Instructions on how to edit indexed data need clarification.
I'm trying to learn how to edit incorrectly indexed data. I'm experienced in using FamilySearch Family Tree. However, I cannot understand, after hours of study, the recently created pages of instructions for the editing task. Please try to clarify those instructions.
One term used in the instructions is: "the record details page" (this is on the Instruction article, "New Records Page - How do I edit data that has been incorrectly transcribed or indexed?" Which record details page is meant? Each ancestor page has a details page. But are the instructions referring to the page showing the index details?
- I have now seen the instruction: "Consider keeping a personal list of any indexing errors that you cannot fix. You can correct them later when more correction options become available. Thank you for your patience as we work to resolve this challenge." I might simply do that, instead of finishing my suggestion, because it is very challenging to list here all the Instruction's ambiguous points and the missing features that they refer to (such as "the dark banner at the top").
FYI - I'm trying to correct a couple of indexes of parish records where the indexer has entered the bride as male and the groom as female (but the image of the parish record clearly states the opposite).
Best Answer
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@davie You make an excellent point. We need to avoid using terms that might not be crystal-clear to our users. We tend to use the term "record" pretty freely to refer to more than one thing that you might find on FamilySearch.
Officially, a record details page is just what @Julia Szent-Györgyi said -- the page showing the details of an indexed record. But it is easy to understand why one might think the term is referring to the details tab of a Family Tree person's profile.
I found 33 articles in our Help and Learning articles that use the term "record details page". We will work on getting these updated to increase clarity. Thank you for pointing out the ambiguity. A help article that is hard to understand is not useful.
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The record details page is exactly what it says: the page showing the details of the indexed record.
Such as: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6V92-7W72
In my experience, the sex or gender is almost never included among the editable fields, so unless the new "edit everything" tool has been applied to the parish registers you're talking about, it's very likely that the reason you've been unable to follow the directions is that the thing you'd like to correct is not (yet) correctable.
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Thanks for your quick response. The first thing I notice is that your screenshot of an Index page has "Save/Edit/Share" options at its top. Those options did not appear on any of the Index pages I was working with. So, as you said, the Index page is not yet correctable. That's good to know.
Unfortunately, I believe the term "record details page" does NOT clearly say that it means "the page showing the details of the indexed record". It doesn't mention or imply "indexed". Neither does it say which "record" is being referred to. To a learner it might mean an ancestor's details page. The user is accustomed to constantly moving to that particular "details page".
I would suggest that the Instructions article would be clearer to a naive user if it used the term "Index Page" or "Index details" or even "Index Details Page". When struggling through the complex Instruction article, the term "Record Details Page" does not have a clear meaning to a learner.
Likewise, Family Tree designers are accustomed to attributing a definite meaning to "Record", but not many learners are. A person (e.g. an Instructions author) who is already familiar with the new process that is being described has fore-knowledge of the intended meaning and thus naturally knows which "Record" is meant.
I also see there are other difficult-to-understand parts of the Instruction article. I'm just trying to help naive users to receive clear instructions on the important editing feature. I don't presently have time to go into further details.
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Unfortunately, FamilySearch is inconsistent in its terminology, which does cause difficulties to new and experienced users alike.
For years, we did not really know what to call the main "profile" page for an individual in Family Tree. It was commonly referred to as the "Person" page, but at least it is now generally recognised as the "Details" page. So, I can see your point over possible confusion with the "record details page".
Another related issue is in these records representing "Sources" - we add them (is that "records" or "sources"?) - to the Sources section for an individual - and / or to our "Sources Box".
Another example in FamilySearch not seeming to know exactly how to describe genealogy-related terms is with whether an event is a "Baptism" or a "Christening". In 99% of cases they are exactly the same event, but sometimes FamilySearch designates them as the former (meaning they are added to the Details page as a Custom Event (when using the source linker process) and sometimes it designates them as the latter term, which means them being added to the Vitals section on the page.
Until there is consistency in applying terms for particular pages and events, both new users and the more experienced will continue with the type of problem you have experienced.
