Comment on the 'Possible Parent' feature in the Suggestion Report

Question

(Not a question.)  I spent a little time this morning experimenting with the new (I think) feature in the Suggestion Report that identifies possible parents for the subject of a profile from the Find A Grave sources.  In the past I have not been a fan of comparing our data to that in the (usually) unsourced memorials in Find A Grave, and have said some unkind things about it.  But honestly, this feature looks like it really does have the potential to be a very useful tool for extending our family lines and adding connections to the big worldwide tree.  I think it's a very clever way to analyze existing data to make discoveries that are right under our noses, so I just wanted to say that my hat is off to Ales and anyone else on the team who was involved in inventing and implementing this.  Thank you!

Comments

Dennis, I discovered this new suggestion feature yesterday morning and I thought it was terrific! I had about ten suggestions and all but two matched up to what I already had on the profiles I managed so it was very simple to link them to the suggested parent/child profile. I was done in about ten minutes. The two which I had to mark false were children who were linked on FindAGrave to their step-father rather than their biological father (who is not definitely known.)

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Ah yes, that's a potential gotcha!  Reinforces Linda's point below about checking other sources.

Answer 1

For those I checked, there was a census on the parents that included the children or a birth source on the children's profile that named the parents, so I had a secondary source.  I think, like other suggestions, we should be checking the information from other sources, but I agree it definitely can help to make connections of profiles that are already in our tree

Comments

I agree, the data should still be verified, but my experience with Find A Grave has been that they usually do get the relationships right, even when they don't necessarily show all of them, or don't necessarily get all the other data right.  This feature just seems to be pointing us to possible connections between already existing profiles that we might not discover on our own very quickly, if at all.

Answer 2

I was also able to connect several on my list today. I have only found two that I think are not correct so will do more research to make sure.

Thanks, Dennis, for bringing this to the Forum. Hopefully, more people will utilize that Suggestion.

Comments

Hi Virginia.  I don't claim credit for bringing the topic to the forum -- there was an earlier thread (yesterday, I think) where I learned about it, but the comment I wanted to add wasn't directly related to the topic of that question.

Answer 3

Before I will accept and record the match I always will get at least one other source that verifies the FaG data.

Sometimes FaG is great fiction, other times, it has information I wish I could source directly.

However, the tool is a great thing to have as we grow bigger and bigger.

rsl

Answer 4

Thank you, Dennis, for this post.  I hadn't seen my suggestion report and would have probably been quite surprised to see all the "new" suggestions there.  But because of your information, I was prepared for what I found and am looking forward to working with all the new suggestions.  Hopefully, I'll find some good information there.