During the past week or so, I had the following conversation with a
friend I was helping with his genealogy. We were using RootsMagic 4 to
look match his pedigree names with those in New FamilySearch. The
following is only slightly edited:
Me:
See that green arrow in New FamilySearch? Just click on the arrow.
Friend:
This shows that this person needs to be sealed to his wife.
Me:
But look, there are three wives with the same name and several
others with different names. It looks like these three are duplicates.
Friend:
OK, so we combine all of the three names. Here we go!
[After combining the names]
Me:
This still shows three different wives, even though we have combined the ones with the same names. Which one is the right one?
Friend:
I don't know [as he copies all three names into his database].
Me:
Don't you think it might be a good idea to find out which one, if any, of the wives are correct?
Friend:
No, I'll just copy them all, that way I probably have the right information.
Believe me, no amount of explanation will change his mind. He can't be
bothered with trying to find out the "correct" relationship, he just
wants to fill in all the empty spots or green arrows in this program.
You win the game when you have all of the empty slots filled and there
are no more green arrows. I we do a search, even though he has no idea
who these people are, and still find green arrows, he is off to print
the Family Ordinance Request (FOR). RootsMagic is a sort of video game
and printing off FORs means you are winning the game.
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