New Beta Family Search

I have been testing the newfamilysearch web site and have a problem. I have tried to work with the help desk but no success.

Is there anyone else who could help me?

Thanks
Roger

What, exactly, is the problem you're having. I'll see if I can help.

I am trying to have only 4 children instead of the 6 it shows.

I would prefer to talk directly if possible. I would be glad to call on my nickle.

Roger

If you're the contributor of the children you're talking about, you can delete them. If you're not the contributor, then the best you can do is dispute them. Turns out I'm not that much help after all...

Thanks.

This makes the system very hard to work with as you can not produce an accurate FGS. These are living children and 2 of my children are duplicated and the other 2 are not. I guess I just don't understand why it is this way. Maybe someone can explain it to me.

Roger

Is access to this new family search website limited to a select group or is it generally available to the public? I would like to do some testing if it is allowed.
Thanks

It is very restricted at this time but hopefully in the near future it will be opened up.

Roger

Roger wrote:It is very restricted at this time but hopefully in the near future it will be opened up.

Roger

When it leaves the "very restricted" mode, I would like to participate.

KB

I administer 2 Stake genealogy libraries and the users have been asking to be given access to the beta for years.(Some are Church employees and others have relatives on the beta.)

I will gladly give up DOS PAF, DOS FamilySearch, my 120+ CD networked FamilySearch libraries, TempleReady, PAF 5, PAF Insight, and anything else I need to to get them access to it.

Ranbato

Is this Beta for Family Search going to include a Web-based Version of PAF? I'm a Mac user, though we are small in numbers, we are a growing community.

I hope that the church is looking into a web-based Paf system.

At the present time I do not see any reason for PAF to be upgraded in order to use the new beta2. The only current use will be to upload a gedcom file to beta2. There is currently no way to download a gedcom. So PAF creates a good gedcom and will not need to be changed.

I hope a future enhancement will allow the sync of PAF and the beta2.

Roger

Send me your contact information and I can send you mine so we can talk monday.

Gordon
FamilySearch DevNet Manager

Sorry, hou may need my email address.

The purpose of the FamilySearch API is sorry developers can create read and update routines with the New FamilySearch. Many PAF Add-in developers are looking at this possibility so that a PAF using can upload and stay in sync with the new FamilySearch without using GEDCOM

I have filled out a survey to participate in the new beta, but have not heard back yet. One of my biggest questions for the beta is whether we will be able to use it as a PAF-replacement. Will I be able to online or offline go and enter new data from my research into the system as I collect the information, or is the new beta more of a online repository where I just upload "finished" GEDCOM files?

Pardon me if someone has already asked this in the forum.

I got my invite to participate in beta 2 Saturday evening. They said only 3,000 people were chosen out of 19,000 applicants. This program is major coolness. I wrote an article about what I am seeing so far.
http://rzamor1.livejournal.com/2007/02/18/

Renee:)

Well since I seem to not be part of the 3,000 chosen - "Many are called but few are chosen," hopefully either on the FamilySearch Labs blog or somewhere we can see some screenshots or get some idea of when this will be coming out. I hope, I hope.

rzamor1 wrote:I got my invite to participate in beta 2 Saturday evening. They said only 3,000 people were chosen out of 19,000 applicants.

(Looking at my email in-box) <sniff>





:rolleyes:

Alas I was also not one of the chosen.

thedqs wrote:Alas I was also not one of the chosen.

The latest I'm hearing from the email groups is that it may be sent out in phases to avoid overwhelming the registration process. Someone got theirs Sunday afternoon.

Tomj wrote:Is this Beta for Family Search going to include a Web-based Version of PAF? I'm a Mac user, though we are small in numbers, we are a growing community.

I hope that the church is looking into a web-based Paf system.

If you might be interested in a chance to maybe run the current PAF on an X86-based Mac, you might be able to use the WINE program to do it, if not now, some time soon. The best way to get it to work is to try it, file bug reports, encourage someone to fix the bugs, try it again, file more bug reports, etc. I posted a link to the WineHQ AppDB page for PAF 5 on Linux to the forum thread about PAF on Linux. HTH.

Roger wrote:Thanks.

This makes the system very hard to work with as you can not produce an accurate FGS. These are living children and 2 of my children are duplicated and the other 2 are not. I guess I just don't understand why it is this way. Maybe someone can explain it to me.

Roger

Regarding the children who are duplicated, have you tried combining them? There's an overview on that topic.

A grandfather of mine was duplicated, as were most of his siblings. It was not difficult to combine them. It's even possible to separate again if combinings were done in error. To test the functionality and to learn more about it, I combined and separated my grandfather a few times.

