Household location accuracy

The maps program is quite remarkable. However, I have noticed that household locations, especially in a cul-de-sac are not very accurate or useful. With maybe 5 homes around the circle, only 1 household name shows at the center of the circle. This is probably being addressed so I will be patient. Incidentally, is a mobile app being developed?

jschuchert wrote:The maps program is quite remarkable. However, I have noticed that household locations, especially in a cul-de-sac are not very accurate or useful. With maybe 5 homes around the circle, only 1 household name shows at the center of the circle. This is probably being addressed so I will be patient.

The final, exact placement of the address locations is the responsibility of your ward clerks. They have the ability to move the marker to the exact spot. But in practice, the assumption of that responsibility is optional. I don't know how many wards have really undertaken that task, which would probably depend on whether their stakes have instructed the ward clerks to do the work.

In my stake we are implementing an emergency communication plan where we are dividing wards into sections and then having 2 members in each section be the coordinator in charge of contacting members in their section. As part of that plan I am working with the section coordinators to gather as much information as possible and one of the things I am asking them to do is have the members log in and move their own house. My hope is we get a significant percentage of the households located that way then the ward clerks job will be much easier. I will be having the first meeting with the section coordinators for one of the wards on March 17th. I guess I'll find out how well my plan works

In case you didn't know, if you have an lds.org account, you can log in and move your own house if it isn't correct or simply verify it if it is in the correct spot.

Chris W

RossEvans wrote:The final, exact placement of the address locations is the responsibility of your ward clerks. They have the ability to move the marker to the exact spot. But in practice, the assumption of that responsibility is optional. I don't know how many wards have really undertaken that task, which would probably depend on whether their stakes have instructed the ward clerks to do the work.

We have not received any direction from our Stake at all regarding this. That said, our ward has the highest accuracy level in the Stake for corrected locations (OK, I love being the Clerk).

cdw3423 wrote:In case you didn't know, if you have an lds.org account, you can log in and move your own house if it isn't correct or simply verify it if it is in the correct spot.

That's true if the house location has never been verified by a clerk, but once it has been verified by a clerk, members can no longer move their own house location.

aebrown wrote:That's true if the house location has never been verified by a clerk, but once it has been verified by a clerk, members can no longer move their own house location.

This needs to be changed. After reviewing several locations in my stake that have been "verified" by clerks, I have found a large percentage of them to be wrong and often very wrong. The members should always be able to move their marker and I also think that the ward should have the option of letting "Emergency Response Leaders" move the markers. I personally think that expecting a ward clerk to know or figure out where all those markers should be, is very unrealistic.

https://tech.lds.org/wiki/LDS_maps_help ... categories

Chris W

cdw3423 wrote:This needs to be changed. After reviewing several locations in my stake that have been "verified" by clerks, I have found a large percentage of them to be wrong and often very wrong. The members should always be able to move their marker...

I agree in principle with this. The member should always have input, but the clerk should have to verify, or provide final approval of, the location. This aligns with the responsibilities the clerk has to maintain the data for members as outlined in the Handbook. If a household adult member were able to move their location after being verified, and if a verified location were moved by a member then a notice should be sent to the clerk to re-verify the location.

cdw3423 wrote:..and I also think that the ward should have the option of letting "Emergency Response Leaders" move the markers.

I don't agree with this. First, there is no standard calling for this position (these positions) in MLS. Without a standard position to correlate permissions with makes this rather difficult or impossible to program. Also I would not want just anyone with a position loosely related to "emergency response" messing with my household location.

cdw3423 wrote:The members should always be able to move their marker

Final responsibility falls to the clerk. Note that members can not change their own address.

cdw3423 wrote:I also think that the ward should have the option of letting "Emergency Response Leaders" move the markers.

As pointed out, there is no such standard calling. Without a standard calling, no "powers" can be given to that calling. Also, membership information is the clerk's job. Note that there's is nothing preventing the stake from extending a clerk calling to you (in addition to "Emergency Response Leader") to do that function if that's what they desire.

aebrown wrote:That's true if the house location has never been verified by a clerk, but once it has been verified by a clerk, members can no longer move their own house location.

I am not able to move my location and the ward clerk knows nothing about it although he said he does have additional privileges with his log in so maybe he can do it. However, there are no extra markers for him to move around a cul-de-sac.

jschuchert wrote:I am not able to move my location and the ward clerk knows nothing about it although he said he does have additional privileges with his log in so maybe he can do it. However, there are no extra markers for him to move around a cul-de-sac.

The clerk can move the marker for your household to your precise location. He does not need to create any extra markers.

jschuchert wrote:I am not able to move my location and the ward clerk knows nothing about it although he said he does have additional privileges with his log in so maybe he can do it.

