Facts (Events and Attributes)

How to Flag a Fact as Preferred, Private, Tentative or Rejected

You can set flags on facts (events or attributes) listed in the Facts tab of the Property Box. The following fact flags are available:

To set any of these flags for a fact, select the fact and click on the cog menu button  on the toolbar below the fact list.  On the dropdown menu that appears, choose an option under Fact Flags. Alternatively, if you right-click on the any fact in the list (that is, click using the right mouse button) you will also be able to see the Fact Flags options on the dropdown menu that appears.

Fact flags can be set in any combination but the Rejected flag effectively has priority and overrides all others.  If the Rejected flag is set, a fact is rejected, regardless of what other flags may be set.  This means that a rejected flag is not also treated as preferred, even if it has the Preferred flag set.  The meaning and purpose of the flags, subject to the priority of the rejected flag, is described in the table below.

Private Set this flag is you do not wish this fact to appear in reports.  Facts flagged as 'Private' will be excluded from most reports by default - unless you choose to override this.
Preferred Set this flag to mark as being the most important fact of its type, for the given person.  For example, a person may have had numerous occupations, but one may be more important than others.   In that case, you should mark that one as Preferred.

If a person has multiple occupations, you can if you wish mark more than one of them as Preferred.  But there is little point in doing so.  If a person has more than one occupation marked as Preferred, Family Historian will treat the first one as the Preferred one for them - and the same applies to all fact types.  The only exception to this is if a fact which is flagged as Preferred, is also flagged as Rejected (see below for more on this).

What is the effect of flagging a fact as Preferred?   The main tab of the Property Box for an Individual shows a number of events and attributes - such as the person's occupation, birth and death.  In each case, it is the default fact of that type that is displayed.  The default fact, of any given fact type, is the Preferred one if there is a Preferred fact of that type, and the first one if there isn't (again, assuming that none of them are also flagged as Rejected).  So, for example, if you have recorded 3 birth events for a given person (which you might do if there were 3 different theories as to when they were born), the birth details that will display on the main tab of the Property Box, will be the default birth details.

It is not just the main tab of the Property Box that can show default or preferred facts.  You can optionally choose to display default or preferred facts in reports or queries.  To learn how to reference default or preferred facts in reports and queries, see Understanding Data References - an advanced topic.
Tentative When you add facts for a person, you are encouraged to show where you got the information from by providing source citations for that fact.  With each source citation, you can use the Assessment field to indicate how reliable you consider that source citation to be.  However, sometimes you may want to go further than simply assessing a source citation.  You may wish to flag a fact to show that you have reservations as to whether it is correct or not.  For this, you should use the Tentative flag.  It indicates a level of uncertainty.  If combined with Rejected flag (see next) it indicates a degree of uncertainty about rejecting the fact.

Setting the Tentative flag is primarily a reminder to you that the supposed fact may not be solid.  It will not usually affect the way information is presented in diagrams or reports.  However, you can also choose to exclude tentative facts (and/or rejected facts) when you export a GEDCOM file.
Rejected Suppose you don't just have reservations about a supposed fact - you actually think that it is wrong.  In that case, you can flag that fact as Rejected.  But then you may ask - if it's wrong, why record it at all?  There are two reasons for this: first, it may be that it is you who are wrong.  If you have recorded all the details, you are then in a position to re-appraise your conclusion at any time.  Second, even if you are correct, by recording all the details, it shows that you are aware of this claim and that you have considered it and rejected it.  If you didn't record the information, it might appear from your research that you were simply unaware of this theory.

Suppose, for example, you encounter two rival theories as to when a particular person was born.  In that case, we recommend that you create two birth events for the person, and provide source citations for each of them, linking the information back to where you got it from.  If you think that any of the sources are wrong, you can use the Assessment field to mark the source as unreliable or questionable, if you wish.  The two theories cannot both be correct.  So we recommend that you also flag at least one of the Birth facts as Rejected.  You can remove this flag at any time.  By setting the flag, however, you are telling Family Historian not to include the information in diagrams, reports and books; and not to rely on it for other purposes - such as for calculating a person's age.


Evidence versus Conclusions

Family Historian allows you to record evidence and draw conclusions from them.  For example, if you record in a birth fact for X that their father was Y (you can do this by adding Y as a witness with role of father in the Witnesses dialog), you can provide full source citations both for the details of the birth and, separately, for the fact that Y was X's father.  So far you may have recorded the evidence in an entirely neutral way.  You haven't (yet) assumed or concluded that any of this evidence is actually true or not.  That is fine, as far as it goes, but if you want to view diagrams in which people's relationships are laid out in a meaningful way, you have to be willing to go one step forward and effectively say that you are not just neutrally recording the claim that Y was the father of X - you want Y to be treated as the father of X for diagram purposes, and for reporting and other purposes.  At no point do you have to make a final decision that this is correct.  You can always easily change your mind at any point, if the weight of  evidence changes.  But at some point, you will need to be able to form some kind of view, however tentative, about which evidence is actually correct.  When you do so, you are moving beyond an entirely neutral approach.  In Family Historian, you do this, in the case of the parent-child relationship, by linking Y as the father of X.  Yes you may have recorded evidence to justify doing this, but the act of linking is not itself evidence - it constitutes a conclusion that you have drawn from the evidence.  Setting the Tentative and Rejected fact flags are also examples of a move from evidence to conclusions - possibly tentative conclusions, and certainly easily revisable conclusions, but conclusions nevertheless.  They affect how the information is presented in diagrams, reports and elsewhere.  For this reason, you may wish to also record why you came to the conclusions you came to, and why you set the flags as you did - see next.

Documenting Your Conclusions

Just as it is good practice to cite your sources, so too, it is good practice to document why you arrived at your conclusions - especially in the case of the Tentative and Rejected flags.  The recommended way to do this is to insert a #Research hash tag into the note for the fact in question, and explain there why you set the flags as you did.  You can even attach source citations to back up your conclusions, if you wish to - see Note Window to learn more.

Fact Flags vs. Record Flags

Fact flags are not the same as record flags.  Do not confuse them.  See Record Flags to learn about the differences.