Hopefully, a moderator will escalate these issues to the appropriate FamilySearch section(s), so instructions are not so ambiguous and we can share a common terminology in referring to these subjects.
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Paul W, I felt great relief when reading your comment on inconsistency in terminology, as I had previously thought I must be the odd one who sees the inconsistency. Thank you. And your final comment raises hope in me.
Apart from the above, I have observed the continual improvements in the design of FSFT. I am sure that all who have been using the program since its inception has enjoyed the many new features which make it easy to work faster and with more accuracy.
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From other threads mentioning the transposition of gender in parish registers, those indexes generally seem to be imported indexes - not records that FamilySearch has indexed, but an index created by another organization.
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Quoth davie:
"your screenshot of an Index page has "Save/Edit/Share" options at its top. Those options did not appear on any of the Index pages I was working with."
Then you were either not looking at index detail pages, or you were using the app, because on the website, those buttons are always there. "Edit" is simply grayed out if it's unavailable.
For example: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KX7X-45Q
I agree that FS's Help Center overloads the word "record", using it for everything from "profile" to "index entry" to "reference to a person in an index entry". (Pretty much everything except what I think it primarily should mean: "historical document of a specific event".)
Part of the problem is FS's upside-down arrangement, where they treat the index as primary, and the actual document (or image of it) as secondary. This is Exactly Backwards from the genealogical (and general research) standard, in which a derivative work like an index should always be secondary to the work it's derived from -- but I don't expect this structure to change any time soon, because it's caused by a very basic fact: indexes are machine-parseable data. Images are not (yet).
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mod note - Thank you for your suggestion. The idea has been submitted. Thank you so much for your kindness and patience.
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Hi Julia. The "Save/Edit/Share" options heading is actually missing from most Index Pages that I work with (on my computer). They do include "EDIT" over on the right hand side of the page (even if editing is really unavailable for that index). But that's not my main reason for responding to you. What DOES intrigue me is this:-
I have never before seen an example of what you illustrated in your post as the lower image of your two (the smaller image of the index details). How did you produce that smaller version of the index ⁉️
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The second screenshot is what happens if I make my browser window as narrow as it will go.
I'm perplexed by your description of index pages missing the save/edit/share buttons. Are you absolutely certain we're talking about the same thing? How do you get to one of these pages? What do they have at the top? Is there a black stripe with the name and collection?
Perhaps a link and screenshot would help clarify what's going on.
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@davie Are you working on a browser (in any OS) or are you using the Family Tree App, on a phone or tablet? The Save/Edit/Share is pretty much the same in the App, on my Android tablet, but I can't verify if it is the same on a phone or another OS.
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Julia and Aine, I think that the difference between what I see and what you see when looking at an Index Page may relate to which country each of us is in as we use the program. Of the thousands of indexed records that I have used to create Sources, or that I work with, not one of them (in Chrome on my HP computer) displays Save/Edit/Share buttons or a black stripe showing the name of the ancestor and collection.
I am in Australia. If you still wish me to show a screenshot, I will. Here is a Link to a random Index Page:-
Sorry - I'm not permitted by FamilySearch to print the URL for the page.
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Julia and Aine, I've found something that is new for me, concerning editing an Index. I find that from the Person Page (for, say, Bernard Welford Marshall MJVB-7PK) if I open an offered Research Help hint (the top one) and then see the "Record Information" on the right of the screen, and then select "View Record" in the black box at the top, it displays in a black stripe and in it "Save/Edit/Share"!!!
Below that, is displayed a thumbnail of an IMAGE of the parish record; and also an indexer's prepared Index of the record. I cannot produce the same when I select a Source document (the Sources page has always been the place I was going in order to attempt editing the index details).
This episode is a perfect example of FS Instructions using inconsistent meanings of words such as "record". You too meant something different from me for "Index Page".
So I can only see the page containing "Save/Edit/Share" if I approach it from an offered Research Help hint. Is that the same for you?