A lot of my ancestors, both parents and children are duplicated. The "tree" right now has a bit of resemblance to a briar patch, at least on that one branch. Unless the real, post-beta system does more thorough automatic combining of duplicates, there will be a lot of combining to do when the system goes live for real.

Hope that helps.

That could be one of the reasons for the beta testers, maybe, to give the tree the once over and remove a lot of the duplicates that already exist. I am sure that on my line we have tons of duplicates too. So that is something to look forward to.

gordon wrote:The purpose of the FamilySearch API is sorry developers can create read and update routines with the New FamilySearch. Many PAF Add-in developers are looking at this possibility so that a PAF using can upload and stay in sync with the new FamilySearch without using GEDCOM

From a technology standpoint, it wouldn't be too hard right now to export from the current new FamilySearch beta system to whatever format one wanted. Family Group Record format can be traversed by clicking on the "show family" links. The HTML for the pages could be saved, parsed, and converted to GEDCOM or other format. The Pedigree form could be used, but it would take more page loads per step.

The only thing I could see in terms of use that might possibly oppose this would be that one is not allowed to slow down the system, and that could be solved by putting in a delay of a few seconds per page request to keep the load on the servers reasonable.

The adventurous side of me would love to start design and coding first thing Monday. The conservative side of me says I should probably not do it unless somebody authorized to give a green light were to give one.

The thing about the API is that it reduces the amount of information that has to be transfered across the network and thus reducing the bandwidth needed for a single user and so more users can connect to the FamilySearch website. For example to send a person through the API would be:
Now for displaying this info to a webbrowser, even in a pretty simple form you'd need twice or more of code giving the table, style, position. Linking the image in. For more advance websites you'd need to include the javascript, stylesheets, etc. That all takes up time and room for the little information that you really are looking for. And for millions of people, the less amount of info to send means more time people can spend doing the work instead of waiting for the servers.

Agreed, an API of the type you described would be much more efficient than parsing human-readable web pages.

Is there somewhere we can get a bit of information about this FamilySearch API? There are about two postings in this thread that mention it. A search on this site for +familysearch +api returned a bunch of threads, most of which have no mention of "API" in the thread. Google didn't turn up much of anything.

thedqs wrote:That could be one of the reasons for the beta testers, maybe, to give the tree the once over and remove a lot of the duplicates that already exist. I am sure that on my line we have tons of duplicates too. So that is something to look forward to.

Actually, the current beta seems to be only to test the software, not to clean up the data. The instructions for the beta test say all the data will be thrown away, so we can add ficticious stuff, dispute anything, "be creative", and "have fun". I haven't added anything ficticious yet, but I did dispute the birth and existence of Fred Flintstone, born in 1776 in Ohio, US. Hey, they said to have fun.

rmrichesjr wrote:A search on this site for +familysearch +api returned a bunch of threads, most of which have no mention of "API" in the thread. Google didn't turn up much of anything.

The Search Engine for this site doesn't look for anything under 4 letters so API even though it shows up in the searching criteria, was not used to search. This was talked about in another thread.

Anyway I haven't heard anymore then you on the API, but I am sure if you start a thread asking for info, people in the know will respond to your questions.

Thanks for the explanation of why searching wasn't doing what I thought it should. That (inconvenient) feature of the search system (only looks for words with four or more letters) sure makes it difficult to search of instances of certain TLAs. (Three Letter Acronyms)

Also, thanks for the suggestion to start a thread asking about the new FamilySearch API. I think I'll do that.

RussellHltn wrote:(Looking at my email in-box) <sniff>

Whoo-Hoo!!! <cartwheels away>

With that enthusiastic an outburst, please don't leave the rest of us in the dark about the cause of your excitement: 1) you just got in to the FamilySearch beta; 2) it's Friday and the quitting bell just ran; 3) a close relative just won the lottery; 4) ...

rmrichesjr wrote:With that enthusiastic an outburst, please don't leave the rest of us in the dark about the cause of your excitement:

It's was on-topic.

thedqs wrote:The Search Engine for this site doesn't look for anything under 4 letters so API even though it shows up in the searching criteria, was not used to search. This was talked about in another thread.

Anyway I haven't heard anymore then you on the API, but I am sure if you start a thread asking for info, people in the know will respond to your questions.

What is the database and search engine being used for Family Search? If we knew we could do some research on our own and determine tips and tricks and limitations.

rmrichesjr wrote:A lot of my ancestors, both parents and children are duplicated. The "tree" right now has a bit of resemblance to a briar patch, at least on that one branch. Unless the real, post-beta system does more thorough automatic combining of duplicates, there will be a lot of combining to do when the system goes live for real..

