New Beta Family Search

[rmrichesjr]

With that enthusiastic an outburst, please don't leave the rest of us in the dark about the cause of your excitement: 1) you just got in to the FamilySearch beta; 2) it's Friday and the quitting bell just ran; 3) a close relative just won the lottery; 4) ...

[russellhltn]

With that enthusiastic an outburst, please don't leave the rest of us in the dark about the cause of your excitement:

It's was on-topic.

[bhofmann]

The Search Engine for this site doesn't look for anything under 4 letters so API even though it shows up in the searching criteria, was not used to search. This was talked about in another thread.

Anyway I haven't heard anymore then you on the API, but I am sure if you start a thread asking for info, people in the know will respond to your questions.

What is the database and search engine being used for Family Search? If we knew we could do some research on our own and determine tips and tricks and limitations.

[garysturn]

A lot of my ancestors, both parents and children are duplicated. The "tree" right now has a bit of resemblance to a briar patch, at least on that one branch. Unless the real, post-beta system does more thorough automatic combining of duplicates, there will be a lot of combining to do when the system goes live for real..

It is my understanding that the program will only link possible matches together. It will not attempt merges, or combining. They what that decision to be made by people. So there will be a lot of work for decendents to do once this goes live, but the end result will be much cleaner than if software trys to decide if people are the same. As new resources come online those will also be linked by the software, but someone will still have to make the decision to combine the info after looking at it. The ability to unmerge is also a great feature in case errors are made. While working with the beta we practiced unmerging someone and it works great. Until some sort of Syncing is devised, I would not be suprised if we will have to combine every GEDCOM that is uploaded.

[bhofmann]

The ability to unmerge is also a great feature in case errors are made. While working with the beta we practiced unmerging someone and it works great.

The merge and unmerge function does sound great. It will really help clean stuff up. I have a question though, who has the final say in dispute resolution? What if both parties feel they are right?

[garysturn]

The merge and unmerge function does sound great. It will really help clean stuff up. I have a question though, who has the final say in dispute resolution? What if both parties feel they are right?

I do not know the answer to that. I don't think all of those types of policies have been determined. It does say in some of the documents I have read that you can agree to disagree, but I don't know how that will affect what is displayed in the public view of a pedigree. Maybe like in PAF you can have two sets of parents or spouces, but I don't know how they will choose on differing date sources. I would hope that each patron would be allowed to rank the source and the source with the most votes would display as the primary entry. With a good reliable source and the ability eventually to link to an image of that source, I would think there would not be to many disagreements.

[russellhltn]

but I don't know how that will affect what is displayed in the public view of a pedigree.

Uh, define "public view". As far as I know you can't see much of anything until you graft the individual(s) in question to your tree. At that point it becomes "your view". As long as everyone's individual view confirms to their expectations, then there is no "fight".

[garysturn]

I have only played with new FamilySearch Beta2 for a couple of hours so I don't pretend to be an expert. I was looking at it with a friend who is a Beta tester while he was logged in under his name. When I did a search for my great grandfather, I found him and got to see him all linked up to all my ancestors without me having linking or combining anything. There were over 40 contribuitors listed in his record. The top submissions listed were from my cousin who had submitted a lot of sources with his submission. The screenshots I posted were of my Great Grandfather just as I found him without me doing anything. There were possible matches, but they were already linked just not combined. In the time I used it, it did not appear that each person could build a different pedigree. It appeared to me to be wiki style with everyone working on the same data. You can not change other peoples data, you can only make comments about others info and add or update your own submission. The only "Your" view I am aware of is when you go to preferences you can select an option to see your submission, and then you see only what you have submitted without any thing you have combined or any one elses information linked to it. This is how things appear to work to me. If there are others that have used it and have seen differently, please let us know.

[bhofmann]

I would hope that each patron would be allowed to rank the source and the source with the most votes would display as the primary entry.

Thanks. I like the source ranking idea, either by popular vote or a preset ranking.

[daddy-o-p40]

Have you considered using parallels (see www.paralells.com) to faciliate PAF on a Mac?