Concerns about new ordinance reservation process

The latest beta nFS introduced a change to ordinance reservation requiring users to reserve all available ordinances for an entire family at the same time in order to “focus on a family” (per the beta instructions).

Helping a ward member in new FamilySearch tonight, I was surprised (and a bit dismayed) to see that this change is now in production. I’m sure it’s well-intentioned. But I don’t think the practical implications were fully considered. I suspect this change will cause confusion and error without really improving our focus on families.

These are my concerns, and I’d be interested in feedback from the community.

Why the Underlying Rationale is Questionable

1. Consider the logic: “Since families are important, all ordinances for a family should be cleared at the same time.” The conclusion actually does not follow from the premise. Clearing all ordinances at the same time doesn't make families more important, and clearing ordinances individually doesn't make families less important. Living family members don’t get all their ordinances at the same time, and that has nothing to do with the importance of the family.

2. Consider this analogy: You can't strengthen a family directly because a family is not a conscious being. It's an organization, and you strengthen it by strengthening the individuals in it. In the same way, the way you do temple work for a family is by doing the work for each individual in the family. We are already focusing on families by doing temple work. Forcing all ordinances to be cleared at the same time just adds an unnecessary layer of complexity.

Why The New Process Is Problematic

1. On the individual LDS Ordinances screen, it’s counter-intuitive to be directed to sealings as the starting point when they are typically the final ordinances done. It’s even more counter-intuitive to click on a link for doing individual ordinances and have the whole family come up.

2. The messages on the screen are confusing. “To select these ordinances select either sealing to parents or sealing to spouse links below” is rather like saying, “To select what you are trying to select, select something other than what you are trying to select.” Can you imagine how this will puzzle users who are new to family history, web applications, or both?

3. The new process provides an inconsistent user experience: If enough information is available, I’m forced to use one of the sealing links; if not, I’m not. The distinction between the two scenarios isn’t apparent unless you know what to look for. I suspect this will also confuse users. (“Hey, there was a different link here last time. Why isn’t it there now?”)

4. By taking the focus off individuals and putting it on a group, we are encouraging members not to take the care they should with each individual name. We already know that nFS frequently marks people as “Ready” when they are not in fact ready, due to duplication/inaccuracies.This new process will likely lead to more names being cleared with less accuracy.

5. Aren't we supposed to be focusing on our direct-line ancestors before we do collateral work? So why would we focus on clearing entire family groups?

6. The new process makes collaboration more difficult. For example, I work with my parents on family history. They live in Utah; I live in Tennessee. Often I will do the endowments and my father will take care of the sealings. If we can’t reserve ordinances separately, we revert to the necessity of snail-mailing cards back and forth.

This isn't to say we shouldn't carefully track our work or proceed methodically through a family group to be sure no one is left out. In fact, maybe visibility is really what we’re after. Why not have some pre-reservation means of displaying all the ordinances needed for a family?

When the Savior visited the Nephites, they went forth to him "one by one" (3 Ne 11:15). So it is with temple work. I strongly recommend restoring the former ordinance reservation process, allowing users to clear one individual at a time, so the process is as simple, manageable, and as error-free as possible.

Kathryn

One more possible drawback, from a real-life example: in one family I'm working on, the father shows Ready, but I suspect his work may already be done as there are several potential duplicates in nFS. However, I need to do more research to make sure they're the same person. I've exhausted online sources and am having to turn to traditional, slower resources (microfilms, etc.)

In the meanwhile (as far as I can tell) the new process makes it impossible to move forward with the rest of the family's work, both where he is the father and where he is the son. That doesn't seem fair to the rest of the family.

I realize I can reserve his name and just not do the work, but that feels like a hack instead of a best practice, plus it raises the chance of accidentally duplicating his work if I forget in the future that he shouldn't really be on the list. (Since I'm working on multiple lines for myself and others, forgetting could happen!)

Someone please correct me if I'm missing something.

I worked as a technical writer for almost a decade. In that work, I discovered that when a process was awkward to document or explain, the process probably needed improvement. I've been imagining how as a consultant I will explain this new process to ward members:

Ward member: "I'd like to be baptized for my grandfather."

Me: "Okay, click on the sealing link."

Ward member: "Huh? I wanted to do the baptism."

