* FamilySearch Id

[davidf]

Do I also detect some antagonism towards Family Search because of its Mormon origins? Is that logical or more emotional? I'm not a Mormon, nor even close. But what they are doing helps us, and I see no reason to kick them in the teeth.

No - certainly not my intention, but as with any source you need to know why it was created. As I understand it genealogy is important to Mormons because (I paraphrase, what was explained to me decades ago by a Mormon Bishop who was a fellow work project team member for a few weeks) you can retrospectively join your deceased ancestors to the Church of Latter Days Saints, thereby ensuring their admission to heaven. If you are a believer, that has to be pretty important motivation and I suspect can lead to the sort of "wishful thinking" by some that I referred to in a previous post. It is more charitable to over-link than to under-link.

I think concern about the accuracy of records is shared. We worry about "tidying up" our own trees; LDS records are multiple orders of magnitude greater and I suspect problems with accuracy are not a linear relationship to the size of the database.

[AdrianBruce]

I spent some time working with FamilySearch FamilyTree and with one of its support forums, GetSatisfaction. GS was a nice little community before it was "improved" to split everything over a dozen sub-communities. While in there, we found some typical themes of people (bluntly) messing up. One theme got informally referred to as "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". In this theme, profile XXXX-XXX started out as (say) Fred Bloggs (1800-1865), but somehow ended up as (say) John Doe (1760-1820). Two clearly different carbon-based life-forms represented (over time) by the same FS ID. That is not a good candidate for a unique id.

None of us ever worked out a certain reason for why the Body Snatchers appeared - my own feeling was that someone (more than one because it happened many times) was just using the "Update Profile" screen to create a new profile - as they thought - without realising that they were over-writing one profile with someone else's details.

So that is one reason why the FS ID can be less than what it's intended.

One single tree (to rule them all) is a laudible aim. Unfortunately its execution in FS FamilyTree is flawed in the extreme for all sorts of reasons ranging from the flat refusal of management to value quality over quantity (not sure whether that's FamilySearch management or LDS management) to FSFT users who are doing it only to get brownie points in the Church and actually don't care about their ancestors (or at least, they don't care to respond to me when I correct their relatives' details). In the middle of them all are hugely dedicated genealogists and software engineers.

Interfacing FH with FSFT would offer useful abilities to keep a safe copy of your data that can (potentially) be reloaded when someone decides that their guess is better than your logic, and to that extent it's an excellent idea. But it's a bit sad when my first thought is that the integration is a safety belt, not a research tool.

[DPBicket]

I spent some time working with FamilySearch FamilyTree and with one of its support forums, GetSatisfaction. GS was a nice little community before it was "improved" to split everything over a dozen sub-communities. While in there, we found some typical themes of people (bluntly) messing up. One theme got informally referred to as "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". In this theme, profile XXXX-XXX started out as (say) Fred Bloggs (1800-1865), but somehow ended up as (say) John Doe (1760-1820). Two clearly different carbon-based life-forms represented (over time) by the same FS ID. That is not a good candidate for a unique id.

None of us ever worked out a certain reason for why the Body Snatchers appeared - my own feeling was that someone (more than one because it happened many times) was just using the "Update Profile" screen to create a new profile - as they thought - without realising that they were over-writing one profile with someone else's details.

So that is one reason why the FS ID can be less than what it's intended.

Thank you for this feedback - it is both amusing and practical. It may represent the birthing pains of something that was then new, or it may represent a systemic issue. I will try to follow up with Family Search directly to get some feedback from them, and post it on this forum if/when I get it.

[Mark1834]

It's probably a reasonable assumption that any future hypothetical FH support for FS syncing will be broadly similar to what RM currently offers, namely the ability to link individuals in your tree to the FamilySearch tree, and optionally sync data in either direction.

You can try out that process now using the tools described in Synchronizing Your Tree With Ancestry to Exploit Hints. The RM extract of your tree would be synced with FS in the same way that it is currently synced with Ancestry.

To emphasise, this is not a tool to suck FS data into FH, just as it does not currently read Ancestry data back. It is strictly one-way, but could be a useful option for users who want to (or at least try to) keep the FamilySearch tree up to date for their individuals of interest.

Should FH add its own similar syncing function in the future, the plugin could be readily modified to update your FH project with FamilySearchID values to continue your linking directly in FH without needing an intermediate application.

[cwhermann]

davidf wrote:

No - certainly not my intention, but as with any source you need to know why it was created.

I think it is important to distinguish between the global tree and the record collections at FamilySearch. I am not a member of the LDS Church and I know very little about their theology or their motivation to create the global tree. And while I can't think of why I would cite the tree itself as a source, I find the digitized images of original records available at FS invaluable in my research.

I too have encountered a number of errors and undocumented events / relationships on the tree and basically use the information in the tree as hints for further investigation. Having said that, I have found a number of valuable images in the "memories tab" attached to individuals and notes in the "collaborate tab," but even then, I am not sure I would use the FH - FS syncing, if developed. I started with RM because of its ability to sync with FS and Ancestry and found it created significant issues with image names, sources and even place names that required a great deal of effort to constantly clean up. At this point, I don't see using the FSID tag as anything other than a place to record the ID for quicker reference and even then I would want to manually enter it. As a side note, I just did a quick check on FS for John Cooke, one of the Mayflower passengers. There are at least five John Cookes all with the same birth and death info, each with a unique FSID number!!

Despite the problems with the global tree, I think the digital records available on FS are one of the most under rated sources of records available on line (and for free). Their digital image counter is about to reach 5 billion records and they are adding over a million images a day. FS states only about 20% of their digital images are indexed and many won't be indexed for years. If one take the time to manually search/browse through digital images of records, you can find lots of info on your ancestors that will never show up in a search by name. I have located hundreds of land deeds, BMD certificates, complete probate files and church (non LDS) records, etc. that would have required visits to repositories. In fact, many of the Ancestry databases cite Family History Library films as the source and by locating the FHL film on FS I have been able to locate images of the actual record instead of relying on the database entry.

I just wanted to point out that despite the shortcomings of the FS Global Tree, the FS website is a valuable source for digital records.

[davidf]

I just wanted to point out that despite the shortcomings of the FS Global Tree, the FS website is a valuable source for digital records.

Totally agree, when I find a collection supported by images (and I can get to the first one of the sequence and see what the title page of the document "says it is" (Burial register, Bishops Transcript etc.) - assuming we don't have multiple registers on one "film") I often widen my search using the "batch number" by direct link from the Family Search page to pick up potential siblings - or even manually browse the images.

Hugh Wallis did an index of batch numbers which is also another useful way in to the transcripts. I used to see it regularly recommended.

[fhtess65]

davidf wrote:

No - certainly not my intention, but as with any source you need to know why it was created.

<SNIP>
I just wanted to point out that despite the shortcomings of the FS Global Tree, the FS website is a valuable source for digital records.

I don't think any of us were questioning the usefulness of FamilySearch and its record sets. Like many, I've learned to search the catalogue by place and then browse through image sets that haven't been indexed. It's often far more effective than using the revamped Search interface, which I find far less useful than the old version.

Teresa

[Gowermick]

It's often far more effective than using the revamped Search interface, which I find far less useful than the old version.

Teresa

I can agree with that, IMHO, the new interface is the pits