Lost Cousins Referrals

[Bryman]

Right, I've read all through the Newsletter pieces mentioned by Peter and I have to say I was little the wiser about the actual Referral process. It is four years since I first attempted my one and only previous Referral and I can't remember anything about that occasion, only that I was disappointed by the reaction/result. I am wondering if there have been changes to the process in the last four years?

It is a few years since I used LC to make a referral to a known cousin and I cannot remember going through the tick process so had to aquaint myself with the process recently. I think the actaul process is sufficiently straight forward that Peter probably does not need to provide further explanation to get the job done. However, a litle more detailed description would probably help those who have yet to perform a referral understand what they would have to do when they do try it.

I had carefully to go through my 320 entries to pick up just the 39 relevant ones following Peter's advice in an earlier post. I repeat the suggestion I made after my dry run earlier - a tick box to select each complete household would be a great time saver. You can then untick any individuals not required one-by-one. On top of that you then have to select their relationship to your "Refer-ee". Quite time consuming, but I was determined to complete this comparatively small exercise regardless. The case where one needed to select the details of hundreds of shared relatives would be quite daunting.

Selection of appropriate entries in the list is not a trivial process, mainly due to LC only having the names and census references and not relationship information other than ahnentafel numbers. I have not looked into this in detail but output from FTA would probably help with that.

In my case, the list of ancestors was provided in household sequence so was not much different from having a single tick box for each household. Is the sequence the same as currently displayed for adding new census entries? If so, then a reminder to select the required sequence before starting the referral process would help.

 

[emjay]

Yes very annoying...even my brother ! He doesn't use email much, but I sent him a few emails with attachments of old family photos. Having received no response, I was furious when I discovered he'd changed his email address without informing me . Where am I on his priority list ?

 

[peter]

Alan, the concept of a household isn't part of the LostCousins system - it's something that was bolted on top at a later stage, using the (often correct) assumption that people with the same census references are part of the same household. This means that identifying households isn't as straightforward as it might have been - the code hasn't been designed around households from the bottom up.

When you create a referral your entries are grouped together as households based on the census references - it really doesn't take much longer to place a tick against the individuals than it would to tick households - surely what takes the time is identifying the households, not ticking the boxes?

Up until now the entries haven't been sorted by census, so the households don't appear in the same order as on your My Ancestors page. I've now modified the code so that they're sorted by census, which also means that on the whole they're also sorted geographically - which will often mean that related households are grouped together, making it easier to spot the ones which are relevant.

This change also means that if you want you can print out your My Ancestors page or transfer the data to a spreadsheet, and flag individuals/households prior to making a referral (had you done this previously the two wouldn't have been in the same order unless you've only made entries from one census).

I've also taken the opportunity to display maiden names since this should make it far easier to spot the right households.

I'm sorry I can't do what you originally asked, but I think you'll find that with these changes it usually won't take more than a couple of minutes to make a referral.

 

[alanmack]

Thank you for the explanation, Peter, and your points are well taken. I did print the My Ancestors page as a prompt (but as a PDF via Firefox's PrintEdit extension to keep the size manageable). The items you had changed were all used I think, and a help in this exercise.

One further thought that may be useful in any future streamlining effort. When the refer-ee is a relation, might it be possible to make the default status of each individual 'Blood relative' ? Only a thought (always dangerous!).

Alan

 

[peter]

One further thought that may be useful in any future streamlining effort. When the refer-ee is a relation, might it be possible to make the default status of each individual 'Blood relative' ?

Surely that's what happens at the moment?

 

[alanmack]

You are right of course. I told you it was dangerous, me thinking!

 

[Bryman]

Selection of appropriate entries in the list is not a trivial process, mainly due to LC only having the names and census references and not relationship information other than ahnentafel numbers. I have not looked into this in detail but output from FTA would probably help with that.

I have now given this a little more thought and raised a suggestion for an enhancement in FTA (Issue 12873). This ought to provide considerable help where there are a large number of ancestors to be passed to the targeted relative. Always provided that Alexander agrees to make the change.

