Best Of

From having my employer change electronic business platforms a couple of times over the past 20 years, I know that data conversion from one platform to another always has problems and some data just never comes over cleanly. From working in the FamilySearch website, in particular in Family Tree, I have seen several database updates had issues in that some some data just did not update properly.

For example, ten years ago the place name function was updated and a large number of places lost their linked standards so users had to go in manually and re-link the standards.

More recently, the place names in the historical database records had an auto-standardization routine run against them that worked great for nearly all places. The rest, although a tiny percentage, is very large in absolute numbers and the databases are full of records with incorrect places that FamilySearch has told us they are trying to figure out how to fix. As an example, in one database I use a lot all the christening and marriages in one community are shown as taking place in the local graveyard.

I don't know exactly what was in some of name data that resulted in the end result of this x-Latn template appearing, but this was the result of a routine to correct and update all the data. I'm sure they could come up with a routine to scan the database and switch all x-Latn template names to Other template names and shift the names to the upper fields. Probably won't take more than a couple of years.

In the meantime, I'll correct them as I find them and tell anyone that is confused that the Family Tree database if very complex and when you are trying to update 1.2 billion names, having the update routine work perfectly 99.99% of the time is a great outcome that only leaves us users 120,000 names to correct manually. Then show, as I explained above, that it is quick and easy to fix these.

The index was causing Source Linker glitches. It needed modification in the 'edit every field' app before Source Linker would pull in the family. There are still a couple of indexing issues - but the record is now attached

Margaret7,462 Bibles often omitted children who died in infancy. I have added infants to family groups where there was solid evidence of an infant existing by that name, even though there is also solid evidence of another child born later having the same name. One of these family groups is documented in a German family bible dated from the early 1900s or possibly late 1800s and excludes a 1 month old infant clearly present in the passenger list of their arrival and the Ellis Island records. The Bible only has the son of the same name born 5 years later in the US.

To do genealogy properly, you need to research more to discover what really is the truth.