Comment Added to Ancestor's vital record data
I had removed "about" from a fixed birth and christening event, only to see that "about" had been added back and in the reasons listed: "The about is a command prompt to generate search results where users do not know how to locate proper standardization in current location for AI to search all time. There is only one time and one location. This is a place of proof not pride"
I don't understand this [perhaps being an old senior citizen]. I have always used "search records" and almost always found the data I needed on FamilySearch search and Ancestry search - so what do I do now?
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Hi Welcome to Family Search Community and posting your question about dates. Family Search is continuously working in the background to find records which may apply to a specific individual. This is where record hints come from. The background search uses whatever information is available on the person page including exact dates or estimated dates (about dates). The decision to list a date as "about" depends on what you know about the date. If you have a source with an exact date, make sure that source is attached and tagged. If you don't know the exact date, then it might be appropriate to list the date as "about" "before", "after", or a date range. Regardless of how the date is listed, the background check will be running. So the question here is, do you have a source with the exact date. If so, make sure it is attached and tagged. You may also want to message with the person listing the date as "about". With regards to the reason added, as stated above, the background checks are running regardless of how the date is entered. The more exact the date can be will improve the search results for record hints. Hope this helps. Let us know if we can be of further assistance.
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Yeah, um, whoever wrote that is seriously deluded or something. Perhaps try contacting that person? As a first step, try asking for an explanation, because what it says doesn't make sense: is he blaming AI? Other users? Standardization? And what exactly is he accusing it/them of, that adding "about" is supposed to help with?
As far as I have ever been able to tell, on FamilySearch, "About 1822" matches exactly the same search inputs as "1822" does, so search optimization cannot be a valid reason for adding the date modifier. Also, to the best of my knowledge, none of the search algorithms on FS employ any process that is normally designated as "artificial intelligence". I really don't know whose search he's talking about.
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I'm afraid that contacting that user won't do a lot of good. The pseudo-scientific language, stating that "about" on dates has something to do with location searches, and the strange concluding remark used in the reason statement combined with the misunderstanding displayed about how the search algorithms generally seem to work suggest that that user has some issues that will prevent a rational discussion.
If you have a birth date entered as "12 June 1840" or "About 12 June 1840" doesn't really matter as long as you have sources that show the date to be "12 Jun3 1840" if it keeps the peace to leave the "about" in. But I would keep a close eye on other relatives you share with the user and if the strangeness gets out of hand, start reporting him.
You may want to remove the "about" once every six months or so to see if it then says gone as this other user loses his Family Search account or moves on to other things.
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I would contact the user who changed this back (through the internal messaging service) and present your evidence for these fixed dates being correct. Obviously, any attached sources will help back up your belief that the data has been correctly applied to the ID in question. Perhaps the other user believes there is just not the evidence for the details to appear "absolute".
I might well have had similar thoughts myself (to the other user) if you had inputted something like (born or christened) "1800, England", but the reason statement for the change seems very strange, given full details of the events had been entered.
So, yes, try to contact the other contributor - otherwise, it could be another case of an "edit war", where you both continue to revert the last change until one of you gets fed up and backs down.
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Thank you for your replies and helpful suggestions. The four of us [3 church members] who "45total41" have targeted also removes "from 1741 to 1744" and when the wife's name is not known have followed the FamilySearch standard of Mrs. in the title field, husband's given and surname in the name data fields & I can't always get the proxy temple ordinances done before individual removes and replaces with "Unknown". Also removes pre United States place names, removes New York Colony and replaces with New York,United States, even though the event was long, long before the United States was such, same for the province of Ontario, which was Upper Canada in 1791, Canada West 1841, Ontario in 1867. I have 4 ancestors who were United Empire Loyalist's to Upper Canada in 1784 - individual deletes and ignores the source citation data. I have learned that to avoid anything listed in "Other Information" which individual deletes to instead place in Discussions. All of us have contacted FamilySearch support, only to receive notice "that there is nothing that can be done, even though one of us noted in her e-mail to FamilySearch, that this individual made 922 changes, additions, duplicates, plus merges to 74 people in her first 4 generations. Individual has no relationship to the Arien Pieterse Buys line and also another data contributor's Jan Cornelius Buys line. The irony here is that the Jan Cornelius Buys line contributor is a professional genealogist and contributor & editing contributor to "The First Settlers of the Beekman Patent" who knows as much about NY Genealogy as Elder David Bednar knows about the gospel! "45total41" in a previous user name has informed us that "we need to learn coding if we are going to use FamilySearch & that Ancestry would better serve our purpose. If users had to learn coding before using FS - no genealogy/family history & temple ordinances would never get done. Individual has had 30 user names in last 2.5 years and when challenged opens new account - Jeff Longstaff and 45total41 being the two new accounts. I had messaged this individual in one of his prior user names and was told "you LDS got it all wrong. Thanks for reading my vent.
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Could we have a sample PID, please?
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