Unhelpful message when trying to replace a spouse
I admit I keep forgetting the correct method of replacing a (female) spouse / mother of the male's children in Family Tree. An "obvious" method of doing this seems to be to create a profile representing the correctly identified spouse (or choose an existing one), then choose Replace Wife from the Couple Relationship area, but this is the response received when adopting this method of correcting the spouse:
Beforehand, I had entered this, following which the message above appears, rather than my being allowed to replace the wife with P67F-7FV:
I have found this on a number of occasions over past years and feel the wording to be most unhelpful, as it implies the action could be completed if one returns later.
In this example, I was trying to replace the wife of John Johnson KZ77-LB3, the incorrectly attached KHDG-82M, with the newly created P67F-7FV.
I have remembered the correct procedure, so do not need help in completing the process successfully, but am leaving John Johnson's page as it is in order for this issue to be checked out, or possibly escalated, in order to save the confusion likely to continue if this wording is not amended.
See https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/KZ77-LB3
Answers
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There are a couple of issues here: the situation that causes the error, and how the error is reported. I'll address them separately.
Why the error happens
The error happens because you are attempting to create a relationship that already exists. Specifically, in the Family Tree as it now exists, John Johnson KZ77-LB3 has a wife Margaret Harrison KHDG-82M with 6 children. John Johnson also has another wife Margaret Harrison P67F-7FV with no children. I'm assuming that you have done the research to conclude that these two individuals named Margaret Harrison are not actually duplicates of each other; if that were the case, you would merge the two women and none of this would be a problem. Instead, you have determined that KHDG-82M needs to be separated from John Johnson and his children and replaced by P67F-7FV.
When you edit the couple relationship between John Johnson and KHDG-82M, you then attempt to replace that wife with P67F-7FV. But if that were to happen, the result would be that you would have two couple relationships between John Johnson and P67F-7FV. That is not allowed — you can only have one couple relationship between a pair of profiles. That attempt causes the server to respond that the relationship already exists, so the relationship cannot be updated as requested. Then the user interface reports that an error occurred.
How the error is poorly reported
When the FamilySearch user interface receives an error response from the server that it is expecting might happen, then it can report that error to the user in a helpful way. This happens in hundreds of places throughout the FamilySearch site. But when an error response is received that is not planned for, the user interface gives a generic error message. That generic error message is "The system is currently unavailable." Since the error was not planned for, the user interface has no idea why it happened. It might very well have been an error due to a temporary condition on the server side. So it gives a message that provides some hope to the user that the system will respond better in the future. But in this case, that hope is vain. And it's misleading because the system is not really unavailable; it simply can't respond favorably to this particular request. As you noted, this is a very unhelpful message, since it doesn't explain the cause of the error, and it gives false hope.
Clearly what is needed is for the user interface to detect this particular error and give a more helpful error message that communicates that Margaret Harrison KHDG-82M can't be replaced as the spouse of John Johnson KZ77-LB3 by Margaret Harrison P67F-7FV because P67F-7FV is already a spouse of John Johnson. Or the system could figure out how to "merge" those two relationships, combining any sources, notes, and events attached to those relationships; but that sounds complicated and might not be what the user hopes for.
How the error can be avoided
This problem can be worked around by first removing the existing couple relationship between John Johnson and P67F-7FV. Then you can replace KHDG-82M as the current wife (and mother of the 6 children) with P67F-7FV. There will be no error and the result will be what you are hoping for.
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Thank you for your helpful response. I believe I had effectively discovered as much on previous occasions - it's just that I'm inclined to forget the correct order (i.e., remove the incorrect relationship first) and instead try straight away to replace the incorrect profile with the correct one!
It is unfortunate that the "interface" isn't "clever enough" to work out the user's (my!) error in work sequence and display a more appropriate message, but I can understand the difficulties from your excellent analysis of the problem.
Will I personally replicate my error in the future? Probably! But at least - from previous experience, and your advice - I'll be able to apply the correct solution next time round: well, that's likely to be later today, when I (hopefully) carry out the process correctly (this time) and attach the "correct" Margaret Harrison as spouse to John Johnson and mother of his children!
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@Paul W Thanks for reporting this. Clearly it's not working optimally, and I have flagged it so that it can be reviewed by the engineers. My workaround was just that — a temporary way to get around the problem while we wait for a better software solution.
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UPDATE
Done already. Well, the instruction was there all along, of course (as shown in screenshot). Perhaps the "solution" would simply be in not having the "Replace Wife" option, when you do have to "Remove Wife" first, then add the ID of the correct Margaret Harrison.
Actually, the process turns out to be even more straightforward than as described - maybe having added the same marriage event already (to his relationship with P67F-7FV) helped things along? No fiddling around with the children's relationship with their "new mother" - they were moved into position as soon as she was added as John Johnson's spouse.
See revised page at https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/KZ77-LB3
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The Replace Wife option is still a generally useful option. The problem only happens when the wife chosen add the replacement on a particular relationship is already a wife of the same husband in another relationship. The system can't know that until you go down the Replace Wife path far enough to specify the PID for the replacement wife. At the point, the UI could detect that she is already a wife and block further progress down a path that it then is obvious won't succeed.
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Yes, I see. Thank you for clarifying that point.
BTW - that was the "easy bit" - moving across all the relevant sources from one Mary Harrison to the other was the time-consuming part!
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