Ron Tanner Speaks Out On Record Hinting

A ray of sunlight has been added to your tree!

Hinting is Here: We Search for You by Ron Tanner FamilySearch has just released a powerful new hinting feature that actually searches our vast record collection for you! We look at your records in FamilySearch Family Tree, compare it to information from our indexed records, and bring back the most likely matches. Our goal is that, on average, 95% of the records we suggest to users will be correct matches (keep in mind that this won’t be true on every person in the tree). After a user reviews a hint, they will be able to attach it to FamilySearch Family Tree and, using the enhanced match functionality, we will help them compare and attach it to other people in the tree. This process will provide documented information to qualify existing people in the tree for temple work and it will also help add new people to the tree who need temple ordinances. As someone with a family history calling, you will no doubt be asked about this new feature so we wanted to introduce it to you. However, we are rolling this out to general members through an email marketing campaign inviting less-experienced users to use the hinting feature first. For an experienced genealogist they could use this feature to pick their family tree clean in a matter of hours. That is why we would like to encourage you and any family history buffs to use this tool as an opportunity to teach family, ward members, and friends the joys of this great work, and help them find and submit names to the temple! Here are what early users are saying about hinting: All I have to say is “WOW” !!!!!!! When the Lord does something, He does it BIG. As I sit here at my computer tonight, my room feels full of my ancestors and the excitement they are feeling has me in tears. I am a convert of 58 years as of last Feb. 5th, 2014, and have been working on family history all of these years. I can’t thank you enough, our wonderful Family History Team, for what you are doing to make this wonderful and important work go faster. How blessed I feel to be a member of this the Lord’s True Church and to be a part of this work. With much love. - K Taylor I think the “hinting” is awesome. I have tried several of my ancestors and found information that I did not have before. You guys are terrific. Keep up the good work. You are updating and developing new stuff almost faster than we can learn them. - G. Flanagan Thanks for letting me participate in the hints beta. It proved invaluable to me in the first few minutes. I’ve been looking in the Massachusetts Birth records for my dad’s birth record and haven’t been able to find it. It showed up in the hints and I could see that his last name was spelled Ostman instead of Eastman. Evidently my grandparents hadn’t yet changed the spelling of their name from the Swedish (Ost with the 2 dots over the O means East in Swedish) and I didn’t think to look for that spelling. Thanks very much for this wonderful tool! - E. Eastman Fantastic - I found my parents’ marriage certificate that I have been searching many years for! - P. Palmer. To help others use this feature log in to FamilySearch.org and go to an ancestor page. The Record Hints box is on the top right side of the page! So, help others try hinting today!