Perhaps other forum members might like to read this suggestion and add their own comments, especially if they think that I have missed anything. That would also give Alexander an indication of how much demand there might be for the new report.

 

[Liberty]

It might be good if the 'list to choose from' indicated the relationship of each person to you - the info you already have on your page. I recognise that I have an unwieldy number of relatives but the problem is evidently similar for those on smaller scale. When I recently sent a referral to my 2nd cousin once removed, I tried to home in on our common ancestors and their descendants by searching for the relevant name, Cooper. Well there are a lot of them (not helped by the fact that TWO of my GGPs had that name). And very few of them have anything other than the bog standard names like John, Hannah etc. Confronted with a household of 2 middle aged people and several young adults, you can't immediately tell daughters from daughters-in-law. If there had been the indication of which were blood relatives/ direct ancestors/ related by marriage it would have made life simpler to identify which household I was looking at.
Also, I note Peter's comments about distinguishing households being a notion that came later. In my family they were on such good terms that they lived next door to each other, and thus have the same census reference. (In one instance the LC checker suggested I was duplicating an entry, but it was sisters-in-law with the same name and nearly the same age, on the same page of the census)

 

[Alexander Bisset]

I'm happy to do such a report but it would only be possible to do blood/marriage/direct etc as that is what is required by the Lost Cousins data entry form. It is a truly massive task to compute the descriptive relationships between two individuals when one isn't the root as may well be the case for this sort of report.

I'm not sure what you mean Liberty when you say "the info you already have on your page" as Lost Cousins doesn't have the relationship descriptors anywhere on the site. All it knows if someone is a blood/direct/marriage etc relation.

It will be relatively easy to produce a report that allows you to choose and individual and that then looks like the Lost Cousins referrals form. I suspect that if I produce a report that outputs all people flagged as having a Lost Cousins entry with tick boxes next to the ones that are direct/blood/married to direct/blood for the invited person that would essentially help people see what the form should look like after they tick the boxes.

Peter can you confirm my understanding that the drop downs on that form are for the blood/married/direct relationships from the point of view of the invited person? I assume that is what is meant by "specify for each how they are related to your relative.".

 

[Liberty]

I'm not sure what you mean Liberty when you say "the info you already have on your page" as Lost Cousins doesn't have the relationship descriptors anywhere on the site. All it knows if someone is a blood/direct/marriage etc relation.

Alexander, this is pretty much what I meant. When I look at my 'My ancestors' page I can at least see my direct ancestors (by scanning down for instances of an Ahnentafel number rather than descriptor). And I can certainly see who is a blood relative, and who a relative by marriage. When you come to mark off common relatives when you do a referral ALL you have at present is the list of names and birth dates. It is fairly tedious to pick out e.g. which Hannah Cooper is my 3GGM, which are my 'aunts' and which are wives of my 'uncles'

 

[Alexander Bisset]

When you come to mark off common relatives when you do a referral ALL you have at present is the list of names and birth dates.

Perhaps a census reference would be useful?

 

[Liberty]

Perhaps a census reference would be useful?

Ah, sorry, - yes the census ref is shown. But to relate that to my family I think I have to e.g put it into FMP as a reference search. This is no simpler than going back to my family tree to identify which of my relatives the entry refers to (and may still require going back to the tree). I was responding to Bryman's suggestion that we throw up various ideas that would make it simpler to mark off common relatives when making a referral.

AND>>> having just looked at what happens when you make referral (a dummy as if referring a sibling) I see that the page to choose from offers me the dropdown boxes ready filled in with a relationship to me. I have only ever referred a distant relative, so this has not been offered but I would find it very useful in all cases of blood reltionship.

 

[Bryman]

Sorry if I have confused anyone but I seem to have misunderstood the instructions on the LC referrals page when the list of ancestors is displayed.
Perhaps I might suggest that the wording is changed to make it clear just what is required, if not pre-completed, ie Direct, Blood Relative or By Marriage.