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No, I get the Save/Edit/Share view no matter how I approach the record. For example, I just searched for a random name/record in France. A name I've researched, but not a record or even the same family I've viewed previously. It's the 2nd record in the results. The 1st one is one I have previously used and attached to my research:
From those results, this is the page I, when I click on the page icon.
The Save/Edit/Share is always present. The only difference is whether the particular record has Edit enabled.
Have you been accessing, from your search results, by clicking on the camera icon, instead of the page icon? That would take you to the image view, and there is no Save/Edit/Share on that page.
By the way - you can post a URL in your thread here. You just need to put it in your paragraph, rather than as a separate line, to avoid the reformatting. Or use the link option.
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Thanks for telling me how to enter a URL in a post. Very helpful.
Thanks also for the tip to select the page icon rather than the camera icon in search results.
However, you didn't mention that you tried opening a Source which is already listed in the Sources section. That's where I was trying to go to edit the index information. That way never produces Save/Edit/Share for me. If you want to edit an incorrect index detail in an existing Source entry, how do you manage to open a page that displays Save/Edit/Share?
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From the Sources list of the person
You can get to the Save/Edit/Share page several ways. Clicking the URL under WebPage (Link to the Record) will take you there in one click.
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Oh, I see. You've been looking at entries on the Sources tabs of profiles. Those are very much not what any of us mean by "index detail page", and the difference in what you see has nothing to do with your location. (No, the website doesn't turn upside-down in the southern hemisphere. 😁)
Index detail pages exist regardless of whether an index entry has been used anywhere in Family Tree or not. From the results list of Search - Records, you can get to the individual index detail page in three different ways: you can click the the name, you can click the "page" icon, or you can click the background of a result to open a summary of the entry in a side panel, and then on that panel, you can click the "View Record" button. (In each case, you can right-click [or your OS's equivalent] to open it in a new tab instead of hijacking your search results.)
From a profile's Sources tab, you can get to the detail page by clicking the link (as Áine explained). If the index includes other participants in the event, then you can also get to a detail page by clicking their names. The link will take you to the detail page for the indexed person who has been attached to the profile you were on, while the names of the other participants will take you to their individual index detail pages.
Yes, each person in an index has his/her own index detail page. This is an important little detail that's relevant to index corrections, because the "old version" of the index-editing tool (i.e., not the "edit anything" tool that's still in the very initial stages of development and has so far only been applied to a few U.S. censuses), what it lists as available for editing depends on whose detail page you're on. If you're on the principal's page (child, groom, decedent, head of household), then every field that's editable in that collection will be listed, but if you're on a non-principal's page (parent, bride, household member), then only the editable fields relating to that person will be listed.
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Thank you for that tip. Before my previous post I actually did try selecting the URL in an attached Source but it happened to be a URL that does not produce a page containing Save/Edit/Share. I should have tried more than one, of course.
I won't bother you with any more on this editing issue. Many thanks for persisting with me on the issue. I clearly see why multitudes of users experience difficulty in engaging with many aspects of FSFT. I'm in my eighties and I've used computers (simply) since 1975 (and cards in a mainframe computer before then) but I've had very little involvement with social media and I know less than my grandchildren about blogging ☺️.
However, from 65 years of FH research I've learnt about accuracy and completeness for entries (which I wish more users would employ). I must say, I admire the accurate and lucid writing style that you employ. Perhaps now that I've been made 'non-functioning' after 27 years as stake patriarch I will have time to learn more of the unwritten 'tricks' available for using FSFT 😕.
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Happy if we helped, @davie . If you need more, happy to support your efforts. I'm only a few years behind you.
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Thank you for all of your clarifying information. It will be of much assistance to me. I hope I can remember all of it. Everything said in my response, above to Aine, applies to you as well, including your beautifully accurate English and your thorough style.
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It has been a pleasure to interact with and learn from each participant in this discussion. As well as that, seeing contributor names such as Szent-Györgyi, Áine Ní Donnghaile, Maile, and Tychonievich has been a reminder about the international nature of FamilySearch! And the worldwide family!
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