COMMENT on the BEGINNER Project: New Zealand—Electoral Rolls, 1865–1957
This morning, I came across this project when exploring whether I could help with a question.
BE CAREFUL indexing or reviewing the "Gender" field. This project is nearly complete, but this may help with the remaining batches to index or review.
This project is deceptively labeled "Beginner." It has only three fields (all required) to index: Given Names, Surname, and "Gender" (M, F, or Ctrl+B). Indexers are supposed to Ctrl+B the "Gender" field if the "gender" is not explicitly mentioned and is unclear from the occupation. Yet, in the first batch I have opened to review, every name has the "Gender" field filled with a non-blank value. On a quick count, I see two occupations of "ploughMAN," one of "gentleMAN," one of "goverNESS," and four of "houseWIFE" - a total of eight (8) un-ambiguous occupations. All the rest are ambiguous as to "gender." So, 99 out of 107 entries have an error in the "Gender" field. Correcting these will send the batch to another review (31% error rate).
I wish the writer of the "Gender" Field Help Example had used all the white space left to explain what to do with the other entries on that page. I've taken that FH Example and annotated it in that white space. See below. Apologies if I've missed other female occupations in this example.
