Thanks for your comments and feedback on the edit updates. We love hearing from you and appreciate all your time and efforts on the site. We made these updates based on your feedback:
We’ve been reading through your comments on Edit Updates. As a follow up, we thought providing more clarity on these topics would be helpful.
Questions about Suggested Edits
Why are the edits displayed individually under Suggestions for Me?
Before this update, other fields in the same edit section for a memorial were locked when there was a pending edit. For instance, if a middle name field had a pending edit then all the other name fields were locked. Now, those fields are open and can be edited when there is a pending edit. As a result, edits are now displayed individually for processing.
What will happen when a manager doesn’t process edits within 21 days?
A little background, Find a Grave has an edit queue where we review suggested edits for Find a Grave managed memorials. As we roll out the edit changes and allow suggesting new fields, we’d like to learn more about how the new edit options are being used, so, at least for a time, edits that are not processed within 21 days will go into the Find a Grave edit queue where we can review them. What we learn will help us make informed decisions about processing edits in the future. It may take us a little extra time (generally within a few days) to process the suggested edits that come in, given weekends and the new fields available for Suggest Edits. We appreciate your patience.
The manager declined the suggested edit I sent, how can we better collaborate?
We hope that with these changes you’ll be able to work together more effectively and collaborate. Now the suggester has a notes field where more information can be added about the suggested edit. The manager also has a notes field when they decline an edit where they can add their reasoning to help the suggester understand the decision. If there is differing information in the historical record, the manager may choose to add both sets of information and sources to the biography. We encourage you to work together. If you send an edit and it is declined, you might try sending it again with a note that adds more information about the edit. Please see our support site to read more about suggesting edits and sending notes.
Questions about processing edits and new edit fields
The community asked if there could be an easy way to filter by type for some of the new fields. We updated the filter by type to include more options. Go to Suggest Edits/Suggestions for Me or Suggestions I’ve Sent. When reviewing and processing suggested edits you can filter by type. For example, this way you can review all edits for veteran or all edits for biographies.
Some edit types you previously received by email through ‘suggest other corrections’ (e.g. bio and burial location) can now be processed on the Suggested Edits page. Suggested edits for memorials you manage are under ‘Suggestions for Me.’ You can process them there or from the specific memorial’s edit page. If you need to contact a memorial manager, you can use the ‘Contact Manager’ button on the Suggest an Edit page.
We’ve also seen questions about the two new fields we added, veteran and gender.
A veteran designation has been one of the most requested features for the site and we’re excited to see it being added to memorials. As we explored the word veteran in different languages, we found that many of the words started with a ‘v.’ You can see the veteran icon on memorial lists and on the memorial.
A veteran is a person who served in the armed forces. If the person was a veteran, then the veteran designation is appropriate and should be added. We added this designation to recognize and honor their service and for veterans to be easily found on the site. From Memorial Search, you can check the box for veteran to include in your search. By adding the veteran designation (instead of relying on the military prefix, images, or the biography) it allows the memorial to be included in any search for veteran. If you manage many memorials you may receive more suggested edits than usual due to this new designation. We ask that members be considerate of others when sending updates. In the Suggest Edits queues, you can easily filter the type of edit to ‘veteran’ and process or view the edits.
We added an option for gender to the site in 2018 to support some of the partners we share our index with. While we don’t use gender directly on Find a Grave, that field is helpful to some of the other sites that use our index. Initially only managers had the option to add gender. With this update, the gender field can be sent as a suggested edit. We are reviewing this field and its use for Find a Grave.
One of the things that makes Find a Grave so wonderful is the way members work together to add and improve information on the site. We know that these updates will affect the way that collaboration happens and it will take some time to get used to. We hope you will continue to work together with patience and kindness as we adapt. With the addition of the notes fields and the Contact Manager button, you have more methods of communication and ways to share information. We’ve provided these tools for members to collaborate and help one another. Again, thanks for your feedback as we made these changes. We hope you enjoy working together in the new edit system.