Are there plans to fix the computer errors in the New York State Death Index?

PeterEdman

An update to the NYS death index in the fall of 2021 has resulted in hundreds of thousands of incorrect death locations. Instead of limiting the sites to locations WITHIN New York, the computer program incorrectly selected many locations OUTSIDE New York (including outside the US).

For example, there are now about 100,000 records with an incorrect death location of Rocha, Uruguay instead of Rochester NY, and some 90,000 records with an incorrect death location of Rome or Syracuse in Italy instead of the Rome and Syracuse in NYS.

Could the program be run again using parameters that ensure that ONLY New York State locations are selected (i.e. that "Amsterdam" means the place in Montgomery County, NY or that "Poland" means the village in Herkimer county, that "Holland" and "Norway" are towns in NY and not references to the country, etc)

Or, if there was a way to "find and replace" the most common errors, that would be very helpful.

Or simply strip out the locations for any places outside of New York, instead of leaving this incorrect information on the record. Most people would realize that an ancestor probably did not die in Uruguay or China, but errors listing similarly-named locations in nearby states might seem more plausible.

Or, at a minimum, put a disclosure on the home page for the NYS death index alerting people that there may be indexing errors and that the places listed are locations within New York as reported by local officials.

Thanks.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

The problem is much, much bigger than just this index. It affects every single index in FamilySearch's database. Every. Single. One.

I have stated my opinion more than once that FS needs to revert all of the auto-standardizations that have been applied in the past year or so, and then start over with better routines and more human oversight, to prevent these kinds of mass re-locations.

Unfortunately, FS has so far completely failed to even acknowledge that there is a problem, never mind its enormity.