Can't find a way to report an issue
I have noticed a disturbing trend in the birth places of early North American settlers in censuses and other documents. What was, and most certainly is, Canada West, Upper Canada, UC etc. is becoming Monaco, Costa Rica, Australia and Korea, to name a few I've seen. At first I just thought it was a "whoops!" and I went on. Then I checked a few against the original documents to be sure it wasn't so. The more I see of these anomalies the more concerned I become for the integrity of the enormous database and the millions of hours invested by the indexers. Is it possible that malware has invaded the servers? I've also seen this issue in document for the US. I've been working with records from these two countries for quite a few years now so I notice the errors but new comers could easily become frustrated in their quest. Hope this finds it way to someone with the power to look into it.🙂
Answers
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It's self-inflicted malware, otherwise known as autostandardization. Yes, it renders the entire database untrustworthy for answering the question of "where". Unfortunately, FamilySearch continues to expect to fix the billions of errors one at a time, based on individual user reports here in the Community.
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Oh no, I was hoping it wasn't so! I take it you have stopped it from doing anymore damage. How can I help correct the damage that has been done?
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Please let us know the link for the record where you are seeing the problem. We will report this problem to the group that can take a look and make corrections.
I think the situation was explained well by Gordon at https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/493956#Comment_493956
This sounds like one of the many auto-standardization errors that were introduced last year. There are some long posts that go into this extensively but I'll just say here that the FamilySearch ran a routine to improve place names in the historical records that worked fine maybe 99% of the time. But when you are talking about billions of records, even a 1% error rate is huge. You can recognize these errors because the records involved will have two event places. The second of the two used to be labeled Original and is the base place name originally set for the indexed batch and is usually just fine. The first listed is the auto-standardized version that has the error. Because the event place is the same for the entire indexed batch, the error will be the same on all of them also.
If you post a specific example of one of the records you are seeing this problem with which you have not corrected in the Search category here in Community under FamilySearch Help, the right people will see it and send it off to the engineers to add to the list of corrections. We've been told it may take a long time to fix them.
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Thank you for your responses. I have read them carefully and followed the links but I still don't understand how auto-standardization can account for what I am seeing since the old place and the new place have no commonality. That's not to say that I doubt what you are saying just that I don't understand. Also, I am unclear as to what is meant by "let us know". Here on the Community Boards or is there a specific place to report these errors? I am not talking about one or two records. Would it help if I gathered some examples and attached a spreadsheet on this thread?
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@SharylHorner, just a few links will do, and yes, here in Community, either as a reply on this existing thread, or as new threads.
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My grandmother's first and last name is listed correctly but her father's first name is incorrect. This is obviously a scanning-interpretation error: his first name was Peter. The scan of the Census page was misinterpreted: his first name is recorded as beginning with an upper case O instead of an upper case P. Peter therefore became Oeter.
How can this error
be corrected in your records?
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@Emil Wisekal, for future reference, when you have a new question, you can start a new thread for it, instead of hijacking an unrelated thread like this. On a computer, you use the big blue "Ask A Question" button in the appropriate category, but I see you're using a phone, where the function may be cleverly hidden away somewhere. (Sorry, can't help there: I failed Phone long ago and don't even try any more -- it's rather expensive hardware for throwing across a room.)
The New York State census images are behind Ancestry's paywall, so the index is not correctable on FamilySearch. You just have to console yourself that the index is not the data. It is merely a finding aid for the data, and it has served that purpose: you found the record.
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This is the new post button on smaller screens
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