FamilySearch adds significant error checking and research suggestions

FamilySearch.org Family Tree is beginning to emerge from its cloud of data and become a much sharper tool for doing accurate genealogical research. In a blog post entitled "Helpful New Additions to the Descendancy View" from FamilySearch, Jeff Hawkins outlines some recent tools that will measurably increase the overall utility of the program. The emphasis here is adding information while at the same time avoid duplication and merging existing duplicate individuals. The new descendancy view is a boon to careful research. As the post suggests,

Two powerful new features have been added to the Descendancy view—Research Suggestions and Data Problems. They help you identify where people might be missing in your tree and where you might be able to improve the quality of your data.

This is certainly true. When I tried out the new features, the program immediately identified one of the individuals in the family I selected that needed to be merged with a duplicate and also indicated which members of the family lacked documentation through sources. I am impressed that this addition will encourage those who use the tree to document their entries. Anything that can be done in this regard will assist in improving the accuracy and integrity of the data.

The article is quite detailed and I will not copy the whole article into this blog post. I would note that changes and additions to the Family Tree program are being documented primarily through the Blog posts and that anyone interested in the program would be well advised to refer to the blog frequently or better yet, add it to a reader program so you get notifications of any additions or changes. I have written several blog posts in the past about reader programs. There is an easy way to search my past posts since they are all online and searchable by Google. For example, if you wanted to find an article on readers, all you would have to do is search for "James Tanner blog aggregator programs" and Google will find the articles immediately. But you might have to dig through a lot of commentary since I have posted a lot of articles. But here is a link to one such article on subscribing to the FamilySearch.org blog.