First Suggestion
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[Problem]
One thing that I haven't seen discussed anywhere in the forum is - What is being done to facilitate collaborative research when there are multiple people researching actively/concurrently on connecting family lines?
A personal example to illustrate my meaning:
I am not the only person in my family doing research on our family lines, my father does extensive research as well. In a large LDS family, I am sure there are others that I'm not aware of as well - who are also doing research.
From time-to-time, my father and I like to sync-up our latest research. Anytime we want to do this we have to go through an extensive match-merge process (sometimes hundreds of names and dates) to see what is new (that the other person has been working on). PAF Insight is helpful in this process, however it still takes a lot of time to go through all of the differences between two files.
[Solution]
My suggestion is this: could it be possible to provide some sort of date-stamp tracking functionality where we could say "import everything into PAF that has been created since the last sync timestamp?" or "allow me to see each change that has been made and import only if I give permission?"
I recognize that the coding in getting this to work properly would be complex - but it would be INCREDIBLY useful.
In other words - be able to run a report that identifies all related entries that have changed since the time of a previous date-stamp. And then be able to perform different functions on the information tied to that report (i.e. import it automatically, allow user-moderated merging, etc.).
Second Suggestion
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[Problem]
A similar problem exists on the FamilySearch site. It makes it easy for people that are just getting started researching a line, but it doesn't make it easy to go back and see what others have added since the last time one has researched certain names or family lines.
[Solution]
It would be very useful to be able to subscribe to automated reports of other information that is being submitted on a family line
I am aware of one site that does something similar - and I find it very useful. I am subscribed to DISBYT - The Computer Genealogy Society of Sweden (http://www.dis.se/denindex.htm). One of the services that this group provides - is an annual report with membership renewal. If I upload a GEDCOM file, they provide me a report of all individuals that have some percentage (ranked on a scale of 1-5) of matching information, including contact information for the submitters.
Even though this is just a static report, it is incredibly useful - as I try to stay updated on any new information that others have researched connecting into my line.
What would be even better - is if the report could be dynamically connected to the data, so that I could see the matching information - and decide right then if I wanted to import it or not into my own file.
I am very interested to see what you think about these ideas.