Me: "I know, but you have to click the sealing link."

Ward member: "Well, okay. [clicks link] What's this? Why did the whole family come up? I just want to reserve the baptism right now. My brother in another state wants to do the endowment. I don't want to reserve my grandfather's brother--my cousin wants to do that work because it's his direct ancestor."

Me: "I'm sorry, one of you will have to reserve all the ordinances for the family. You can mail the cards to each other."

Ward member: "Seems like a hard way to do it..."

The new process seems to ignore the realities of actually doing research and temple work in favor of (mis)applying a concept ("We should focus on families.") I feel there must be a better way

Kathryn

This new Temple process also allows you to remove a reserved name from the reserved list. If you are not comfortable doing an entire family, remove those family members from the reserved list that you do not want to do at this time.

In the previous release you could only release names to the Temple but with this new release you can remove them from your reserved list without sending them to the Temple.

GarysTurn wrote:In the previous release you could only release names to the Temple but with this new release you can remove them from your reserved list without sending them to the Temple.

You're right, Gary--and I actually thought about that, but it's also a hack--a workaround which indicates the current process needs improvement.

But again, maybe I'm missing something. I'd like to hear what the advantages are to the new approach beyond being able to say "We are focusing on families by reserving all ordinances for a family at one time" (which in my mind is a rather weak advantage compared to the numerous and stronger disadvantages).

I can only think of one other advantage, a practical one: On the rare occasions when all ordinances for a family are ready to be cleared at the same time, it's easy to do so.

But come to think of it, I don't think I've ever personally had a whole family ready to clear at one time (though I remember one time when my researcher Mom did ). In my experience, that's not the reality of research. And even if it were easy and common to clear ordinances for a whole family at once, that still doesn't address other concerns mentioned above.

Thanks! The discussion continues ...

Kathryn

Kathryn wrote:..... But again, maybe I'm missing something. I'd like to hear what the advantages are to the new approach beyond being able to say "We are focusing on families by reserving all ordinances for a family at one time" (which in my mind is a rather weak advantage compared to the numerous and stronger disadvantages). Kathryn

One of the advantages of doing an entire family at one time is that a little more effort goes into identifying the individuals of a family to insure that you've got the right person. This helps avoid the duplicate ordinance problem, which is the primary goal behind the nFS system and the reason that President Hinckley requested that the effort be undertaken.

When ordinances are performed for an individual and that individual isn't tied to a family, it's easier to choose the wrong person, especially if it's a common surname.

Techgy wrote:One of the advantages of doing an entire family at one time is that a little more effort goes into identifying the individuals of a family to insure that you've got the right person. This helps avoid the duplicate ordinance problem, which is the primary goal behind the nFS system and the reason that President Hinckley requested that the effort be undertaken.

When ordinances are performed for an individual and that individual isn't tied to a family, it's easier to choose the wrong person, especially if it's a common surname.

I suppose, but couldn't there just be a verify step ("are you sure you have the right person, child of so and so?") instead of having the user reserve the entire family, just to go unreserve most of them right after?

mkmurray wrote:I suppose, but couldn't there just be a verify step ("are you sure you have the right person, child of so and so?") instead of having the user reserve the entire family, just to go unreserve most of them right after?

That would be easier, but how many times do you thoroughly read a software license or agreement before you click "I Accept"???

Questions such as those would simply be ignored because it's easier to say "yes, I know what I'm doing."

Techgy wrote:One of the advantages of doing an entire family at one time is that a little more effort goes into identifying the individuals of a family to insure that you've got the right person. This helps avoid the duplicate ordinance problem,

Duplication of work is a problem, one ancestor in my wife's family has had their temple work done at least 3 or 4 times, but it's a human problem not a technology problem. Technology can help avoid the problem, but not correct the problem.

I could be wrong, I'm still fairly new to using the new Family Search, but it doesn't seem to me that submitting the whole family is going to prevent someone from entering doggy data, or ignoring what has already been done, just to so they can submit Aunt Lillian and get her work done. My experience is that forcing the issue often results in more bad data, not less, as people try to get things done.

PNMarkW2 wrote: I could be wrong, I'm still fairly new to using the new Family Search, but it doesn't seem to me that submitting the whole family is going to prevent someone from entering doggy data, or ignoring what has already been done, just to so they can submit Aunt Lillian and get her work done. My experience is that forcing the issue often results in more bad data, not less, as people try to get things done.

