything that pushes that data down and possibly off the screen has to be not only justified, but essential. In my mind, the Life Sketch field does not pass this test.
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Paul, now that you know many of us put important information in Life Sketch, why do you continue to ignore it? If some sort of collaborative text field isn’t automatically open and on top or top on the side, I promise I will start putting important information in the name field comments. No links will do. I continue to forget to check the collaboration links but I do not forget to read life sketch.
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There's no sense in trying to move stuff out of the Life Sketch section based on some computerized interpretation of the text: what if it's not even in English? I think the section should be treated as if it was always used according to its biographical purpose. (The ideal location seems to me to be the fluff page, in place of the computer-generated text.) Moving any text that doesn't fit the biographical purpose should be up to users.
However, the reason Life Sketch is sometimes re-purposed needs to be addressed. People use Life Sketch for warnings because neither the old nor the new format/placement of the collaboration tools offer the visibility that warnings need. In other words, the collaboration tools need to be made more visible.
(Also, the merge process needs to be revised, since it currently completely hides the collaboration tools, but the new person page cannot address this need.)
The more I think about it, the more I like the general idea of including summaries/snippets of collaboration notes in the right-hand column, just like research hints and change log entries. I'm not sure whether they should get their own box or be included in the research hints box. If they're included with research hints, then maybe people would be slightly less likely to miss them because they have that section closed? On the other hand, if they get their own box, and there's a "warning" flag feature added, then that section could ignore user preferences for closing the section if there is a note flagged as a warning.
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