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No matter how easy or uncomplicated you think something is, there always seems to be someone who doesn't quite get the message. The FamilySearch.org Family Tree is an amazingly well done and, from my perspective a rather easy program to use. But there are always questions and misunderstandings with even the most obvious features.
I recently had a friend pass on this comment after trying to help a patron in a Family History Center. The comment really illustrates two different issues.
Today, I was helping a young woman with her research, and I asked if she looked for information on FamilySearch. She said, "oh yes, I have a tree there with sources."When a program is designed, the programmers are not usually the people who will ultimately use the program. That is one reason why FamilySearch and other developers use Beta tests to let the real users give feedback on the issues with the program. Here we have two excellent examples of program difficulties that are not going to be found by bug reports. The reason is simple. There is nothing wrong with the Family Tree program at all. However, the Family Tree, as well as most of the other parts of the FamilySearch.org website do make assumptions about a user's competency and awareness of the terminology and usage of parts of the programs.
I said let's look at it. She went into FS and pulled up her person. There was not one source, document or memory attached. When I asked (very nicely) where the source was, she responded -- "oh, it's right here". She pointed to the hints under the Research Help column on the right. Her perspective was that was a place where the sources were kept and that she did not have to do anything further.
We were trying to estimate a marriage date and I noticed that there was only one child listed under the couple. I asked if there were any other children in the family, and she said yes, it was a very large family but she is only interested in her direct line ancestor.
People who focus only on one line and fail to "fill in" the rest of the people in their ancestral families are quite common among those who are "interested" in genealogy. If you go back in time, clicking on family lines on the Family Tree, you will quite possibly find family lines that have only one child in each generation. So this part of the quote does make some weird sort-of sense.
Quite frankly, this is the first time I have ever heard of the issue with Record Hints. I know people who ignore them both negligently and intentionally but thinking they are the same thing as sources is really strange, especially if you manage to open one of the Record Hints and look at what it says.
It is situations such as these that make my days interesting while helping in Family History Libraries and Centers. Let me know if you agree with the patron.
I am often surprised when highly educated professionals who have spent years and years to learn their trade expect to "find a name" without even wanting to learn how a program works. The person in your example could very well be one of them.
ReplyDeleteJust this week, my husband noticed that some Swedish family names in Family Tree had * between the first name and the patronimic last name. He was unable to do any temple work because the program was not recognizing the names with the unusual character in the middle. He contacted the woman, in Sweden, and she said that she inserted the * in the names to help her remember which person she was related to!! He explained she needed to come up with a different way of keeping track of her family. That was a real head shaker.
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