Friday, June 20, 2014

FamilySearch Family Tree "Record Hints" - Marking a Record "Not a Match"

In my post Record Hints are Now Available on FamilySearch Family Tree (posted 17 June 2014), I showed how to "Review" a Record Hint, and "Mark" the "Record Hint" as a "Match."

I went looking for a Record Hint that was "Not a Match" on other persons in the Family Tree, and found one listed for Hattie (Hildreth) Seaver's husband, Frank Walton Seaver (1852-1922).  

Here is his Person Profile (top of page shown):



I looked at the second Record Hint listed (at the top of the right-hand column on the screen above) - the one for "Massachusetts, State Census, 1855."

I clicked on the link, and the comparison of the information on the record (on the left of the screen below) with the information for my great-grandfather in the Family Tree (on the right of the screen below) appeared (two screens below):


After comparing the record with the person profile, I decided that this was "Not a Match."  There were two Frank W. Seaver persons born in about 1852 in Massachusetts - one was born in Taunton, Massachusetts to Nathan and Caroline Seaver, and the other, my grandfather, was born in Medfield, Mass. to Isaac and Lucretia Seaver.

I clicked the "Not a Match" button on the screen above, and filled in the box for "Reason why this Record is Not a Match:"


I clicked on the blue "Save" button above, and was taken to the "Record Hint" page for Frank Walton Seaver.  There is now one "Possible Match" and one "Not a Match" Record Hint listed (the Not a Match screen is shown below):

The "Not a Match" screen shows the Record Name, the Reason, and the Events for this Record Hint.  I could, or some other user of the Family Tree could, click on the blue "Review" button to review this decision again, and even reverse it.

In the case above, I can't fault the system for showing me this Record Hint - the name was the same, the birth year was the same, and no relationship was entered into the indexed information because it was not entered in the record.  

I will try to look at Record Hints for a number of persons to try to assess the accuracy of the Record Hints - I haven't gotten to that task yet.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2014/06/familysearch-family-tree-record-hints.html

Copyright (c) 2014, Randall J. Seaver

2 comments:

Donna Hansen Peterson said...

Hi Randy, after reading your post I went and played with my tree at FamilySearch and looked at the hints. They were fun and easy to use and attach. The matches were good and they even found someone I had not added to that tree so I decided to play with that aspect. The program kept trying to match this person with someone else. Finally I gave up and moved on. I did leave feedback about the apparent looping.

Ginger Smith said...

Although I am not yet using the Family Tree feature on Family Search, I like the idea of being able to add a note as to why I marked a hint "not a match." That way when I go back to it, I can see why I rejected it without having to review it again.