Relationship Viewer
I know that Relationship Viewer shows whichever path is shortest when one of my blood relatives is married to another of my blood relatives. I have at least 4 such connections I know about. However, I recently came across a situation that renews my interest in having Relationship Viewer show me both paths:
I was working on the hints for a very distant blood relative (something like a 5th cousin) and one of the hints was a marriage record to another of my cousins. Now the Relationship Viewer shows the 5th cousin as the 'spouse' of my other cousin. This marriage makes the DNA connection with the 5th cousin disappear! The only way I can see the 5th cousin relationship is temporarily "divorcing" the two cousins. An advantage of showing both paths is the children of the marriage relationship would be expected to have a much stronger DNA connection to me. Also, some DNA analysis only works through either the maternal line or the paternal line, not both (https://share.google/aimode/Ac7u6jOIJekPUWDK4)
My question: Does the community think it would be good for Relationship Viewer to show both paths?
Best Answers
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Yes, I very much wish this was a feature on FamilySearch and/or Relative Finder
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But even the term "married relative path" has three possible interpretations, each of which might lead to a different relative path:
- The spouse of my cousin (or other blood relative).
- My spouse's cousin (or other blood relative)
- The spouse of my spouse's cousin (or other blood relative).
On top of that, there is the possibility of multiple cousin relationships through different common ancestors, some of which may be equally close, so that the term "shortest path" might be ambiguous. So there really are multiple possibilities.
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Answers
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Most online Relationship Calculators take the shortest path. I have a set of ancestors who are both my 4th and 6th great-grandparents because I descend from their eldest child on one line and from their youngest on another. I know of no online calculator that can handle that.
Several of the options for Family Tree Management, found in the Solutions Gallery, can show multiple relationships. This is an example of my grandparents, who were 3rd cousins, from Family Tree Maker.
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Thank you Áine.ní.Donnghaile but it seems to me that FamilySearch calculated it before I made the marriage connection so it should be able to do it again.
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If you remove the connection, it should recalculate the original connection. It can only handle one at a time.
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EXACTLY Áine.ní.Donnghaile!! I know "it can only handle one at a time" which is why I am asking if the community agrees or disagrees that Relationship Viewer would be improved if it provided both paths. Your solution (which was in my original post) means I need to undo an improvement to the shared tree in order for me to see a blood relationship. Then redo the undone improvement. Anyone else who comes along in a similar situation to me (e.g., those of us who are blood relations of both, the rest of my close family, my parents, many of my close cousins, aunts, uncles, etc.) will never know this fact unless they, too, undo the marriage. Your suggestion would have us manually undoing random marriages of relatives just to see if the "spouse" is also a blood relative. Would it not be far easier for FamilySearch to use the same information it used moments before I made the marriage connection to just report both paths? It would take running the process twice - once counting marriages and a second time not counting marriages, adoptions, etc.
Again, my question was, "
Does the community think it would be good for Relationship Viewer to show both paths?"Do your two responses indicate that your answer is "No, it would NOT be good for Relationship Viewer to show both paths"? If that is the case, then a thoughtful explanation of why you feel that way would be very helpful.0 -
I suggest you post in the Suggest an Idea category, @BookWorm5. Only there do you have a chance of attracting the attention of engineers/staff who might invest the time and money to make such a change.
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You asked "Does the community think it would be good for Relationship Viewer to show both paths?"
I would note that the word "both" doesn't really fit, since there are many possible relationship paths between two people in most cases.
Showing multiple paths would require a more complex user interface to allow the user to select the relationship path, and would also take more computing power to calculate all the paths. Is the benefit worth these multiple costs? Personally, I think it would be nice on some rare occasions, but I have plenty of other things I'd rather have FamilySearch work on.
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Thanks Alan E. Brown, I inferred that "both" meant the shortest blood relative path and the shortest married relative path.
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Áine.ní.Donnghaile, there is no category to gauge community support called "Suggest an Idea". There is only the process to actually suggest an idea and then there does not seem to follow anything that resembles gauging support for that idea.
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Have a very Happy New Year!
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I agree with Alan E. Brown, there can be equally "short" paths for either consideration (considering marriages vs not) and I don't think the documentation available from FamilySearch specifies how "ties" are resolved. I think my language should have been more precise and I think the current FamilySearch algorithm must be something like:
A) The fewest number of degrees of separation allowing for marriages to be considered where ties are resolved using the following hierarchy 1) the fewest number of marriages, any remaining ties then 2) the largest number of parent-child relationships, any remaining ties then 3) …
B) Same as A) but with only parent-child relationships considered
I haven't studied the documentation for other free, shared-tree platforms but it appears at least one allows a few different calculation strategies along with the ability to recalculate a route circumventing selected individuals.
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