* Should I Eliminate Most Witness Facts?

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Mardon
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Should I Eliminate Most Witness Facts?

Post by Mardon »

I'm in the process of converting from RM8 to FH7. I used Shared Roles a lot in RM and all these entries got converted to Facts in FH7. For example, If a person's death certificate listed the parents' names, and the spouse's name was listed as the Informant, I added a RM Shared Role to each of these 3 people. This created a Fact for each of them in FH7. As I go about cleaning up the database, should I delete these FH7 Facts that were created automatically from the RM Shared Roles? It seems like I could treat the spouse as a Witness since they are listed as the Informant but I'm not sure that's the best idea. I get the impression that Witness Facts are not encouraged in FH7. I also notice that Witness Facts often seem to mess up the flow of Published Reports. Advice will be appreciated. TIA (Hope as a FH Newbie I'm not asking too many questions. I do attempt to find answers for my questions before posting here.)
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LeslieP
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Re: Should I Eliminate Most Witness Facts?

Post by LeslieP »

I've been using witnesses on facts since my TMG days, they carried over into RM, and carried over into FH. I have no intention of ever not using witnesses, and GEDCOM7 now supports the concept with an official structure, so the future is bright on that front!

Your RM witnesses should have come into FH perfectly fine, complete with roles. If they truly did not, then there may have been an import option that you could choose differently, someone else may be able to help with that.

But in short - if you like creating facts with principal and witnesses, and defined roles, there is no reason to stop doing that.
Leslie P
Houston, TX
from TMG to RootsMagic to FH7
publish to web via TNG
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tatewise
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Re: Should I Eliminate Most Witness Facts?

Post by tatewise »

FH is flexible enough to accommodate a variety of options to suit your preference.

In Replacing Witnesses with Census Facts after RM8 to FH7 Import (20749) you asked about Census shared Fact Witnesses.
It is generally advised that each household member has their own Census Event instead of using shared Fact Witnesses.
In a Census, each person is effectively a principal because they all have the same Role.
See also FHUG Knowledge Base Recording from a Census Record.

For other events, such as Birth, Marriage & Death, different people have different Roles.
The principal person or couple are different from the Informants, Bridegroom, Bridesmaids, Minister, Witnesses, etc.
So for them, shared Fact Witnesses are a perfectly good solution.

When you say each Shared Role created a Fact in FH V7, do those facts in the Facts tab have a blue arrow on the left?
That indicates they are shared Fact Witnesses and as such typically have different text and Sentences.
If they don't, then probably some Fact Witness customisation is missing.

Regarding Reports, if shared Fact Witness entries are not wanted then there is an Option to exclude them.

Some screenshots of the 'problems' will allow us to explain better what you are seeing.
See FHUG Knowledge Base Forum Usage Tips under Attachments and Taking Screenshots.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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Mardon
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Re: Should I Eliminate Most Witness Facts?

Post by Mardon »

LeslieP wrote: 26 Jun 2022 19:02 <*snip*>
Your RM witnesses should have come into FH perfectly fine, complete with roles. If they truly did not, then there may have been an import option that you could choose differently, someone else may be able to help with that.

But in short - if you like creating facts with principal and witnesses, and defined roles, there is no reason to stop doing that.
Thank you for your comments. My RM Roles did import fine into FH7. There was no issue with that. I think my issue is that I was 'over-using' the Shared Roles functionality in RM. That resulted in an over-creation of Witness Facts in FH7. For example, in the case of death certificates it had been my practice to create RM Roles for the deceased person's parents' names as listed on the death certificate and share those Roles with the Principal's Death Fact. I now see no reason to have a Witness Fact for the deceased person's parents just because those names are on the death certificate. It had also been my practice in RM to create a Shared Role for the deceased's spouse if the spouse's name was listed on the death certificate. I used a RM Role named husband/wife. I now see that if the Principal person's spouse was assigned a specific function on the death certificate, such as Informant, then the spouse should be attached as a Witness to the Principal's Death Fact, but using "Informant" as the Role name and not the Role name husband/wife. Based on your feedback, I'll continue to use Witnesses but I'll be more careful to make sure that everyone I list as a Witness performs an actual witnessing activity and that the Role name reflects that activity. Hope this makes sense.
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tatewise
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Re: Should I Eliminate Most Witness Facts?

Post by tatewise »

Yes, that makes sense.
If you have a lot of those 'superfluous' Fact Witnesses, then they can be bulk deleted via a suitable custom Query.
We can advise how to build such a Query.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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Mardon
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Re: Should I Eliminate Most Witness Facts?

Post by Mardon »

tatewise wrote: 26 Jun 2022 19:12 FH is flexible enough to accommodate a variety of options to suit your preference.
<*snip*>
In a Census, each person is effectively a principal because they all have the same Role.
See also FHUG Knowledge Base Recording from a Census Record.
<*snip*>
shared Fact Witnesses are a perfectly good solution.
<*snip*>
When you say each Shared Role created a Fact in FH V7, do those facts in the Facts tab have a blue arrow on the left?
<*snip*>
Regarding Reports, if shared Fact Witness entries are not wanted then there is an Option to exclude them.

Some screenshots of the 'problems' will allow us to explain better what you are seeing.
<*snip*>
Thank you for all the help you've been providing. I hope I don't wear out my welcome with too many questions, but "Thanks for your advice."

The flexibility of RM7 is one of the things that I'm growing to really like. It makes the learning curve a bit steep but I feel that the end result will be worth it.

I'm now in the process of converting my database so that each individual has their own Census Fact rather than being treated as Witnesses. Per BillH's advice, I also checked out the plugin, "Give Witnesses Their Own Facts", but I think I might do the conversion manually just to be safe. Even if I did automate the Census Witness conversion, I'd still have to enter all the ages manually.

Per LeslieP's comments, I will continue to use Witnesses but will be more careful in doing so (as explained in my reply to him).

There is a blue arrow next to the Witness Facts in the Facts Tab. It is very difficult for me to see though. I use a 4K, 32" monitor so I've had to adjust the text size and fonts to make things large enough to read. It doesn't seem like there is any way in FH7 Tools-->Preferences-->Display to make icons like that blue arrow appear larger. It just looks like a tiny dot on my screen. I had no idea it was a blue arrow until you mentioned it. I haven't found any solution for this.

Thanks for the heads-up regarding excluding Fact Witness entries from Reports via the Options menu.

Thank you for the screen-shot info. I now feel fairly comfortable regarding the use of Witnesses, so I don't think I need to post any screen-shots on that topic right now.

Thanks again for all the help.
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LeslieP
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Re: Should I Eliminate Most Witness Facts?

Post by LeslieP »

Mardon wrote: 26 Jun 2022 20:16 'over-using' the Shared Roles functionality in RM.
I understand now! And now I'm thinking maybe I've been UNDER-using the shared roles functionality.

Note to self: add "informant" to death fact when I have the death certificate - that's USEFUL stuff because it puts the informant in the decedent's place of death, at least for that brief moment in time. (probably, I mean, maybe they provided info via phone? is that done? oh well, at the very least it can show a relative or friend who was close to the person at the time)

Cleaning up my witness roles, fixing sentences, etc are all project that have long been on my ToDo list, but will be much easier to tackle in FH-land than they ever were in RM.
Leslie P
Houston, TX
from TMG to RootsMagic to FH7
publish to web via TNG
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