Amount of time spent indexing.
My bishop ran a competition between our YM & YW last year for 2 weeks and it inspired/ motivated lots of indexing.
He had them sign up into the group, either YW or YM so their numbers would be visible. You probably know that actual numbers are no longer visible for each person, but they are if you join a group.
We are preparing for a new 6 week indexing competition in the Bloomington Hills 2nd ward starting next week.
I pointed out that the amount of time spent indexing is a more accurate measure of effort than numbers of records indexed. For example: I can do 20 Italian birth records in an hour. OR I can do 200 US business directory entrees in an hour.
It would be wonderful to have a measure of how many hours were spent indexing by each competitor! Is it possible?
Answers
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Our plan is to have 4 groups competing this year. EQ, RS, YW, YM
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Why don't you just have the groups all work on the same project? Then it would be fair. Numbers are still not visible by individuals in a group. But, the groups numbers are tallied. Do you have the exact same number of men and women in the groups? Why can't it be a challenge for the entire group to reach a difficult, yet attainable, goal instead of a competition? Then if they accomplish the task, everyone is celebrated.
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Dear Melissa S Himes,
You are a sweetheart. You want it to be fair. You thought carefully and made suggestions. You are the only one who responded.
I was hoping this would reach the big wigs who can change things and make data available: how many hours a person indexed.
The easiest project: US Business Directories was completed. There is one muster roll available, but they turn out to be quite repetitive. The same people listed over and over with just a few changes.
My bishop had the foresight to limit the youth to indexing. No reviewing. So at least they must type something to get some credit. We can see the numbers for each person participating because they joined a group. [I'm not sure you caught that benefit.]
Looks like we will just make due for now. Thanks again. We have 2 weeks left in our competition/challenge and our good bishop loves to make everyone a winner. If you participated you get a tasty treat. :)
Once again, thank you for your thoughts and response.
Vern
PS. I am so pleased that we have one advanced project of vital records has had 4K completed by ward members: UK, England, Middlesex—Parish Registers, 1539–1988 [Part A]
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Thanks, Vern. I did not think that you could see the personal numbers of people when they are in a group. I would be interested in learning more about this because we were told that feature was supposed to have been stopped for privacy concerns.
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The amount of time spent indexing would be difficult to measure accurately - active Entry time versus open batch time. Open batch time could just be how many people opened a batch and left it on the screen, active input time could vary widely due to typing speed, etc. So although amount of records doesn't reflect effort it might be the only way to measure. As a Ward Family History Consultant I can view reports for Indexing in the Ward only - not the Stake - I cannot see other individuals indexed records total - only my own. To my knowledge - unless you have Stake Admin rights - you may not be able to view the individual totals either. Individuals in a group could share/report their total but I am not sure how to view that report (as I cannot for a Ward).
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I believe these "competitions" to be a dreadful idea and should be totally discouraged. Surely this only encourages rushing to get the maximum possible number of records indexed during the period of the competition? Ostensibly, the "hours spent" idea would provide a better reflection of the effort being applied, but everybody should have their own way of supporting the wider FamilySearch project. If someone spends 10 hours on indexing and another person spends 5 hours indexing and 5 hours adding new names to Family Tree the respective efforts should be viewed as a whole.
Please forget this silly idea of making indexing competitive, as:
(1) Rushing leads to a far greater chance of creating inaccurate results.
(2) There are multiple ways of contributing to FamilySearch - indexing should not be given any more importance than any other activity that FS participants feel is best use of their time.
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While I agree that competition could encourage 'rushing to complete Indexing' I understand youth wanting to compete. As long as they are taught the principles of good Indexing and understand the process - from pre-Indexing preparation through pre-publication processing to publication - I don't find that a youth rushing would be that different than any other Indexer (we all make mistakes - that's one way we learn) and the Review process should catch any 'glaring' issues.
Just some balancing thoughts...
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I have been doing Indexing Reviews and often times after submitting the batch, the system does not display any increase to the batch quantity completed. This continues to occur often, even when processing...as an example, 10 batches, one or two batches (which may have 3-7 entries each) will not reflect any quantity increase of completion. Please response regarding this issue.
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I understood from previous posts, here in the questions section, that competitions were not allowed.
I tried to find that in writing, but did not see it in my brief search. I agree with Paul, I think competitions should be discouraged.
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What I have seen with teenagers is they love to work WITH each other doing batches. When they are all in a room together they cluster around the computers in groups and help do the batches together. It really is an amazing sight to see although I admit that I have seen adults do the same thing. As adults we do tend to work alone at home but when we get together to index well the fun starts! Bring cookies and have fun!
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@Astorga Jaime R Sometimes the system takes a while to catch up, especially on Sundays when alot of people are indexing. The servers can't handle all the traffic. Usually you will see those numbers change the next day.
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I've seen in the past where Family Search has mentioned in writing that they discourage contests or competitions because of the blatant padding of numbers, that was seen in arbitration. For example, back then we would get credit for Blank records and we'd see whole batches with every record marked Blank. Easy numbers. I had one where someone entered the name Joseph Smith and no other info for 50 records when there weren't 50 records and none of the records that there were had the name Joseph Smith. Easy numbers. I can't find anything in writing anymore where FS discourages competions (the ones where the contest is the most numbers). But about a year ago or so in a webnar with Jason Pierson, the product manager of FS, he sounded like he really, really does not like indexing competitions (where numbers are the goal) because they still see some awful results of those contests. Indexing events where people work together rather than against each other are great, however.
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Amen to the "no contests" posts. From reviewing, I've seen too many instances of rushed, bad indexing and adding extra records full of bogus data.
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