James Tanner's Five Tips on FS/Family Tree

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James Tanner has taken some statements in the Family Search Help Section and elaborated

upon them.  These are things that every Family Tree user should be aware of to better assist our patrons in getting the overall picture of the aim and purpose of FS/FT.

"Tip No. 1

There is no guarantee that the information in Family Tree is accurate. Data comes from many sources, and anyone can edit the information in Family Tree. It is your responsibility to verify names, dates, places, and family relationships, and to provide sources when available.

This is a very frank admission of the status of the content of FamilySearch.org's Family Tree. In fact, it applies to any user submitted family tree on any online program. The key here is the last comment, "provide sources when available." Despite a huge influx of the source citations to Family Tree entries
over the past, almost three years, there are still many entries with no supporting sources. But what is
more serious, is that users of the Family Tree make changes to existing records without sources and
even more seriously, without consulting the sources that have already been supplied. 

There is an even more serious question, can we add names to the program without providing sources? The recent addition of source hints to Family Tree illustrates that the times when sources are not
available are really quite limited. In almost all cases, going back about 200 years, there are many more sources than are usually assumed. For example, adding an entire family to the Family Tree and citing
a marriage record is not adding a source when available. The marriage record is not a source for the
births of the children. 

This Tip should also be kept firmly in mind when people go fishing for names to take to the Temples.
There is no guarantee that a name without a source in Family Tree is not a duplicate and further that
the name is actually an ancestor of the user. 

Tip No. 2

To find an individual in Family Tree, click Find in the top menu. To find a Historical Record, click Search in the top menu or click Search Records on an individual’s person page.

This Tip is really about using the program as it was designed to be used. In other words, part of the function of working with Family Tree is to use the Find menu option to determine if there are multiple copies of an individual in the Family Tree. It is not enough to rely on Find Duplicates function alone to determine if duplicates exist. Likewise, the links to Historical Records are also there for a purpose; to 

be used. It is time to get away from mining the Family Tree for names to take to the Temple and begin adding names from verified historical records.

Tip No. 3  view it here:"  http://rejoiceandbeexceedingglad.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-top-five-tips-for-familysearch.html

I encourage you to read this from James' blog!  Enjoy!

James enjoys giving tips.  This first one is more for basic use of Family Search.  This next one is 
really essential to understanding the basic premise of Family Tree and explaining it to others.  This one I have saved in my Source Box for future reference while helping patrons.

http://rejoiceandbeexceedingglad.blogspot.com/2016/09/10-important-things-to-know-about.html