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Question Moderate Pending changes for a family

  • Boomn4x4
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12 years 10 months ago #1 by Boomn4x4
Moderate Pending changes for a family was created by Boomn4x4
When moderating pending changes for a family, when there are multiple changes, how do I know which change in the Moderate Pending Changes box matches up with the specific change made to the family.

For example, I had a user add 3 new siblings to a family and a marrige date to the parents. In the moderate pending changes screen shows: "Wallace Murphy + Mary Rita Dugan" with a list of the 4 changes. If I click on the "View Change Diff" it takes me to the family record and shows the changes, highlighted with blue boxes. Unfortunatly, the user entered invalid birth dates to 2 of the 3 new people. How do I knew which of the 4 listed changes to accept (the marriage date, and the correct person) while undoing only the 2 invalid changes?

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  • Boomn4x4
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12 years 10 months ago #2 by Boomn4x4
Replied by Boomn4x4 on topic Re: Moderate Pending changes for a family
Well, as a quick reply, I can use the last change date/time to match them up, but that seems awefull inefficient. Shouldn't there be a way to take you to each individual change?

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  • ToyGuy
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12 years 10 months ago #3 by ToyGuy
Replied by ToyGuy on topic Re: Moderate Pending changes for a family
No, there is no way. This is why I use the "View" and the "Raw Edit" for every change approval (several hundred each day) to review and correct the data entries. (Particularly PLAC or SOUR structures). I then use their entries as examples in an email to the user to advise them of their errors and refer to the FAQ for data entry conventions. It usually only takes a couple of emails and then I have few changes to make.

BTW, the only thing the changes in the FAM record will refer to are FAM items: Marriage date/place and addition of INDI's. The incorrect DOB would be in the INDI records separately shown.

I find it VERY difficult to decline changes as it can corrupt your data. I would suggest making the corrections and then approving the change. I have the DONT UPDATE box clicked for all my changes so the USER change remains in the record and not replaced by my ID.

Santa Stephen the Fabled Santa
Latest webtrees at MyArnolds.com
Hosted by webtreesonline.com , a division of GeneHosts LLC
MacOS 10.6.8, Apache 2.2+, PHP 5.4.16, MySQL 5.5.28

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  • Boomn4x4
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12 years 10 months ago #4 by Boomn4x4
Replied by Boomn4x4 on topic Re: Moderate Pending changes for a family
My tree is currently scarcly published. I only have one other contributor besides myself. However, it is going to be published in a local newspaper next month so I'm hoping to have a good grip on how to approve changes. Would you mind giving a walk through the methods you use that you have found most effective, or point me to a document that does a good job of explaining it?

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  • ToyGuy
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12 years 10 months ago - 12 years 10 months ago #5 by ToyGuy
Replied by ToyGuy on topic Re: Moderate Pending changes for a family
Sure, although I claim no particular expertise nor can I state that doing it 'my way' is the only way as each admin may develop their own procedures to meet their own criteria.

1) Establish a set of criteria and/or conventions for data entry. Every admin has a different interpretation of the GEDCOM standards when it comes to PLAC hierarchy, notes, sources and other tags. It is critical to tell your users what YOU expect from them. I set standards for their use of the site (Terms and conditions of use), how frequently, minimum information required, etc to stay an 'active member with full access'. I also specify our preferred formatting conventions for data entry. All this is in the FAQs, which users of any sort are required to confirm they have read and agree to abide by those rules. In conjunction with this, we have a separate set of PRIVACY regulations, again noted in the FAQs, which they must also acknowledge and confirm their willingness to abide by these rules prior to any account activation.

2) When we approve a new user, who has expressly confirmed that they will abide by the T&C and Privacy rules, we send them a welcoming email with the URL for accessing the site, reminding them that only the Welcome (main) page contains the latest news and that we prefer that they bookmark that page rather than their 'My Page' or another internal page for their point of entry, so they can read any updates, adversaries or critical news about the site. Obviously we can not control where they enter, be we can monitor our logs to see if they comply. Further, in this introductory email, we remind them that changes they make will not appear to the general public until approved by a site admin. Continuing, we advise them that we visit the site frequently, but should they have very important data to contribute or an important change, to please email us that the site pending changes need review. Further, we remind them to visit the FAQ page for data entry conventions, expectations and an explanation of the importance of SOUR additions to their data entry. Finally, we advise them that, while reviewing their changes we should find a pattern where they fail to follow the conventions or fail to document their entries with sources, we may suspend their access and that we will contact them by email to explain how and why the data failed to comply with our standards so they can correct future entries.

