Introduction Week -- Day One for FamilySearch Family Tree

OK, so this is supposed to be the week that FamilySearch Family Tree (FSFT) is "introduced." We have been working with a rather cranky website for the past week on FamilySearch.org and would welcome some stability, at least. Last Monday, the site was down completely and since my class was on FamilySearch Family Tree, I had the class members vote on what else they would like to learn and taught about Google tools for Genealogy instead. The class went well. I have the same scheduled class today and if anyone shows up, we'll see if the program is still running.

I worked some on FSFT and noticed some issues, such as when two obvious duplicate people where showing, even in the same family, the program failed to find any possible duplicates to allow the people to be merged. FSFT also refused to allow a gender change when there were two entries, one showing the person as a male and the other showing the same person as a female. Perhaps that feature will always need the intervention of Family Search?

Anyway, a check of the program today shows it pretty much the same as yesterday and last week and so forth back to the not-so-recent-now changes. I checked the Reference Guide and it is still dated 2 October 2012. So there are no major updates.

I did get contacted by one reader who asked if FSFT was a "replacement" for Personal Ancestral File? I am not really sure how to answer such a question. I do think that it is important to have your own research on your own computer in some format using a genealogy database program but those genealogists that are still using Personal Ancestral File (PAF) should do something with their data. Especially since I spent over an hour transferring some files from an older version of PAF to something usable just this last week. This might not be possible too much longer.

If I hear anything or see anything online, I will try to respond, but this week we are beginning our travels to Atlanta for the Family History Expos. I am not sure how much writing I will be doing with the travel schedule. We are leaving early to visit family and then to the Expo on November 9 and 10 at the Gwinnett Center, 6400 Sugarloaf Parkway, Duluth, Georgia 30097.