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Sunday, June 19, 2016

Multiple Duplicates on the FamilySearch Family Tree Portend an End to new.FamilySearch.org

Road Sign, End, Dead End, Hopeless, Final, Finish, Off



I have had a number of comments recently, both public and private, about a huge number of duplicate entries finally showing up in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. Previously, the program was unable to find or view these duplicates because of a complex issue originating in the limitations imposed by the previously used program, new.FamilySearch.org. You can see my more extended explanation in my post entitled, "What will the FamilySearch Family Tree look like when it is fixed?"

The appearance of the Family Tree's previously undetectable reservoir of duplicates is a major indication that the programming being done to detach and finally put to rest the new.FamilySearch.org program is finally nigh at hand. As I note in my post from my other blog, the appearance of all of the duplicate entries in the Family Tree will throw some of the family lines into chaos. On the other hand, most of us who have been waiting for years for this event to happen are diligently trying to merge all the duplicates.

If you have no idea what I am talking about, it probably doesn't matter at all. The problem involves people with "legacy" families whose relatives have submitted their genealogical information to FamilySearch and its predecessors for well over a hundred years. Fortunately, the store of duplicates is not infinite, although it may seem so in some cases. I do know that it is potentially possible for their to be over a thousand copies of one individual essentially hidden in the program. These previously undetectable duplicates have prevented many of these "pioneer" lines from being corrected in the Family Tree.

The end is not quite here yet. I still see notices that some of my relatives "Can't Be Merged At This Time." This notice is the chief indicator that the problem still has not be resolved. But my own experience, and those of my commentators, is that many more duplicates have appeared and are able to be merged.

Of course, this may all be idle speculation. We may still have a while to wait before there is a definitive end to the limitations imposed on the Family Tree. As usual, we will just have to wait and see.

7 comments:

  1. Another indication that the end is near for New Familysearch may well be the scheduled maintenance for the Familysearch site on 27th June. The notice I saw said that the site might be down for up to 24 hours: whatever's going on then has got to something pretty big for things to be down that long.

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    1. You can see from some of the other comments that there is a difference of opinion on this subject.

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  2. One of the positive changes I've noticed in the last couple of days is that sources created and attached using the Source Linker are now showing the indexed information when the source is opened on a person's page. Yaay!

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  3. James, I don't believe the issue is a sign of the end of nFS. Did you see the blog post from the Ancestry Insider about it or read the getsatisfaction threads? According to Ron Tanner, the appearance of duplicates was likely an accident caused by the LDS Membership department incorrectly exposing some data to nFS. http://www.ancestryinsider.org/2016/06/barrage-of-records-causing-problems.html

    And David, the scheduled maintenance also doesn't have anything to do with the end of nFS. The database powering Family Tree is being rewritten, but the sync with nFS is remaining. At least that's how I understand it.

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    1. I have read the comments by the Ancestry Insider and on Get Satisfaction. My view of what is happening includes those comments but there is much more than what you mention or what is covered by the AI. I would be very surprised if the June 27th date was anything more than an upgrade. But I still see a number of developments that point to fact that FamilySearch is closer to a solution of the NFS problem than they were even a short time ago.

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    2. It looks the scheduled maintenance is both a significant database upgrade and the end of syncing with NFS. That's very good news. https://getsatisfaction.com/familysearch/topics/preparing-to-stop-synchronizing-between-nfs-and-familytree-on-beta

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