"Virginia, Vital Records, 1715-1901" severe problem with locations

GLY365

A comment: This collection has some serious issues with place names. Some of the indexed places of birth and death are incorrect -- some are wrongly given as other states, or even other countries such as Iran, Phillipines, Ireland, etc.

Example: The birth index below for child ___ Haines says he was born Mountain Province, Philippines; died (born dead) at Mountain, Oconto, Wisconsin. The record itself says Mountain, and is from Page County, Virginia.

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6XWX-VXGN

I hope this issue can be fixed.

Thank you.

Áine Ní Donnghaile

@N Tychonievich or @Mike357

Placename standardization algorithm, again.

@GLY365 When you see the (Original) designation with an an incomplete location, the problem is with the placename standardization. The problem has to be escalated to the engineers for correction.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Notice that there is both a "Death Place (Original)" and a "Death Place" field. The one with the parenthetical "Original" is what was actually typed in by the indexers; in this case, it just says "Mountain".

Mike357

@GLY365 - yes, I see that there is a problem with the Register of Births for "Haines" that is found in the collection, Virginia, Vital Records, 1715-1901. As we should only be seeing records from Virginia in this collection, a death place of "Mountain, Oconto, Wisconsin" is certainly an indication of a problem.

Both @Julia Szent-Györgyi and @Áine Ní Donnghaile have discussed the indicators and nature of the the auto-standardization problem that we are seeing in FamilySearch; so, let me just add that I will start the process of getting our engineers involved in reviewing and fixing the problem that you have found. Unfortunately, as we so often say, because of the backlog of these problems it's impossible to suggest when the problem will be fixed.

Thanks again for making us aware of this instance of the auto-standardization problem.