The ward clerk certainly can move markers for his ward. Some clerks haven't experimented with this yet, but he'll find that he can indeed move markers. I'm not sure why you can't move your marker, unless some other clerk or executive secretary or bishopric member already verified your address. But the ward clerk will have the ability to see the verification status of every household in the ward; if your address has already been verified, then that explains why you can't move your marker, even if you don't know exactly who verified it among the bishopric/clerks.

jschuchert wrote:However, there are no extra markers for him to move around a cul-de-sac.

I'm not sure what you mean by "extra markers"; there should be one marker for each household. Why would you need extra markers? Note that sometimes you need to zoom in sufficiently to distinguish between markers that are quite close to each other.

aebrown wrote:The ward clerk certainly can move markers for his ward. Some clerks haven't experimented with this yet, but he'll find that he can indeed move markers. I'm not sure why you can't move your marker, unless some other clerk or executive secretary or bishopric member already verified your address. But the ward clerk will have the ability to see the verification status of every household in the ward; if your address has already been verified, then that explains why you can't move your marker, even if you don't know exactly who verified it among the bishopric/clerks.



I'm not sure what you mean by "extra markers"; there should be one marker for each household. Why would you need extra markers? Note that sometimes you need to zoom in sufficiently to distinguish between markers that are quite close to each other.

I have zoomed in to enlarge the area. What I mean is that the map shows only 1 marker at the center of the cul-de-sac. The tool tip for that marker indicates the name of a valid household that is part of the cul but says it is unverified. There are no other markers in the area for 5 homes around the cul-de-sac. So which markers would the ward clerk move? This is the case for each cul-de-sac in the ward neighborhood.

Related questions: I am not the ward clerk but produced a scaled map through AutoCad which we distribute to the members. Can ONLY the ward clerk move the markers? When he logs in with his lds account, does the program know he is the clerk and allows the marker location procedure to work? I found that I am unable to move them.

jschuchert wrote:I have zoomed in to enlarge the area. What I mean is that the map shows only 1 marker at the center of the cul-de-sac. The tool tip for that marker indicates the name of a valid household that is part of the cul but says it is unverified. There are no other markers in the area for 5 homes around the cul-de-sac. So which markers would the ward clerk move? This is the case for each cul-de-sac in the ward neighborhood.

Related questions: I am not the ward clerk but produced a scaled map through AutoCad which we distribute to the members. Can ONLY the ward clerk move the markers? When he logs in with his lds account, does the program know he is the clerk and allows the marker location procedure to work? I found that I am unable to move them.

Are there ward members living in all homes in the cul de sac, or just one?

Is the marker a group marker, which has three small circles inside the marker's circle? Or does the marker just look like a bullseye, which denotes a single household? (Group markers can contain multiple households.) If there are multiple ward families grouped together, it may be that the automated geocoding was only able to locate them approximately, at the same approximate location. If so, and there are multiple single-family residences occupied by different ward members, the clerk can manually break up the group and move a single marker for each family to an individual lot. If it is a group marker, you should be able to click on the marker and see multiple households listed in the popup.

EDIT: Since you apparently have downloaded the household list as a CSV file, you should also be able to identify households that are part of a mapped group by that data file. Such households will have an entry in the column called 'Group."

Yes, the ward clerk is authenticated at login with higher privileges than rank-and-file members. They can only move their own households (and the clerk can later override what they do.)

RossEvans wrote:Are there ward members living in all homes in the cul de sac, or just one?

Is the marker a group marker, which has three small circles inside the marker's circle? Or does the marker just look like a bullseye, which denotes a single household? (Group markers can contain multiple households.) If there are multiple ward families grouped together, it may be that the automated geocoding was only able to locate them approximately, at the same approximate location. If so, and there are multiple single-family residences occupied by different ward members, the clerk can manually break up the group and move a single marker for each family to an individual lot. If it is a group marker, you should be able to click on the marker and see multiple households listed in the popup.

EDIT: Since you apparently have downloaded the household list as a CSV file, you should also be able to identify households that are part of a mapped group by that data file. Such households will have an entry in the column called 'Group."

Yes, the ward clerk is authenticated at login with higher privileges than rank-and-file members. They can only move their own households (and the clerk can later override what they do.)

Thank you for your response. All homes around the circle are occupied. The marker in the center of the circle is a 'bulls-eye' although there are group markers further away in the same street but the pop up there only indicates 1 family. Maybe I can work with the clerk and see what's going after he logs in. I can certainly understand how confusion might exist around a cul-de-sac.

jschuchert wrote:Thank you for your response. All homes around the circle are occupied. The marker in the center of the circle is a 'bulls-eye' although there are group markers further away in the same street but the pop up there only indicates 1 family. Maybe I can work with the clerk and see what's going after he logs in. I can certainly understand how confusion might exist around a cul-de-sac.

One other approach that can be helpful is to select a household in the directory list of the Maps application. That will highlight the marker for the household in the map panel. This technique can help distinguish among markers that are physically close to each other, and can help you find markers that may be placed far from the correct location or for some other reason are not where you expect them to be.