Other Information Sources Counts Don't Count
While the old page only counted sources for Vital Information, the new page has counts listed for Other Information on everything including residence and military service events. While I never minded the lack of counts for Other Information, if they are adding the counts they should count. I don't quite know how source counts will be meaningful for Residence events (how many sources will provide the same place and date?), and the same can be said for Military Service at least as far as place and date go. Sure we can have multiple enlistments in multiple forces but those will almost always be singleton events when considering the date.
At any rate, if you want to count it you should. The below example has a linked WWII enlistment record correctly typed as a Military Service event which provided the date and place when I linked it. I added the branch and rank manually as I always do since I can't think how SourceLinker would do that. As you can see the count did not update to 1.
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Did you tag these life events in the source?
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Since a person's detail page always has a name, birth, christening, death, and burial slot, the Source Linker is able to automatically tag source information when we attach a source. There was a post long ago in this group where we were told that the Source Linker cannot do the same for other information because that other information does not actually exist until it is created. Working around that quirk is why it took so long for them to develop a method of tagging sources to other information. The other trouble is that there can be multiple entries for one type of other information, such as a residence and an automatic process cannot tell which of those entries should be tagged.
So we do have to following a process 1) create a piece of other information manually or through the source linker then 2) tag the information with any applicable sources.
I find this easiest to do by clicking anywhere in the data block for the other information then using the Tag Source link that appears in that box:
Regarding your comment:
I don't quite know how source counts will be meaningful for Residence events (how many sources will provide the same place and date?)
You are right, source counts are not meaningful in and of themselves. If that count is 1 or 50 doesn't really matter. This is not a contest in which the piece of information with the highest source count wins.
The actual purpose of tagging and that source count is to allow us to quickly find for review the source of the information.
For example, say the person whose 1891 census record I show above has 200 sources on her. If I want to read that census record, I can either go to her sources page and scroll and scroll and scroll or I can go in Other Information to the census entry, click on it, click on the one source there, and to go directly to that source.
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@WDan5, as Patricia implied, the counts are based on user-entered tags. They're not automatic.
The ability to tag sources to conclusions in the Other Information section is brand new in the new person page interface. Source Linker has not been updated with this new function -- and even if it had been, that would not be relevant to existing conclusions.
(I see that Gordon has answered in much more detail while I was occupied by convincing the system that I am freaking signed in. I'm posting my comment out of sheer spite [at the computer]; I hope this "short version" is helpful to someone.)
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FYI, we know there is still work to do in source linker to automaticly tag events created from the source.
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Should there be automatic tagging for Other Information? Do we really want that? It seems that people are not very selective with tagging and just let the defaults run wild. I've seen a lot of profiles where every source is tagged to, say, the name. Then when checking sources on the name by opening the View Data or Edit Data boxes, there is just a complete, less useful, duplicate of the source page which sort of defeats any potential usefulness of tagging.
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Only when the source data creates the Other Information entry during the attach process, such as residence added from a census record.
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Okay. I understand why Other Information wasn't tagged in the olden times. Makes sense. I get why the New Person page/SourceLinker isn't 'tagging' for Other Information yet. Totally no problem. And there seems to be a way to 'force tag' an event to a linked document. Cool. I still don't see how these specific set of counts will be anything other than 0 or 1 though. I take that back. I've seen instances of a person being on two separate census sheets when they are counted here and there (moved or work as domestic/laborer and both employer and family claim the person) in the same city. So that's possibly a count of 2. The only reason I would care about a count of 2 or more in Other Information would be as a signal that the person may have other persons' documents linked. A 1930 census event count of 2 for John Smith is probably too many but for Ilka Marcionowicz (totally made up) could be a valid count of 2.
FWIW, I always check the Name count in Vital Information for the contrary situation. I mean if there are 12 sources linked and the Name count is 10 it means two sources are not displaying when I open the Name field and see what docs are linked and how the name variations show. Those two sources could be the only sources providing a middle name or an indication of a Doctor and other info (birth, death, etc.) that may come from the document. I find that often it is just those NFS and external link sources but anything linked in 2016 or before is likely untagged too. Rarely it is someone linking more recently and they must have manually untagged some piece of information. For whatever reason I don't know.
