russellhltn wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 12:30 pmI'm trying to picture how this might have worked (assigning trees to members without an account to link them back to the ward)- Assuming a family of 4 with the wife being the one who did her 4-gen: previously her children would have been "credited" with having done at least the maternal half of it even if they did nothing. But now, without an account, they're at 0%.
I'm just thinking that a better understanding of how it used to work would help understand why it was an undeserved number.
The process that was done behind the scenes is the same one that is still used when a member creates a FamilySearch account now. And remember that a member's membership record connects them to their ward, and FamilySearch has access to that information, even if the person has never created a FamilySearch account.
First of all, note that living persons receive special attention in FamilySearch. Each living person is unique to a user. So if I have a record for my living father, that is distinct from the record he sees, which is distinct from the one that my living mother sees, which is also distinct from those that my siblings see. Each of us is looking at a different copy of the same living person.
A living person in Family Tree will be connected to no one at all initially. Then somehow they have to get connected to their parents (who may be living or dead). Then the parents have to get connected to their parents, and so on. At some point, those connections will be to deceased people in Family Tree. At that point, the work that a sibling or spouse or cousin may have done becomes a distinct benefit, because the rest of the tree for that branch is immediately filled in. But until those living people and relationships are filled in, there is no connection to the existing people in Family Tree.
All that I have described above has to be done manually for those who are not members of the Church, or whose parents are not members. But for members, we have the benefit of having access to membership records, which contain relationships to parents. Using that information, FamilySearch can create relationships and living person records as far back as the membership information goes. And Family Tree records for deceased members of the Church are connected to their membership record as well, so those connections can be made all the way back to the deceased ancestor (as long as that ancestor was a member of the Church). For people whose families have been members of the Church for many generations, it is common for all 4 generations to be filled in automatically.
Now if someone has never created a FamilySearch account, those initial relationships to their parents in the Family Tree will not be created, and so their percentage will be 0%. Remember that we are talking about a Family History
Activity Report. That number of 0% is a much more accurate indicator of their activity level than 86% or 100% or whatever they might have had credited to them in the past. It's certainly a significant change, and I personally did a double take when I saw the huge decrease in my ward's percentage, but once we get used to it, it will better reflect the actual level of activity in our wards and stakes.
Questions that can benefit the larger community should be asked in a public forum, not a private message.