3) As to the actual review of the pending changes, it is pretty much as described previously. Even if we find that the user has duplicated a number of INDI's, we do not delete or disapprove their entries, but rather use webtrees nifty MERGE function to resolve these problems. That way, we don't lose any valuable additional information the user may have entered. To review, we:
1) Open the pending changes interface
2) Navigate to the first in the list
3) We click "View Change Diff" link in the current tab. We see what changes were made and if we need to review and/or correct them prior to approval (adding to the database), then we click "Edit raw GEDCOM record" and make the changes.
4) Within the RAW EDIT window, we make sure the "Do not update the CHAN record" is ticked, and we click SAVE.
5) We return to the View Pending Changes list and go to the next item. It should have refreshed and the SAVED change should have disappeared, but if not, we simply type Command-R for a refresh (MAC).

6) After approving all the changes, if we discovered a consistent data entry error (lack of SOUR, adding SOUR to only the ticked YES box, bad PLAC formatting, incorrect data entry or incorrect tag usage, improper media file naming - not unique, etc) then we will immediately write a brief email to our user(s) about what we corrected and why, and how they can improve during future data entry sessions, pointing them to help screens or the FAQs for convention reviewing. This usually happens a couple of times with new users and then we get pretty consistent, good results that require only a very few changes. For instance, personally I abhor periods in the NAME field, so I simply remove them when approving changes but don't make a fuss: John W. Arnold or John Wm. Arnold, becomes either John W Arnold or John William Arnold. Too, my users see the Nicknames in "" and sometimes think they need to add that formatting, John William "Billy" Arnold becomes John William ""Billy"" Arnold because they entered the Nick field as "Billy" rather than Billy. It is not frequent, so again, I prefer not to fuss about it and simply make the change. Most notice later and get the hang of it, but if not, not that many names have Nicks entered, so I simply fix it and go on.

NOTE: We do have within the GEDCOM EDIT settings the DO NOT CHAN record ticked so that this box is automatically always ticked for us.

Hope this helps someone. If you want to know more, just ask as you can see I have no problem writing about what I do ;-))

Santa Stephen the Fabled Santa
Latest webtrees at MyArnolds.com
Hosted by webtreesonline.com , a division of GeneHosts LLC
MacOS 10.6.8, Apache 2.2+, PHP 5.4.16, MySQL 5.5.28
Last edit: 12 years 10 months ago by ToyGuy.

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12 years 10 months ago #6 by kiwi

or point me to a document that does a good job of explaining it?

There is no such document. You "could" write a wiki article, but I'm not a fan for things like this. There are too many alternative solutions, and each one is appropriate for different people / circumstances.

Stephen has given you some very valuable tips though. I 100% agree that the very first thing is to define the correct procedure (for YOUR site), so that users know what is expected of them. Then , sadly, your role as admin has to be as enforcer, often in a friendly way, but sometimes that's not enough. I've said before on these pages, being an admin for a well-utilised site is not an easy task, and not one that can be taken lightly.

The other key thing, also already mentioned by Stephen, is to always fix INDI changes before FAM. I suspect that is where you went wrong in your original question here. If you fix each of those in order, they will disappear from the list of FAM changes, leaving you only the genuine FAM changes to consider.

Finally, make good use of the tools your browser gives you, especially the option to "open in new tab / window". This gives you the opportunity to make changes without having to step backwards through screens.

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  • Boomn4x4
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12 years 10 months ago #7 by Boomn4x4
Replied by Boomn4x4 on topic Re: Moderate Pending changes for a family
Thanks to both of you for the help.

Stephen, I have a good grasp on #1 and #2. I run a few phpBB boards, some of them quite busy. I've gotten a good grip on the admin process and what it entails. I'd imagine genealogists can't be nearly as bad as some of the punk kids I have to deal with on my forums. Then again, as soon as I say that, I'm sure I'll be proven wrong. I've already had an issue with my one and only contributor over a birth date I had documented with two Federal Census' against his "my dad told me"

I guess #3 is going to be a trial and error process. I'll take what advice you have given and roll with it.

Thanks again

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  • vhhawk
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12 years 10 months ago #8 by vhhawk
Replied by vhhawk on topic Re: Moderate Pending changes for a family
Adding my thanks too. Stephen's and Nigel's advice comes at a timely time for me.

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  • ToyGuy
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12 years 10 months ago #9 by ToyGuy
Replied by ToyGuy on topic Re: Moderate Pending changes for a family
Great .Glad it was helpful. That's why we're here.
Working with Nigel to add a "Helpful Hints on Operating a webtrees site" WIKI page(s). More than instructions and more than simply FAQs, but rather a narrative version of this and a couple of other recaps of experiences from long time use. After it's up, maybe some others can contribute some of their 'hints' too.

Santa Stephen the Fabled Santa
Latest webtrees at MyArnolds.com
Hosted by webtreesonline.com , a division of GeneHosts LLC
MacOS 10.6.8, Apache 2.2+, PHP 5.4.16, MySQL 5.5.28

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