Baptism dates are listed as birth dates
Historical records has not recognized baptism dates as a valid entry. They have been classified as other. Recently baptism dates haver been entered as birth dates. Please remove the sword christening and replace it with baptism. Or state Chr/Bap and the entry. Batch after batch in England has birth dates listed that are really baptism dates. Record hints are placing them in as birth dates.
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The post-indexing process is also the cause of records appearing as baptisms instead of christenings. I, and others, have commented that FamilySearch needs to take more care in categorising events.
However, I do not see what you mean by, "Please remove the word christening and replace it with baptism". You seem to be confusing matters here. In the example referred to, baptism and christening are the exact same event, so this would have no effect on changing the incorrect recording as a "birth".
As discussed in other posts, whilst baptisms / christenings should never be recorded as births, it is best to add all such baptisms as christenings, to ensure they are added (in the source linking process) directly to the Vitals section, instead ending up (by default) in the Other Information.
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FamilySearch treats christening and baptism as separate events. Christening, or infant baptism, is a vital event and a proxy for birth. Baptism, meaning believer baptism, is not.
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As explained, the problem many of us is finding such a pain is that FamilySearch now appears to be categorising all infant christenings as baptisms.
Whilst I have never come across a collection of adult / "believer" baptisms on FamilySearch (have you?) the careless practice of FamilySearch regarding infant ones means that I am now having to add around 90% of such events manually to the vitals (christening) event section.
If a moderator has escalated the issue (or, indeed, a FamilySearch employee has read any of the relating posts),the existence of the problem appears to be falling on deaf ears.
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@dontiknowyou, the problem is with "Baptism, meaning believer baptism" -- 99.99% of the time, it ISN'T. It's just another word for christening. As I've pointed out numerous times, English is very nearly unique in having two separate words for this concept.
It would be incorrect far, far fewer times to always equate baptisms with christenings than the current situation that Paul describes, of having to correct the location of the christening event on profile after profile after profile.
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I have never come across a collection of adult / "believer" baptisms on FamilySearch (have you?)
Yes, I certainly have. They have been chiefly Anabaptists, Nonconformists in the UK, and Baptists in British Colonial America, the United States, and Canada. And in many, many Catholic and Protestant families I have come across LDS converts.
"Baptism, meaning believer baptism" -- 99.99% of the time, it ISN'T.
True! And in much of Europe there are no birth records, only infant baptism records. So I too feel the pain of repetitively copy-pasting Baptism to Christening. I also spend a lot of time removing infant baptism data from the Birth field.
I'm kind of on the fence about this issue. I don't like how much time I spend correcting profiles, but on the other hand I often think what FamilySearch is doing now is fail-safe. It is also having the indirect effect of teaching millions of contributors about the distinction.
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"teaching millions of contributors about the distinction" which DOES NOT EXIST.
Really.
It is a freak chance of linguistics that the English language happens to have two words that mean "baptism". No other European language shares this superabundance of vocabulary.
It is an unfortunate chance of linguistics and doctrine that the American, English-speaking denomination behind this website has chosen to assign a different meaning to one of the synonyms, and to therefore misfile millions of conclusions in the Tree.
It would be really, really good if they would stop doing so.
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The French ruled England for a time. When they left, the English vocabulary had doubled.
Christening come from Old English (Germanic) roots. Baptism comes from French roots. They mean the same thing.
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The salient point here is that infant baptism is usable as a vital event, while adult aka believer baptism is not usable.
It is salient because use of infant baptism as a proxy for birth is built into FamilySearch Search, Find, and Hint algorithms.
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