I have used the new Smart Matches function enough to understand how it works, at basic level. In the end I can reach a point where a person has got a lot of Smart Matches. From this new common view I can see how many positive hits a specific piece information has got,
In the old version in FTB, you may transfer the useful information to your own tree by a step-by-step merging procedure which has been extremely useful, although rather unreliable. Probably there is similar feature in the new version, only that I have not found it. Could you enlighten me, please?
After reading the FAQ I realise, that the changes that were collected online, do not automatically trickle down to the FTB. This means two bad things. After doing some merging, the online tree looses synch with the FTB tree. And, even if you did not say so, publishing from FTB might create major problems in the online tree, perhaps overwriting the changes.
I have been critical earlier about this scheme with an FTB tree and an online tree and expected that there will be synch problems. It now seems that that time has come.Possibly we would need some instructions and advice, stating that we should not uypdate the tree on the FTB, only online.
Unfortunately there is no really sync-function between the online part and FTB. I have seen promises that MyHeritage.com is working to solve this in V6
After doing quite a number of Smart Matches it has become obvious that the new software suffers from the same issue as before but now the problem is even worse. At least in Sweden it is common that a person has several given names. This fact seems to give problems to the comparison process. What happens is that when there are several persons with different first forname but the same second forname, they are mixed up in a strange way, ie. that the wrong pair of persons are compared. Even if you know it, there is nothing you can do about it, just decline the match. Just looking at the facts presented, it is diffiicult to understand why the system has come to this conclusion. Just family name and the second forname match, but all dates do not match.
Just to be sure I want to mention that I have sent a number of direct emails to you, because I had no easy way of attaching the screenshots to the messages of the MyHeritage message system without loosing the accuracy of the screenshots. Today I sent a new email again, because I found some new findings regarding this issue. Could you please acknowledge you have received them?
To make things a little bit easier, I have taken a screenshot of a typical situation. Unfortunately I was not able to send attached to this message so I address it as an email by esther.weinberger@myheritage.com and hope for the best. If you can you can attach to this forum yourself.
A few of the first ones matched well, but then the overwhelming majority ended up in wrong matches. It worth to note, though, that most of the right persons are listed, they are just wrongly matched by the system. These particular names came up with a number of other family trees and all had the same problems. One problem is that the information from this time period is highly unreliable and people seem to have named themselves in many different ways (e.g. Brigitta, Birgitta, Britta, Brita). Also there was a prevailing fashion of using a latin or biblical form of the name (e.g. Erici instead of Erik, Petrus instead of Peter, respectively). Also some people sometimes used a name from his/her father, like Svensdotter or Gudmujndsson. When I child died in his childhood, it was normal that the same name was passed on to another son, born later. This could happen several times. Of all these reasons, there are probably duplicates among the people listed above, which are hard to catch, as helpful dates seem to be missing in many cases.
It will be interesting to see what you can do about this one! I have tried to pass on many comments through David Horowitz, more or less trying to encourage you to develop the Smart Matches algorithms considerably, because there are so many issues, big and small, associated with it.
I have just been rejecting those faulty matches. I considered tightening criteria, but that, too, has disadvantages, considering the variety in spellings over the centuries.
I am having same problem, all the right people, but matched wrong, brothers matched from other site are mis-matched with brothers on my site, so have wrong wife, children etc....., any word on how to fix this yet?
Just reject the wrong matches and cofirm the right ones. A lot of work & aggravation, but genealogy is full of those!
My problem is not quite the same, though I am sure it is shared by many if not most.
I am working with Family Tree Builder. and most of my Smart Matches come from family.
And most of them are correct matches; yes, it is the same person and most of the details match.
BUT, often there is some mis-matching of the details.
A different spelling of a name, a differing date of death. I want to confirm the Smart Match, to let my relation know that we have the same person on our tree. But just to 'confirm' the match without comment would leave the other site manager thinking that we agreed on all the detail. So I have gone to the trouble and effort to send an e-mail noting the discrepancies.
Since most of these are noted in the yellow panel at the bottom of the 'matching' page in FBT, why can't I attach that to the confirmation?
Or even just a 'Comments' box where I could write a paragraph to advise my relation of the discrepancies.
Since some of them are members of my site I could just refer THEM to the appropriate person's entry, with a note to 'please note discrepancies and advise if my data needs updating'.
I don't want to use the collaboration feature in the website as I believe it won't sync back to FBT.
I saw that in other forum threads you made a few additional suggestions regarding Smart Matches. I will forward all these to our development team, as they are all good helpful suggestions.
After spending hours Confirming/Rejecting all of my matches with the new & improved Smart Matching tool, I logged in today to find I have 193 Smart Matches to confirm with myself???
All showing as 100% matches, I only have one site & one tree. Is this an issue or have I done something stupid?
After you confirm a match, it will stil wait for confirmation by the other site manager.
Once both of you approve it, you can link the two trees, and start a conversation over the match.
snip
Regards,
Noam / MyHeritage Team
Hi,
I am using Family Tree Builder. If I want to "link the two trees, and start a conversation over the match", how EXACTLY do I do that? We are talking here about instruction "for Dummies", please consider me computer illiterate.
And if I succeed in starting this discussion, can I/ we use the web page to make any changes we agree upon?
And will this innovation interact with Family Tree Builder? Or will stuff have to be transcribed manually?
This feature currently only exists online, and not in Family Tree Builder. We will add it to FTB in one of the future versions.
What you can do now, is publish your tree to your family site, and in your family site (you can get to it from FTB by using Publishing > My Sites > go to my site) go to the Family Tree > Smart Matches page.
Here you will be able to confirm matches and send emails to other site managers, who will confirm them back. You will then be able to converse over the match, and see the details in the other tree. You can also ask to be a member in the other family site.
Changes to your tree cannot be made online, as an FTB tree is only editable in FTB. This too will change in the next version we release.