It is my understanding that the program will only link possible matches together. It will not attempt merges, or combining. They what that decision to be made by people. So there will be a lot of work for decendents to do once this goes live, but the end result will be much cleaner than if software trys to decide if people are the same. As new resources come online those will also be linked by the software, but someone will still have to make the decision to combine the info after looking at it. The ability to unmerge is also a great feature in case errors are made. While working with the beta we practiced unmerging someone and it works great. Until some sort of Syncing is devised, I would not be suprised if we will have to combine every GEDCOM that is uploaded.

GarysTurn wrote:The ability to unmerge is also a great feature in case errors are made. While working with the beta we practiced unmerging someone and it works great.

The merge and unmerge function does sound great. It will really help clean stuff up. I have a question though, who has the final say in dispute resolution? What if both parties feel they are right?

bhofmann wrote:The merge and unmerge function does sound great. It will really help clean stuff up. I have a question though, who has the final say in dispute resolution? What if both parties feel they are right?

I do not know the answer to that. I don't think all of those types of policies have been determined. It does say in some of the documents I have read that you can agree to disagree, but I don't know how that will affect what is displayed in the public view of a pedigree. Maybe like in PAF you can have two sets of parents or spouces, but I don't know how they will choose on differing date sources. I would hope that each patron would be allowed to rank the source and the source with the most votes would display as the primary entry. With a good reliable source and the ability eventually to link to an image of that source, I would think there would not be to many disagreements.

GarysTurn wrote:but I don't know how that will affect what is displayed in the public view of a pedigree.

Uh, define "public view". As far as I know you can't see much of anything until you graft the individual(s) in question to your tree. At that point it becomes "your view". As long as everyone's individual view confirms to their expectations, then there is no "fight".

I have only played with new FamilySearch Beta2 for a couple of hours so I don't pretend to be an expert. I was looking at it with a friend who is a Beta tester while he was logged in under his name. When I did a search for my great grandfather, I found him and got to see him all linked up to all my ancestors without me having linking or combining anything. There were over 40 contribuitors listed in his record. The top submissions listed were from my cousin who had submitted a lot of sources with his submission. The screenshots I posted were of my Great Grandfather just as I found him without me doing anything. There were possible matches, but they were already linked just not combined. In the time I used it, it did not appear that each person could build a different pedigree. It appeared to me to be wiki style with everyone working on the same data. You can not change other peoples data, you can only make comments about others info and add or update your own submission. The only "Your" view I am aware of is when you go to preferences you can select an option to see your submission, and then you see only what you have submitted without any thing you have combined or any one elses information linked to it. This is how things appear to work to me. If there are others that have used it and have seen differently, please let us know.

GarysTurn wrote:I would hope that each patron would be allowed to rank the source and the source with the most votes would display as the primary entry.

Thanks. I like the source ranking idea, either by popular vote or a preset ranking.

Have you considered using parallels (see www.paralells.com) to faciliate PAF on a Mac?

enriquer wrote:Have you considered using parallels (see www.paralells.com) to faciliate PAF on a Mac?

That discussion is on [thread=258]this thread[/thread].

I'm actually not sure why you posted this comment in this thread either. This thread is about the new beta FamilySearch website.

I see they have added the ability to post pictures to the forum. The images have to be online. Here is a screenshot of newFamilySearch.

Have any other beta testers for the new FamilySearch current beta received any contact from a Brad Christensen or other product manager?

I got an email message from him on March 9 asking to talk about how the beta is going and such. I replied at that time and then again on March 14 with phone number and such. I haven't heard from him since.

I get the impression the current beta test is keeping the project folks considerably more busy than they had planned. I hope that doesn't mean the project will take longer to get to production release.

Roger wrote:Thanks.

This makes the system very hard to work with as you can not produce an accurate FGS. These are living children and 2 of my children are duplicated and the other 2 are not. I guess I just don't understand why it is this way. Maybe someone can explain it to me.

Roger

Roger,

I'm beta testing too. You said 2 of the children are duplicated--have you tried combining them?

Kathryn

Merge the 2 that are the Same!
If they are living, Support will have to do it!
Go to help then feed back, tell support the problem.
So fare I'm in the System twice one is living, the other die in 1978!
I have to wate till my Temple Dist. is on the new System and work with the Ward Clerk to get it changed!
best of luck!
Larry

Tomj
I have made screen shots of most of the New FamilySearch, I'm missing the ones on how to Help Others!

These may not be the final Cut!
if there is a intrest in them will see if the Personal information can be Bocked out!

Larry

Good info on the new Family Search