1950 Census -- District of Columbia place name errors -- wrong States!!
I have been working on 1950 Census for my relatives in Washington, DC and discovered that the "standardized" place name is a completely different place in almost every person I look up (at least 10 people). And I don't see this issue reported anywhere yet.
Basically, the "original" event place listed is Washington, DC, United States which matches the top of the physical page. However, the modfied/standarized "resident" place that gets copied into the person's profile record is not DC -- it is in another state!!
The only pattern I see is the place name has "Washington" in it somewhere. And, it is different from person to person. So there are members of the same household listed in different states. Some I can attach, some I can't because of the 403 issue.
Here is an example of a married couple assigned to 2 different states:
husband William F McCarthy - LTXZ-LGL
link to source shown below: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/sources/LTXZ-LGL
wife Millie McCarthy - L12S-Y9P - can't view/attach, but placename is "Fayetteville, Washington, Arkansas, United States"
This is a very serious issue -- if people don't know this, they will not find people where they actually lived, and this problem also populates incorrect info into the database for everyone!
Please address ASAP! Thank you.
Ruth
Answers
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Gah, in other words, instead of realizing the vast scope of the problem caused by automated placename-standardization, FS has gone and used it on the 1950 census, too.
FamilySearch: your automated placename-standardization routines DO NOT WORK. They damage the database by filling it with false data. PLEASE STOP using them. You need to revert the entire database to its previous, more accurate state, and START OVER. PLEASE.
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Totally agree Julia Szent-Györgyi!!
The standardization program also changes "Washington, DC" (and other spelling variations) to "Washington, United States" when attaching other source records / adding events.
I keep fixing that, too, but you have to look carefully to realize it. So I am sure this error is in many DC source and vital events in profile records and familysearch users don't even know it. What a mess!!
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