Possible Enhancement: Census Entry Replacement

rt · Post by rt » 13 Apr 2010 19:57

Nick,

I've been a FH user for years, and have a legacy of old data entry - often done before settling on a standard method / format for recording facts.

In my case, I'm now replacing some census entries (done years ago) with a more comprehensive & uniform set of facts & associates sources with media records. This is quite a task for anyone with a sizeable list of individuals in the gedcom.

My suggestion is that when AS detects an existing census entry, the program should continue to warn, but also provide the option of replacing the existing census fact with the new. I'm certain there are sophistications to consider (e.g. allowing the user to retain / remove existing citations), but the basic facility would be very useful for anyone endeavouring to standardise their census facts.

ID:4489

Post by **nsw** » 13 Apr 2010 20:58

So just to try to simplify this, what you really want is the option to delete the current census fact if there is already one?

rt · Post by rt » 13 Apr 2010 21:50

Nick,

Yes.

I haven't thought through what options (if any) it might be sensible to include.

rt · Post by rt » 14 Apr 2010 05:13

Nick,

Similar suggestion for Occupation of course. Replace / update.

Post by **nsw** » 14 Apr 2010 06:54

Occupation would be difficult though wouldn't it? How does Ancestral Sources know that an occupation fact has anything to do with the census fact, particularly if we're talking about entries which presumably aren't both linked to a census source and may not have the exact census date, etc.

rt · Post by rt » 14 Apr 2010 07:13

Nick,

It needs to be an option, and possibly limit to those with the census date?

Post by **nsw** » 14 Apr 2010 07:26

Possibly could look at date though my experience (over a number of years of supporting users of Gedcom Census) is that prior to using my software most users were fairly vague when recording census details, e.g they might record the occupation with just a year rather than an exact census date. Also of course people do get married, have children on census dates and so on so the occupation could relate to something else. As you say this would just be an option but I'm not convinced it would be of use to many people. The census fact deletion I think is more reasonable.

I can see some benefits and I'll add this to the wishlist but to be honest I'm rather more keen to move on soon to adding support for other source document types and perhaps revisit this kind of fairly specialised requirement further down the line.

Best wishes

Nick

Post by **hsw** » 14 Apr 2010 17:06

Nick

When you're developing the next set of data entry facilities (whatever they might be) would it be possible to incorporate the option of deleting simple 'duplicate' facts (without the bells and whistles addressing other facts with the same date)? One of the major advantages I see of AS is the opportunity to fix previous 'less-than-stringent' data entry and replacing existing facts would go a long way towards this.

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