Comments on: Rating a Source-Citation

By: Scott Mitchell

Scott Mitchell — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:59:12 +0000

All,
while I agree that there are some issues that need to be addressed in FTM 2008 let’s not beat a dead horse here. Should Ben remain mute on the other features of FTM because there are issues?

Regarding the feature, I think it is great. There are some research items that I want to record as a lead to be followed up on later but am not convinced are correct. This is a helpful way of documenting the confidence I have in the info.

By: Benjamin Nettesheim

Benjamin Nettesheim — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:37:49 +0000

Michael,

This issue is identified and will be fixed in the next Service Pack Update, due to be release to the public shortly.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 04:26:36 +0000

I recently attempted to export a snippet of a very large tree in both FTW and GEDCOM formats and discovered that ALL sources were exported, not just those attached to people in the snippet. I really do not wish to share my entire source database with others, when really, I’m sharing only a few people. Any ideas on how to correct this? If not part of standard feature functionality this would be a nice enhancement.

By: Athena

Athena — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:55:31 +0000

I’m certainly not going to get involved in rating all my citations; I only rate questionable ones.

I would also remind everyone to be careful about interchanging the terms “source” and “citation”. Rating a source may not be as useful as rating the citation. While my level of confidence in a particular source — e.g. a particular census — may be high, confidence in a specific citation might be very low.

By: John

John — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:07:50 +0000

I also do not think more “bells and whistles’ are needed. This software is already big and bulky enough. Fix the other concerns first.

By: Debbie Wilson

Debbie Wilson — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 01:20:17 +0000

I am getting rid of a 2002 desktop and I’ve saved all of my Family Tree Maker info to a flash drive. If I buy the newest version and put it on my laptop will I be able to retrieve all of my all info. Forgive me if this is a very elementary question but I need to know. Thanks!

By: Larry Chesebro'

Larry Chesebro' — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:33:37 +0000

Rating of sources/source facts is a necessary evil and should be done.

However, as many FTM users have expressed concerns regarding the inordinate time required to rate thousands of individual “sources”, e.g. Census records, why not have an option to either rate each “source” individually or rate all “source facts” in one operation as most FTM users know as the source?

By: Fran

Fran — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 03:52:15 +0000

It seems to me that at times it is not the reliability of a single source, but the summation of several sources which confirms or adds to the certainty for some information. For example census data (or even better several decades of census data) that confirms information in a published biography in a county history, a published obiturary, and information from family lore. As a single source of information, all of these could be suspect, but when the information is consistent or inconsistent in a particular way, the sum may give you a fairly good picture of “truth” of a particular fact. It seems to me it is the accuracy of a fact rather than the source which is important.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:17:04 +0000

The stars sound ok in theory but in practice, at least the way they’re implemented here, their use is very limited. The only way I would use them was if I could easily look up weakly sourced facts (ie 1 star) that need more research. But even then I don’t think it would be the best way to identify the “iffies.”

On the most basic level, of course, genealogy is not about facts but about relationships. The facts are there to attest to the relationships. As Athena points out, what you know about an individual is where (or even if) he or she fits in the tree. What I want to know is not how credible the source of a fact is (like other here I generally know the credibility of my sources). I want to be able to visualize how comfortable I am about the validity of links between people. I wholeheartedly agree with Athena that the ability to assign visual cues to relationships is more useful than the star system.

That would be (as they say) sweet.

Also I’m looking forward to the next release. I posted some early rants on FTM2008 but it looks like our concerns are being heard and worked on.

By: Jeff Jahn

Jeff Jahn — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:42:30 +0000

Here’s the problem I see with the rate of sources. First if you follow that standard rules the most you will ever get is 2 stars. Why is that will if you use ancestry, most of them are index’s hence second hand sources basicly subject to the indexer errors. Second why would i want to go through all that time to rate my sources only to have it not show on reports. If I have added a source i feel comfortable with it so no need to rate. Rating would only be used if i want to show someone else how comfortable I was with that source.