I agree with Mark. I think focusing on an entire family at a time will cause people to pay less attention to carefully validating each family member rather than more. In working with ward members as a consultant, I've found them to be 1) overly-trusting of the data in nFS, as if it were gospel (after all, it's a Church web site!), and 2) pressed for time. They want to get their family history "done," trying to fit it in with their other callings, a full- or part-time job, running teens here and there, sharing the gospel with their neighbors, etc. The new procedure invites them to cut corners as they deal not with individuals, but groups.

At the last general conference, the church had approximately 13.5M members. Let's suppose that just 10%--about 1.3M--use nFS (I have no idea what the number really is). Suppose the new procedure results in 5 duplicate ordinances per user (probably a conservative estimate, given that families are larger the further back you go). We end up with almost 7M new duplicates in the system.

Add to that the hours spent actually doing those 7 million duplicate ordinances, and finally the time spent cleaning up the mistakes. Think of all those on the other side who needed their ordinances done but didn't have that privilege because we on earth were busy doing temple work that was already done.

Considering the size of the expected user base (hopefully a large percentage of Church membership), as well as the database (eventually all of earth's population), reducing duplicates is not a trivial concern! Yes, members have their agency, but an optimal process and user interface can go a long way toward encouraging adequate research and preventing duplicates.

Kathryn

It seems to me that if you only enter information into nFS about the members of the family for whom you are ready to do ordinance work, and leave out information about the other members of the family, you can submit only those you want to do, and avoid having to remove the others. Then when you find additional information about the other members of the family and are ready to do the temple work on them, you can add those to nFS and do the temple work on them. I figure that if I am not ready to do the temple work on someone, I have no reason to put his or her name in the database. If I put the information in nFS and then don't reserve the name, someone else might reserve it and do the temple work with incomplete information. nFS assumes that however many names you put in it constitutes a family - it doesn't know if there are other members of the family if you don't add the names.
Marian Johnson

Marian JOhnson wrote:It seems to me that if you only enter information into nFS about the members of the family for whom you are ready to do ordinance work, and leave out information about the other members of the family, you can submit only those you want to do, and avoid having to remove the others. Then when you find additional information about the other members of the family and are ready to do the temple work on them, you can add those to nFS and do the temple work on them. I figure that if I am not ready to do the temple work on someone, I have no reason to put his or her name in the database. If I put the information in nFS and then don't reserve the name, someone else might reserve it and do the temple work with incomplete information. nFS assumes that however many names you put in it constitutes a family - it doesn't know if there are other members of the family if you don't add the names.
Marian Johnson

I believe that at a major part of the new Family Search was the collaborative nature of the research, being able to share data with others researching the same lines, sharing notes, combining efforts to advance a family line past a roadblock that others may have already surmounted...

...I can't do that if I only enter "complete" and/or "temple ready" data.

Personally I think doing things in the cloud is generally a bad idea. However, being able to collaborate with other people researching the same family line strikes me as one of the better uses of cloud computing. Designing such a system to encourage people to either not enter data, or engage in hacks to compensate for system "features" is fail.

One of the original reasons for the nFS program was to elimiate duplication of effort with regard to temple ordinances. When we reserve "whole families" it should only be done when "we" have satisfied ourselves that we have eliminated the duplicates by having chosen the correct name if duplicates are shown. We are human and will make mistakes. Others can contest the choices we have made and I'm sure that will happen. As for how to let our cousins do there ancesters work and we do ours, communication seems to be in order. Our deceased relatives are not as likely to be as concerned as we are about who is doing their work for them. They are busy and waiting for us is something they are probably use to.

While clearing names for our upcoming Youth temple trip, I discovered two advantages of the new approach:

1. One family in nFS had their ordinances complete. Then we discovered several additional children, which I added. It was quick and easy to clear these children all at once.

2. While clearing ordinances for another family, I discovered a sealing that wasn't done which I thought was done. Having that "birds-eye" view of the whole family was helpful.

But I also ran into some fresh snags:

1. When providing names for Youth baptisms, I like to give them cards cleared for only the baptism and confirmation. That way, if the cards are lost or misplaced, I can still print cards for the additional ordinances without being concerned about duplicates. However, the new approach makes that impossible.

