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Re: Immigration Records Erroneously Showing Entry at Quebec, Hardin, United States?
My earlier short comment was easy to be misinterpreted. “Safeguarding the original place text and re-standardizing with better reference data” has always been the long term plan to repair the damage. Because that work is still in progress, it isn’t accurate to call it “poor programming” when it hasn’t been implemented yet.
You obviously put some serious thought into how this collection could be fixed, but the challenge goes far beyond this one collection. FamilySearch has over 3,500 collections and I’ve personally documented this same type of place‑standardization error in at least 124 collections. The underlying problem did not start because someone casually wrote bad code for a single project; it arose during the massive migration of over 5 billion records from an old system into a new one. In that process, some place names were standardized incorrectly.
“Re‑standardizing with better reference data” means two things:
- Preserving the original indexed text exactly as it was entered, and
- Using an improved “Standards” database in the new system to match (or construct) a more accurate place (or date, etc.), even when the original text might be just a single vague word or a messy string.
The long‑term “treatment” is to apply that approach across affected records in bulk. Currently there are dozens of linked work items focused on the final objective. I fully understand why this feels urgent and frustrating from a research perspective. The scope and complexity are exactly why it’s taking time, not a lack of concern or capability on the part of the engineers.
Lastly, I can only speak for myself, but I’ve worked very hard to be transparent about how these errors occur, and we truly do our best to respond to every concern that users raise. It would be difficult to find any responses from moderators or Admin that could be classified as “excuses, pablum, delay tactics, blame, deflection, denial, or negation”?
Re: Immigration Records Erroneously Showing Entry at Quebec, Hardin, United States?
I might as well be the long standing inhabitant of this community who winces at the suggestion of automated clean up processes. Regrettably, we have had instances of emergency clean up processes that actually made the system worse. Hence many of us will be very wary of such cleanups. I'd far rather wait for the techies to understand what the exact reason for the error is (because there are many variations on the issue) and get it right. Although, I'm afraid, even I worry about how long the fixes will take.
As for activating the edit button, given that the index came from elsewhere, it will probably create even more issues to move stuff away from the original.
Re: Step Children - Other Marriages
I would dispute that leaving step-children out is "proper". Nor does it create confusion in the system. It might cause confusion to those people who don't actually read stuff, but I'm not sure that their potential confusion should dictate my research. (My assumption is that normally the children are marked up correctly as "step", if they aren't then that's where the flaw lies)
Whether or not step-children should be included in a family seems to be a matter of personal preference rather than any robust principles. This means that some will include them and some won't. I think that we should respect the researcher's preferences.
In my case, I only add step-children if there is a social / historical reason to do so. For instance, my GG-GF married 3 times. I don't show his 2nd wife as a stepmother to the children from the first family as there is no evidence that they ever lived together. To include them, even marked as step-children, is pointless and historically misleading, in my opinion.
In the case of the family shown by @StephenDespot , I do raise an eyebrow at the absence of any "step" legend on the diagram, plus, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I would have thought that the pre1950 "children" were unlikely to have had a domestic relationship with their supposed stepmother, hence are good candidates for omission.
Re: Duplicate marriage events
I've requested at least a couple of times that all Couple Relationship Events be shown right there on the profile details page under the Family Members section instead of hiding them. I posted my suggestion mock-up in this discussion about troubles with editing and displaying couple events:
Clearly there should be no data quality flags for different couple events on different days since a couple could have many events in their history as Wayland mentions or even for the same event type on different days since that can happen. But should there be a flag for more than one copy of the same event on the same day? That could be useful.
Re: Needs race changed throughout census
"touch with a barge pole" works in American English as well. Although we often use "10-foot pole," having not gone metric. 😎
I also have a dim recall of an earlier thread about the misinterpretation of race on the Canadian census.
Re: How do I find famous relatives from my husband's family?
Ask him to create a FamilySearch account, set up enough of a tree to connect him to deceased ancestors, then have him show you.
As far as I am aware of how the system works, that is the only way.
Re: Deciphering who is nearest relative
Hi @CaroleDavis76.
This chart should help you, and there's also a relationship calculator farther down on the page: https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/cousin-chart
Essentially, these labels are just how you are related to your common ancestor compared to someone else. Your 1st cousins—commonly just "cousins"—share the same grandparent with you. A 2nd cousin shares the same great-grandparent, a 3rd cousin shares the same great-great-grandparents, and so on.
When someone is "removed" it means the two of you are connected at differing generations. For instance, the child of your 1st cousin and you would be 1st cousins once removed because your grandparent is their great-grandfather. Another way of thinking about it is to visualize a family tree. In this case, a cousin's child wouldn't be at the same "level" as your name would appear, rather another generation down, or "removed".
GFre
Re: Wrong records & duplicate records being added to profile - How to fix this?
In short, there is nothing you can really do to stop careless Family Tree users adding totally incorrect relationships to the relatives you find in the tree. You have done the right thing (against the profile you reference above) to add an "Alert" note, designed to draw attention to the fact others have confused your relatives with unconnected individuals and that careful examination of the evidence is required in order that added relationships are correct. However, (in spite of doing this myself) I still experience these problems on numerous occasions throughout the year, whereby it can take me two or three days to make the necessary revisions that reflect the accurate information against just one individual.
On the points you raise, I would add some advice, however:
Firstly, because a surname spelling does not match it does not necessarily mean it does not relate to a person in your family. For example, I know of at least two examples where relatives spelled their names differently: a father and son who spelled their surname as BEASLEY and BEAZLEY, respectively, and two brothers, one of whom spelled their name as FINLAY and the other as FINDLAY. Never rule out a relationship / connection due to a different spelling, especially in records of, say, a couple of hundred of years ago, when names were recorded by an official as they heard them from someone who might well have been illiterate.
Secondly, there are lots of FamilySearch records ("sources") that one might consider to be "duplicates", but which on close examination have a different URL and have possibly been extracted from a totally different source (for example, in England, from the parish register, or from the Bishop's Transcript copy). In spite of the resulting "duplication", these all should be added to the individuals to whom they relate, otherwise another user could add any unattached sources to the wrong individual (of similar identity).
If you are not already doing so, make sure you "Follow" all those individuals (profiles) that are of interest to you: to ensure any changes made by other users are easily picked up. Certainly, carry on adding notes (particularly in the Collaboration section), reason statements and sources, to the profiles in which you have an interest, which should help reduce the number of errors make by others.
But you will never be able to eliminate the regular, unwanted use of your valuable time in correcting the mistakes made by other users - particularly in respect of incorrect merges. Unmerging / restoring these "deleted" profiles - when found to relate to completely different individuals - can be very time-consuming (as you may have found), because you have to ensure all sources are removed from the individual to whom they do not apply and remove any items under the "Other Information" section that do not relate to them.
Working in Family Tree can be quite testing at times, so be sure to have your records backed up in your personal software package, in order to restore your relatives' profiles to their accurate state after another user might have caused (sometimes quite considerable) damage to your carefully researched inputs.
Paul W
Re: Entire microfilms blocked due to a few restricted images
@StephenDespot I checked on the three films you reported and two of them are now fully accessible. #4594776 has received metadata corrections and should subsequently be available. At the time you reported these we were sending everything in for review. Now we preview for metadata errors and many times that's all that is needed to restore access.
Have patience with us. We're doing the best we can!
A GOOD UPDATE ON THE COMMUNITY
We've had some fixes applied and so far, things seem to be back to normal. 🎉
If you see weirdness, please let us know!