Thanks to everyone for the discussion. Very enlightening.
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Re Gordon Collett "It seems that people are not very selective with tagging and just let the defaults run wild"
I never figured out why anyone would uncheck the tagging in SourceLinker. If you think a name of UNKNOWN for the wife is validly the actual wife, untagging the name is just going to hide that info in the Name edit screen (or that new Info screen). If a death certificate gives the decedent's and father's names but UNKNOWN for the mother and you know who the mother is and she exists on the tree, what's the harm of linking it and letting the name tag go through?
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Re Gordon Collett "I've seen a lot of profiles where every source is tagged to, say, the name. Then when checking sources on the name by opening the View Data or Edit Data boxes, there is just a complete, less useful, duplicate of the source page which sort of defeats any potential usefulness of tagging."
I've explained above how I use the tagging counts for name. I want the counts to be total there because if I am looking for a middle name/initial or prefix or suffix, I want the sources to display on the Edit screen where it's convenient to have them displaying. Same for birth dates. If there is only a birth year and all sources are fully tagged then it is easy to edit the date and place from the tagged sources on the Edit screen. Else I have to search all the sources individually to check for fuller dates or birth places. That would be annoying.
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I assume that SourceLinker is defaulting all available tags to 'on'. If there was a tag available for Military Service I did not notice it. Good point.
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@WDan5, no, SourceLinker cannot tag anything in Other Information, such as Military Service. As I wrote upthread, this brand-new function has not yet been added to anything besides the person page. You have to go to either the profile's Sources tab or to the specific conclusion to add the tags.
If a source documents a married name (of the form "Mrs. John Smith"), then I don't tag it to the name in Vitals. Other sources do generally end up tagged to that primary name, though, because even if the surname has completely changed, the given name generally hasn't (and I don't consider things like "Frank" versus "Franciscus" to be different names).
As for the number under Other Information almost always being "1", I don't see the problem with this. Source tagging is a lot more than just that number: it's a direct link between the conclusion and its source(s). That is, you can edit a conclusion and see a list of all the sources that have been tagged as supporting it, and when you look at a source, you can click through to see all of the conclusions that it has been tagged as supporting evidence for.
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Well, I guess I can agree with that. If opening up the specific event shows the linked source or sources, it could become useful. I do still think you'll never get more than two docs linked but meh. Looking at it the other way, if you see a census residence in 1930 and there is no source linked or counted then it gives you a chance to challenge where that data came from. I have seen instances of John Smith with multiple John Smiths' documents linked. After pulling apart the doc links and relinking them to their correct John Smith, one has to be careful to go back and manually delete any event added from a bad link. I do it but I'll bet there are a lot of users that don't.
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Well, I guess I can agree with that. If opening up the specific event shows the linked source or sources, it could become useful.
The best part of this new feature of being able to tag Other Information is having that one source on that one piece of information so that you can see the source and open it right up without having to dig through the source list, as shown in my illustration above.
To clarify why I do not think every source needs to be tagged, let me mention the two main situations when I do not. The Name field is a good example. In one of the areas I routinely work in, there are two parish records, the priest's official book and the deacon's copy. Both books have been indexed twice. So if, say, Hans Olsen had 6 children, that is 24 indexed sources for their birth records, all of which say his name is Hans Olsen. Having all of those sources tagged to his name and clogging up the View Data and Edit Data boxes lists of sources for his name is not useful. If I have a couple of birth records for him that both say his name is Hans Olsen, that is all that really needs to be tagged to his name.
The other situation arises when the index is wrong. If a birth record for Hans Olsen has been transcribed in an index as Heuf Ufsen I will add the source to the source page but not tag that source to his name. Instead I will find the digitized copy of his actual birth record that shows his name is Hans Olsen, add it as a source, and tag that to his name.
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