Issue 35.17
When you log into https://www.familysearch.org/tree/ and look at your pedigree view, either the landscape view, the descendancy view or the portrait view, you will see colorful icons. Boxes with a temple icon are for ordinance related information. The turquoise blue boxes are record hints provided by completed projects from FamilySearch Indexing. The purple boxes are providing Research Suggestions. The red ! boxes are Data Problems.
Data Problems represent a whole list of possibilities. Each FamilySearch user should try to clean up these warnings, consider the research suggestions, and add the Record Hints when they are matches. Focusing on the Data Problems, look for the red icons. Not having a standardized place is a data problem. Some places and dates have been copied from Ancestry.com, have come into the Family Tree from GEDCOM submissions, or have been added by users who are not selecting the standardized dates and places. The purpose for having a standardized date is that the system knows what the date is. It can then give you much more intelligent feedback concerning dates that are unreasonable. Adding a date as 12-1-1910 can represent December 1 or January 12. That is a big difference with a large margin of error. Always select the standardized date and fix any non-standardized dates you see in your Family Tree.
The standardized place also enhances the search function. The computer needs to know the place so that the searches can trigger the record hints. If there is an abbreviated place the computer can’t figure it out and won’t be able to decipher the place. Cutting and pasting may also trigger a data problem if you do not select the standardized place from the drop-down menu that appears.
Data problems may also appear if the birth year of the child is later than the death year of the father or if the birth year is after the mother turned 52, which is normally the end of the child bearing years. You can find a complete set of the data problems by clicking Get Help and searching for Fixing Data Problems in Family Tree or just Data Problems.
For more information, contact Shanna Jones shannasjones@msn.com