Adding unconnected people to Family Search
Should we be taking random names off of the census records and just adding them to Family Search. We have a patron that feels these people need to be found and is randomly putting these names into Family Search.
If (the) patron takes the names off the 1900 census, how will they remember who was put into the system when the 1920 census comes along ? Theoretically the same person could be put into the system many times over causing many duplicates.
We are reluctant to tell the patron not to do it. If it doesn't cause a problem should the patron just continue to do it ??
Thank you
Best Answers
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IMO, I think just pulling names off a census record and creating a FamilySearch PID in mass without verifying they are not already in the tree or connecting to the tree is irresponsible.
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A decade ago, Family Tree was "seeded" with similarly disjointed, index-based profiles or tree twiglets that had been entered into previous systems. We're still trying to clean them up, and there's no end in sight.
Please tell this person to stop wasting everyone's time and energy like this. If he/she feels that people "need to be found", he/she should explore indexing. That's how people are made findable, without creating unnecessary extra work in the form of duplicate profiles in the Tree.
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Sorry I can't provide any finer detail, but many Community members have complained about it. I believe this has been set-up by BYU as a volunteer project, of which they are keen to attract more participants.
For some reason, FamilySearch appears quite happy for this project to continue, in spite of it having led to a huge amount of duplicates in Family Tree. I believe the intentions were good (as with your example) but there seem to be serious flaws in the process of checking whether IDs have already been created for these individuals.
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Answers
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Thank you for your opinion. I feel the same.
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I totally agree it does waste a great deal of time ..for Family Search as well as for the patron. Time would be better spent indexing.
Thank you for your input.
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Surprised nobody mentioned the multi-duplicate-creating BYU 1910 census project.
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I am not aware of that project myself. Would you be willing to explain it or let me know where to gain information about it.
Thank you
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@Sharon Patricia Rickard , see https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/88094/us1910project#latest . I don't think I've run into records that had been created by that particular project myself.
I will say that I have had some success finding maybe-relative names in the 1930 Mexican census for the same small town as the lines I'm working on, finding at least one other source before creating an unconnected family based on them, and then working backwards to an intersection, merging a lot of IGI duplicates along the way. But "randomly putting these names" sounds suspiciously like an "unapproved extraction project".
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