Place standardization error: Ger.

dontiknowyou

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MCQH-JRD

Birthplace "Ger." is standardized Ger, Baḩr al Ghazāl, Sudan

This is just a report for escalation to the appropriate team. I do not need any response.

dontiknowyou

See it here. In the United States 1860 census many immigrants from Germany have abbreviated birth place "Ger." standardized to Ger in Sudan. Exact search on Germany excludes these records.

Caringandsharing

Thank you for reporting this Inaccurate Place standardization. I am able to replicate the problem as reported. This is being forwarded to another department for further review and action. Thank you.

dontiknowyou

This report has been escalated.

Caringandsharing

Thank you for reporting a place standardization error. 

Collection Title: United States Census, 1860

Not able to duplicate the problem.

There is no standardization problem in this Historical Record Collection in the example given.

If the birth field in source linker or on his details page is defaulting to Ger, Baḩr al Ghazāl, Sudan, you simply standardize it to Germany.

Caringandsharing

Thanks for the screen shot.

Paul W

This illustrates the problem in indexing an entry exactly as it has been written in the original record.

Quite rightly, the indexer has followed "project instructions" but - further down the line - this is the result. If the standardization is by a computer program, this type of error is bound to occur - in this example, "Ger." (for "Germany") will probably always mean standardization will produce the place in Sudan.

I wonder if anyone has any suggestions as to how this problem can be avoided in future? (Perhaps involving humans is the only solution.)

Julia Szent-Györgyi

@Paul W, when almost all of FamilySearch's indexes were created, the place field was a text field like any other, searched as text: "Ger" would match the place in Sudan, or the country of Germany, or "Hungary, Baranya, Gerényes", or any of the hundreds of thousands of placename fields that contain a word starting with those three letters.

If, on the other hand, the placename field were an entity: a text label for a point on the map, then searching could be made more efficient. The search query would be "show me records associated with this jurisdiction", and the algorithm would return all of the records with coordinates within that jurisdiction.

The problem is, you can't go from one to the other without human input, but that's what FamilySearch tried to do. It has been an utter and resounding FAILURE, but nobody at FS has acknowledged this.

dontiknowyou

When a contributor standardizes a place name in a profile there is a disambiguation step: we see a choice of standard names, and select one (or none).

What seems to be missing from Search is the inverse of this disambiguation step. So, for example, searching on Germany should return any record with "Ger.", including records from Ger in Sudan if they meet whatever other search criteria are given. Recognize the ambiguity.

Caringandsharing