The Index is the Problem. Now What?
This is about your very interesting and useful new function, not the long standing debates and differences of opinions between people following obsolete standards and newer genealogists but you will need a brief summary to understand part of the concerns I will raise in this post.
There are two major factions when it comes to Norwegian names and recording genealogical data. There are those who maintain that Norwegians should never be recorded with any other surname than their patronymic surname and refuse to admit that any other surnames exist. Then There are others who acknowledge the rich history of Norwegian naming practices which has four types of surnames: patronymics, fixed patronymics, farm names, and family names. The vast majority of Norwegians in Norway who use My Heritage use the full, more complex, names for their ancestors that their ancestors used. Geni also acknowledges the full naming system and actually has official guidelines on how to enter Norwegian names which, I was pleased to see when I first read their guidelines, agree with how I have always entered Norwegian names.
FamilySearch indexes have generally included only the first name of a child in birth records because that is generally all that is listed in the name column of those records. For the parents they have generally indexed just the parent’s first name and patronymic and ignored the family name that is also listed in the birth record or treated it just as the family residence instead of the true surname it is. The FamilySearch Wiki article on Norwegian names is biased towards the “patronymic name only” point of view and has a fair amount of erroneous information in it, but that is a discussion for another time.
In keeping with checking records that I expect to stress the system in order to find problems I went to this record: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/KCVW-Q6V
His name is entered correctly according to common use among Norwegian genealogists, Geni’s guidelines, my personal preference, and the strongly held opinions of my wife (this is her 2nd cousin five times removed) and my Norwegian in-laws.
Eight of the nine “data inconsistent with tagged sources” issues are due to the indexes not including the person’s full name. Going in and editing every single source record is neither practical nor a productive use of time. However, having such a long list of inconsistencies looks bad and it seems to be an official declaration by FamilySearch that a Norwegian person’s full name is not to be used. I am very concerned that this will lead to the same situation as the map pins on place names which lead some users on a crusade to have a map pin no matter how much place name information they had to delete.
The ninth item, which is second on the list, is due to an incorrect transcription of the record. The image really does say “Hystad” not “Flystad.” I have not been too concerned with these types of errors in the index. Since the source is attached, other users, if they feel the need, can go to the image and see what is there. But having this listed as an inconsistency does raise the specter of someone “correcting” the profile page to match the incorrect index without actually checking the source image. It does add a bit of pressure to go and fix the index.
But what if the index is transcribed correctly and the source record has just been determined to be wrong? Does this mean that we should only tag sources that support our conclusion and not tag all the sources that are for the person but conflict with our conclusion? Do we just leave them hidden on the sources page or not attach them at all? Academically that would not be very honest. They should be tagged but have a clear note explaining why that source is viewed as being in error and why it will always appear on the inconsistency list and wreck the score. What are we to do? How can the Quality page be modified to prevent damage to a person’s profile?
Comments
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A few ideas come to mind on how this could be addressed:
- The scoring prototype could identify certain collections, such as https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/4237104, that should not be subject to the SURNAME_MISMATCH rule
- We could create a new Norway 1800-1900 segment in the scoring prototype that is not subject to the SURNAME_MISMATCH rule
- Add a place in the Family Tree Norwegian alternate name template to specify farm names
- Request that the farm names be added to the index of certain record collections
Thoughts?
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1) Could be an option. Seems like a lot of work, though, to identify each collection and be quite a list to maintain.
2) Surnames didn't really become stable in Norway until about 1920, but a segment for 1600 to 1920 could work.
3) The existing templates really work just fine. And a person's full birth name which should appear in the Vitals section could have any of the four types of surnames.
4) Possible, but that would add another layer of complexity for the indexers and even now they struggle a bit. I've seen people's occupation indexed as their residence.
Would it be possible to just lump a person's full name into one, single block of data for comparison purposes? That way if John Paul Smith Jones Everet had an source record that indexed him as First Name: Everet, Last Name: Smith it would quality check as being fine no matter how his five names were distributed between the first name field and the last name field.
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@Gordon Collett Thank you for your valuable input, and patience, while the engineers continue to refine this product :)
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