Stop 'correcting' Julian Dates!
Project instructions for UK Lancashire non-conformist records tell you to 'correct' Julian dates to Gregorian dates. This is wrong, confusing and inconsistent. Prior to 1752, UK used the Julian calendar and the recorded dates were the legal dates. One should only index what was recorded. Once 'corrected', how is a user to know, if the image doesn't happen to be available, whether such a date has already been 'corrected'. And this advice is already inconsistent with what is currently indexed on FamilySearch - take for example the baptism record for Eliz. Scolefield, "England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975" • FamilySearch. This gives the baptism date as 26 January 1675, which is what the image shows. The project instructions would require this to be indexed now as 5 February 1676 (it is in a current batch for indexing a second time) - so would both results appear in future?
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I agree - totally wrong, and against any practice I've previously encountered.
The problem is - how do you communicate with any "Indexing manager" or even the project leader? There are many other cases of individual project instructions being totally odds with the general ones and, in some cases, they lack any form of common sense.
The current problems with FamilySearch indexing need to be addressed urgently, but how do we even communicate that message? Sadly, there appears to be much apathy even among FamilySearch users over this issue. I raised an "idea" here about poor indexing practices a couple of weeks ago and it didn't get one supporting vote!
(See https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/118133/indexing-project-instructions-and-practices-need-to-be-revised#latest. My remarks appear to have attracted no interest whatsoever - not one added comment, positive or negative.)
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Upvoting.
Index dates as they are written. Please!
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