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Major AI Transcription Issues with Genealogy Bank Records

Ian Scheil
Ian Scheil ✭
November 15, 2023 edited September 30, 2024 in Search

Hello,

In my research I keep coming across (as do lots of friends and colleagues) of records that are from Genealogy Bank that are horribly transcribed with no way to correct them. To an unsuspecting person or someone just starting out this has the potential to really mess up the records for people and result in hints not being established when they should be. For example, a relative of mine passed away on January 23, 1992. It says January 23, 2023. I have come across this so many times now where the years are incorrectly transcribed same with the dates in general for alot. In addition, relationships and names are often incorrect with these records. It seems very pervasive for records from Genealogy Bank and is a major issue I am running into and as I said friends keep coming to me with the same problems. I'm just not sure where to bring this issue because it really does seem to be the case on a large scale that could be affecting thousands of records and going through them individually is nearly impossible. This is even worse when you have records that are hard to find for a person and the only ones available are Genealogy Bank sourced through the Family Search search records function.

Tagged:
  • Record Searching
  • search records
  • help-&-feedback
  • transcription error;
  • Historical Records Bug
1

Answers

  • Áine Ní Donnghaile
    Áine Ní Donnghaile ✭✭✭✭✭
    November 15, 2023 edited November 15, 2023

    As noted on the collection landing page, you can report problems using the Errors? button:

    image.png


    1
  • Gordon Collett
    Gordon Collett ✭✭✭✭✭
    November 15, 2023

    This is another situation where any transcription whether by human eyes or OCR should be viewed as just a finding aid to get to the original source. No matter how sophisticated the process everyone needs to be taught and constantly reminded of this fact of genealogical research.

    3
  • Ian Scheil
    Ian Scheil ✭
    November 15, 2023
    https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/533848#Comment_533848

    Unfortunately the report errors button is missing on various records. It's something new I'm coming across. It's almost always there. But lately it hasn't been on a lot of them all from Genealogy Bank.

    0
  • Ian Scheil
    Ian Scheil ✭
    November 15, 2023
    https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/533849#Comment_533849

    I agree 100%. I wish, however, they'd have a place to add alternate facts for the records like Ancestry has where the issue can be easily mitigated.

    0
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