Transcription errors
Recently I was researching my tree and a "hint" appeared which proved to be correct, but the information appeared in a document which had been incorrectly transcribed and arbitrated.
The information related to all the persons mentioned on the record, but my specific interest was Louisa Elizabeth Tripp having a baptism event date: 14th February 1855
The document is: from England, Middlesex Parish Registers, 1539-1988
The event place is transcribed as: St John the Baptist, Muston, Leicestershire, England, United Kingdom <-- which is totally incorrect.....Middlesex Parish Registers would never refer to Leicestershire information
The Head of the original document does show the event place, i.e. " Baptisms solemnized in the district parish of St John the Baptist, Hoxton, in the County of Middlesex, in the year of 1855" - "auto-checker" and incompetence has resulted in the error.
Can the management please review this/these documents ....
Best Answer
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@Stephen Taylor_3 Thank you for reporting the inaccurate place standardization in England, Middlesex Parish Registers record collection. We have confirmed the problem and will move it on to our engineers. As has already been stated, we are not able to predict how long it will take for a correction to be in place. Meanwhile, since this is an editable collection, you can edit the place for your ancestors as you find them.
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Answers
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When posting this type of comment, you really need to give links to specific examples. Also, since you really don't know how this error occurred, throwing in terms like "incompetence" are not helpful.
I'm just another user and can't do anything about this other than provide sufficient information for any teams working on this type of problem to quickly determine what can be done about it.
The specific record recurred to is: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:68VK-CF3T . The event place has been edited by a user to be St. John the Baptist, London, England, but the original index had the incorrect St John the Baptist, Muston, Leicestershire, England, United Kingdom.
Checking the images, these records all came from film 008040872 https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSF7-S7TM-Z?i=1&cc=3734475 which has three items, all for baptisms in St John the Baptist, Hoxton. Jumping through, almost all the indexed place names are the incorrect Muston reference. There are a few I saw with other errors.
Going into the catalog and looking for the film number, I find that that film referred to just those three items and no others so this is not a case the part of the film had records for another church:
Is it possible, or is there a system in place, to do a mass correction of all the baptism place names in the index for this single film?
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Thank you for your improved input to my comment....
I have been a "reviewer/arbitrator/moderator" since 2012, although not active in the last few years.
There is an important duty of accuracy on the responsibility of the "reviewer/arbitrator/moderator" and I feel sorry that, possibly, other searchers, for family information, may have been persuaded to reject this/these records because the baptism location doesn't seem to match up albeit on a record which should be correct.
It would be nice if there was a system in place, to do a mass correction of all the baptism place names in the index for this single film and others.
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Given the extent and variety of errors I saw while skimming that DGS, I wonder if the error was in the indexing process - when the images were being batched prior to indexing.
Since an indexing batch is usually no more than a few pages - sometimes only one page - it's unlikely that a single indexer or reviewer would have worked on more than a small portion of that DGS.
See N Tychonievich's comment in this thread - https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/418910/#Comment_418910 regarding a similar error I reported.
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This comment is not relevant, although probably true for other batches - the hand-written subject "heading" on the page of this record/batch accurately and decisively states the location of the baptism.
The, apparently, indexed location which has been transcribed is probably a result of an "auto-fill" error but neither the indexer or the "reviewer/arbitrator/moderator" has checked if was "auto-filled" correctly.
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Since it covers the entire microfilm, I would wonder if this was instead a post processing error, or potentially an error when the film was being prepared for indexing and was therefor either a field that was applied after all the indexing and reviewing was completed, or set in concrete before indexing began since there was really not need to index it. It was the name of of microfilm which applies to every single record.
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The handwritten heading on the census I reported is also correct, but the batch has been categorized incorrectly.
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Thank you @Gordon Collett - that was the same thing I was trying to say. We're not looking at an individual or even a few individuals who made the occasional error. It's the entire DGS that is affected, and that would not come from the work of one or a few people.
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@Stephen Taylor_3, an error that applies to an entire film is not an arbitrator's/reviewer's fault. The location field was added in pre- or post-processing, not in indexing.
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Then fix it...and save other searchers from being disappointed.
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As Gordon mentioned in his original comment, we are other users of the website - users helping users. We can't fix it.
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However! Such things are usually seen the moderators who pass them on to the engineers who can fix them.
What we users can do is do all the initial analysis and clearly state exactly what the problem is, which is what this discussion has done.
In the cases where we do get a formal reply it is always along the lines of, "Thank you for bringing this to our attention. It will be passed to the appropriate team. We are unable to give any time line for the resolution of this problem."
The list of such problems is apparently very long and the list of engineers apparently relatively short. The fix could be several years in coming.
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It goes without saying and is understood you are yourselves "users" and not the "fixers" and I do understand how this discussion works and the time-line which may or may not ensue. 😕
Gordon did however hit the nail on the head with his comment - "The list of such problems is apparently very long and the list of engineers apparently relatively short".
I can sincerely assure you however, that you'd be "scratching your heads" with frustration at the efforts of some contributors (and many, many more than "a few individuals who made the occasional error" - see your earlier post 😉).
Let's leave to the engineers now.....😀
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