2. In one instance, I added a child to a family in nFS, knowing the work for the rest of the family was done. I cleared the added child's name, only to discover the mother (Alvania Scott, KP91-MVX) was automatically added to the request as needing all ordinances—apparently there was a duplicate record somewhere. Okay, I thought, the duplicate check will catch this. But it didn't. So I had to manually remove her from the reservation list. Turns out the duplicate record (MZTG-B1D) didn’t have enough information for the system to consider it a duplicate. Had someone been clearing these names who didn’t know Alvania’s work was done, it would probably have been done twice.

3. In another instance, I added some missing children to a family, then cleared their names. With the new approach, the parents’ sealing was forced into the reservation list. However, in this instance the family does not want the children sealed to the biological parent, but to the adoptive parent who was apparently much more of a true parent to the children. But the adoptive parent isn’t yet in nFS (we need to find documentation on the adoption). I needed the option not to have the sealing done at this time.

4. Not only that, the sealing of the parents was forced onto the FOR, even when I didn’t select it in the reservation list! Because it wasn’t practical for me to get to the temple myself and have the cards printed before the Youth temple trip, I gave the FOR to the YM president on Sunday. I would rather he’d just been able to print baptism & confirmation cards without having to worry about an extra (erroneous) couple sealing card.

Tangent (issue not related to the new approach): When the incorrect FOR came up in Adobe Reader, I tried to cancel it but got thrown into a loop ("Did it print correctly?" > I answer no > I get sent back to the incorrect FOR). I finally closed the browser to cancel it. When I signed back in, all the cards were marked "Printed" even though I'd not printed them and had never said they printed okay. There needs to be a way to cancel an FOR before printing if errors are discovered, and names should not be marked “Printed” until the user clicks the button saying they printed okay.

Conclusion: forcing all ordinances for a family to be cleared at once will likely increase errors and duplication, especially for those who are new to family history. I recommend strongly that this approach be modified. When users select a name to reserve, by all means allow them to reserve all ordinances for that person and their family if appropriate. But don’t force it. Doing effective family history work is not a black-and-white “clear the whole family at once” proposition. In fact, I suspect most researchers would agree that the "exceptions" I've described above are more the rule than the exception.

Users should be able to do easily what is best for their particular family and situation.

I have been using nFS in Mexico for the past year and a half and have loved the program. I am loving it less, however, since the institution of reserving entire families at once. For me it is counterintuitive and unnecessarily inflexible.

I also just noticed a quirk. My uncle was born in the church and baptized and confirmed. However he never had his initiatory or endowment ordinances performed. He is dead and the work could be done but there appears no way for the program now to allow it. Clicking on the Readys doesn't work and clicking on the sealing doesn't either since he is listed as Born in the Covenant and no option appears to perform these ordinances. But perhaps I am doing something wrong

eyepill wrote:I also just noticed a quirk. My uncle was born in the church and baptized and confirmed. However he never had his initiatory or endowment ordinances performed. He is dead and the work could be done but there appears no way for the program now to allow it.

IIRC, he needs to be dead for a year before proxy work can be done. Is he recorded as deceased in nFS and has it been a year?

I do remember some figures on nFS use.

Heard that 260,000 users were using it as of this spring, before the beginning of the Utah/Idaho segment of the rollout.

Of those, about 20,000 were logging in every day. It can be assumed that it was not the same 20,000 each day, but that was how many unique users were logging in.

Each day, they were getting about 1.8 million pageviews from those users.

Have heard nothing since the out-of-metro temples started coming on in April, we are just two temples away from starting the Wasatch Metro (Ogden to Provo) part of the rollout.

Yes, my uncle has been dead for 10 years and he is listed as deceased. The option is still unavailable to do his initiatory and sealing. You can check if you wish at his number KWCV-YCP

eyepill wrote:Yes, my uncle has been dead for 10 years and he is listed as deceased. The option is still unavailable to do his initiatory and sealing.

If you are ready to do the work, I would send a request through the feedback channel and ask that you be given the ability to prepare the ordinance request and to do the work.

