UsCensusProject
Last week as I was working on my family history, I found that this USCensusProject account had taken names from the 1900 census that were misspelled and created a whole new person and family from this misspelling. This created duplicates of my family members with temple work that would have been done twice if I had not merged them. I found another branch of my family line that they had done the same thing to also, and needed to merge them. Just wondering who this USCensusProject account is and why they are creating all these duplicate people without researching for duplicates?
Answers
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You'll find a few threads filled with laments about the damage done by various groups/contributors calling themselves Census Project. https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/517787#Comment_517787 and https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/523476#Comment_523476 among others.
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Sad that this has been allowed to exist. Obviously, there is no individual accountability and their work is frought with errors. In general, the Census records are the lowest form of source documentation to create new records in the family tree for all the reasons noted (incorrect names, no birth dates, relationships that are confusing, etc). Unfortunately, the "horse is out of the barn" and about all we can do is cleanup the messes. . . . just my two cents.
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Family Tree managers certainly seem to be either oblivious to, or in denial about the damage this ongoing work is doing. In spite of the apparent instructions to volunteers about making at least rudimentary checks of the individuals being added to Family Tree, I have yet to see a female being recorded with her maiden name, or any attempt to standardize place names. If these exercises were meant to conform to standard, FamilySearch indexing instructions this would probably be in order - i.e., where indexers are supposed to record names and places exactly as they are written. But this is not supposed to be connected to indexing - that part has already been completed - so there in no excuse for volunteers adding information to Family Tree in this manner, let alone there apparently being no reviewers to check their efforts. Besides that, the number of duplicates being created is probably the most serious problem.
No, common sense should tell those who allow these projects continue that census records are a totally unsuitable means of adding names to Family Tree. Individuals are often difficult to recognise as being the same person when comparing their records from one census to the next: ages, birthplaces and even spellings of names frequently do not match, so how on earth is an accurate profile of an individual to be obtained on the basis of looking at what is recorded about them in just one set of records (e.g., US 1910 or England & Wales 1911 census returns)?
In short, these projects break most of the instructions users are given for their adding names to Family Tree on an everyday basis. No checks made for duplicates, married names being entered instead of maiden ones, no comparison of data between different sources. Genealogy this is not.
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