Incorrect indexing
I have been doing research in the U. S. Virgin Islands, and find that numerous records have misidentifed the location as "Virgin Islands, Manistee, Michigan, United States" (see attached). The record clearly states that it is the caribbean island. This seems to be most common in the census records. How can this be corrected?
Answers
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I found a record that seems to match that at https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:SP8P-XFK. However, it appears that the place was updated in Dec 2020. Now it shows as Virgin Islands.
Perhaps your image was created before then. If it was created more recently, perhaps it comes from a different but similar record. If so, please provide the URL of that record.
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It is when you do a search. Here is the url:
And the screen shot:
I have seen many similar mistakes with other names
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It isn't unique to the Virgin Islands. I'll bet from reading posts that there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of place names that are screwed up on FamilySearch. I have never seen an explanation for why it happens or if they are working to correct it. @Paul W is most familiar with this situation. I'm sure he will be around soon and can offer insight.
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Thank you for that, Melissa - I recently gave a similar vote of confidence in Gordon Collett's abilities to address a problem!
Actually, there are others (including Gordon) who have better theories on this subject than I. But it seems each time there is a project to improve the situation in producing correct standardised names, the opposite seems to take place. There has been a volunteer project that, I believe, was fairly counterproductive and a "computer-generated" one (if that's the expression) that turned perfectly correct standardised names (in indexed records) into locations on the other side of the world from the place the event actually took place.
I think I read that the FamilySearch engineers (connected to place-names projects) were taking a long, hard look before deciding their next move in trying to address these problems. The intentions appear to be worthy, but getting any project (human or machine) to work effectively appears to be another matter!
Sorry about my terminology and if I have not answered this too well, but it's close to my bedtime (here in the UK), so hopefully others might add their opinions before I return to Community tomorrow. But, in summary, these problems are ongoing, can occur due to different actions / reasons, and (lastly) there is currently no real answer as to when, how (or if) these problems will ever be individually or collectively addressed.
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This thread may be helpful. https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/391065#Comment_391065
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