This appears to be an unforseen glitch in the process that was not considered. It should be resolved quickly. There will be many more in these same circumstances.

eyepill wrote:Yes, my uncle has been dead for 10 years and he is listed as deceased. The option is still unavailable to do his initiatory and sealing. You can check if you wish at his number KWCV-YCP

Try the following:

Pull up your uncle and go to the "LDS Ordnances" tab.

Note the message "To select these ordinances select either sealing to parents or sealing to spouse links below." in the right hand side.

Click the link below "This individual's temple ordinances are completed. Click for details." (Yeah, not very intuitive.)

On the next screen, click "Continue"

A few screens later, I was presented with a screen reminding me of church policy for doing work. I stopped at that point. But I think this is the route to get what you're looking for.

BTW, it appears there is a duplicate record for this individual. And the work is "in progress" for that duplicate.

Actually I had not planned to do the work, since his family has not given permission. I was just checking to see what effect the new policy would have and noticed the glitch.

Another twist: This system will continue to generate a growing backlog of "reserved" work by those who lack family members of the opposite gender to complete ordinances.

scion wrote:Another twist: This system will continue to generate a growing backlog of "reserved" work by those who lack family members of the opposite gender to complete ordinances.

As my family has performed ordinances for our ancestors, we have sometimes been short a few people, especially to perform sealing ordinances. Rather than seeing this as a problem, we have found it to be an opportunity to reach out to members of our ward or other friends to join with us to help. I have always been able to find members who are willing and anxious to help, and we have had some great experiences with them.

So I don't think the new system necessarily will create a backlog -- we can perform the work for whole families at a time by extending invitations to help with ordinance work beyond our immediate family members.

Hearing some of the retorts to divorced and part member families would make your hair curl. Not every ward is accepting of all members.

scion wrote:Hearing some of the retorts to divorced and part member families would make your hair curl. Not every ward is accepting of all members.

Unfortunately, this may still be the case in some areas, but this is probably not the best place to discuss these types of issues. Your local leaders are always there to help.

These are local leaders. Others follow their examples.

Not all wards operate like that.

We also have the option to assign individuals to the Temple to do the work. In nFS family file names assigned to the Temple are given first priority and are done quit fast compared to the old method of assigning family names to the Temple. With the new system we can also assign just certain ordinances to the Temple and reserve others for ourself. So you could do the baptisms and assign the Endowments to the Temple.

Kathryn wrote:While clearing names for our upcoming Youth temple trip . . . .

1. When providing names for Youth baptisms, I like to give them cards cleared for only the baptism and confirmation. That way, if the cards are lost or misplaced, I can still print cards for the additional ordinances without being concerned about duplicates. However, the new approach makes that impossible.

It's actually not hard to do this. Assign the I, E, and SP to the "temple", then you can print the cards with just the B & C. No temple will grab those names as they will remain unavailable until the other ordinances are completed. Then if you want to do the rest of the ordinances yourself, change the assignment from the temple to yourself once you've created the FOR for the youth baptismal trip.

One caution. I've noticed that if the Seal to Spouse are assigned to the temple, they are immediately printed by some temple somewhere. I thought the intention was for us not to do that ordinance until both parties in the couple had their endowments completed. That is not how it is working under NFS.

I have also heard that there are additional problems with this reservation system. For example, somebody does research & prepares individual names to take to the temple. Perhaps they go to the temple the following day, or maybe a month or two later. When they hand the barcoded printout over to be scanned, the cards won't print and the patron is told there is an error. No message seems to explain what that error is, but it seems to relate to reservations. Meanwhile, if another person actually goes to nFS & merges someone on that barcoded sheet & makes a change that affects that list, it is not automatically corrected, nor does it offer an option to print all cards other than the affected individual. The whole batch is rejected. The person needs to leave the temple to figure out & resolve the problem, then print out the new barcoded request. This will particularly impact those who travel to attend the temple and those who are attending in behalf of another living individual, but don't know their friend's research data.

Found a somewhat humorous error the other night resulting from this new process. An ancestor was married several times. I added one wife and printed their FOR.

Later, I added another wife and printed the FOR their sealing. It forced the already-printed sealing of the first wife to be added to the FOR. (I actually didn't notice this at the time.) When I took the FOR to the temple to be printed, a warning came up on the screen saying there was a duplicate.

It took us a while to figure out that the first sealing had been forced onto the second FOR, then designated (correctly) as a duplicate printing