I had assumed that this needed a description like "Grand Aunt" but now I realise that would be incompatible with what is required when entering ancestors into the appropriate census.

That simplification should make the proposed change much easier to produce a list of required ancestors. Anything that can make the activity of referral easier and quicker should help to get more people doing that.

 

[Tim]

Also, once we've referred one person who shares a particular line we can use that referral as a template for others.

I didn't know you could do this. So I searched for it and it's the icon to the left of the white X in the red circle. Wished I'd known about it before I did the last referral, I had to add 327 relatives, and it took a long time!!

 

[peter]

Peter can you confirm my understanding that the drop downs on that form are for the blood/married/direct relationships from the point of view of the invited person? I assume that is what is meant by "specify for each how they are related to your relative.".

Indeed.

 

[Liberty]

I had to add 327 relatives, and it took a long time!!

Tim, I am relieved to know you are also dealing with huge numbers of relatives. I was starting to wonder if the issues I face were unknown to others, who are dealing with smaller numbers. (You don't have 2 GGPs with the same name, do you? [I wonder how Alexander manages with ALL those Bissets.])

Thanks for pointing out where the route to the template is. I knew it was there somewhere, but have not had cause to use it, as the people I have referred seem to be as far from each other on the tree as it is possible to be...

Perhaps, if we thrash this out a bit more, Peter can report in a NL that a Working Party has overhauled the referral system, it is now even more User Friendly, and urge people to give it ago.

Every week Red Dragon reports how many people have joined LC. I wonder where they come from, since it doesn't seem to be via referrals. How do they know about us?

 

[peter]

I didn't know you could do this. So I searched for it and it's the icon to the left of the white X in the red circle. Wished I'd known about it before I did the last referral, I had to add 327 relatives, and it took a long time!!

I've now added a paragraph to the How Referrals Work page to highlight this feature.

 

[peter]

Every week Red Dragon reports how many people have joined LC. I wonder where they come from, since it doesn't seem to be via referrals. How do they know about us?

Here's a breakdown of the 30 most recent joiners:

Friend: 12
Internet forum: 8
Link from another website: 2
Relative: 2
Family history magazine: 1 (WDYTYA)
Other: 5 (2 from course, 1 from Google, 2 unspecified)

None of the 14 people who had been referred by friends or relatives quoted a referral code.

 

[Tim]

Hi Liberty,

No, I don't have GGP's with the same name but lots of cousins born the same year with the same name

Every week Red Dragon reports how many people have joined LC. I wonder where they come from, since it doesn't seem to be via referrals. How do they know about us?

Peter's newsletter is very good and very well written, so I'm sure there's lots of word of mouth referrals going on. I'm trying to remember how first heard of it, it was back in Nov 2004. I think it came up in a Google search.

However, I think there is a mild perception that there is a duplication of effort if you were to use LC. I mean you have already collected and entered data into your FHS program (everybody must use one now?) , so what useful purpose do you get from entering the data again? Now we know that there is a useful purpose, as all of us here on the forum have entered a large amount of entries and many of us have made matches from this effort.

But I agree with you, anything we can do to make entering the data as simple, and painless and as easy as possible is a win win scenario all round.

Having discovered the template button, and using some of the future features of FTA will certainly speed up the referral process, and then newcomers don't have to enter all their data.

Also, when the forum goes live, there could be potentially a large number of LC members who receive the NL but who have not entered any data. Our job on the Forum should be to encourage these people to add their relatives, and show them the benefits of doing so. Peter has mentioned a sort of "Buddy" system, teaming up experienced LC members with non users, to help them with any questions or concerns. There could also be a special Forum area for them, who knows?

I'm looking forward to go live, all the new people on the forum, and getting the message across about the benefits of using LC as a tool to expanding your Family Tree.

 

[Tim]

I've now added a paragraph to the How Referrals Work page to highlight this feature.

Thank you.