Place name is wrong in the record
Comments
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This is a clip of a search result and corresponding Record. Clearly I was looking for a mary white born in Barbados (no other constraints). The problem here is that this result is from "England, Cheshire Parish Registers, 1538-2000" Collection.
I've highlighted 3 points on the clip:-
- the Search clearly shows a Birth place (and the Record does Not show it)
- the value shown is 'Saint Philip, Barbados' (this is Certainly incorrect)
- the Edit option is no longer available to allow for correction
It is obvious that during the Transcription phase, someone has carelessly selected the first match for 'Saint Peter' and did Not check that it should be "Saint Peter, Chester, Cheshire, England" and NOT "Saint Peter, Barbados". The additional, more serious problem here is that there are (currently) 4,418 such records in this collection similarly tagged. Further this problem is true for several other Collections (that I have so far come across):-
- Birth, Marriage, & Death, England, Lancashire, Marriage Bonds and Allegations, 1746-1799 (8,286 records)
- England, Warwickshire, Parish Registers, 1535-1963 (2,380)
- England, Yorkshire, Parish Registers, 1538-2016 (1,334)
- England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975 (505)
- England, Somerset, Church Records, 1501-1999 (471)
- England, Staffordshire, Church Records, 1538-1944 (352)
Obviously I do Not want "Birth" removed as a field but it Needs Correcting (a global replace by a collection-supervisor could solve this).
Clearly Editing rights needs serious reconsideration (every valid opportunity should be given to all Mass editing of poor data). I am still flummoxed at how many thousands of Records omit vital fields because of some early Transcription restrictions. Again, why can't select members be given access to append data to Vital fields to improve the original Record from Original Sources?
Lastly I have tried "Feedback" (without any plugins on several browsers) but since it's inception found it virtually useless (other than to place me on the Community home page), there is no Contextual landing page, nor the assurity that specific qualified development members are going to see and review said Feedback(s) for the given area of concern.
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I've commented on how misleading "Feedback" is, when someone is looking for Help. Maybe they'll listen to you. I gave up trying to point out problems a long time ago.
There is a big problem with the place searching. It is complicated because places change names and jurisdictions over time. But the implementation could be much better. If I don't specify "exact search", I get anything with a similar spelling. If I do specify "exact search", I only get places with that exact spelling. When I search for "Versmold", I get hits all over the world. If I search for "Versmold, Westphalia", I only get hits that include the Westphalia jurisdiction, and not the various other jurisdictions it had. (I am researching a time when the borders/jurisdictions changed every couple of years.)
So make sure you search on a place that is exact enough, but not too exact.😳
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@A Andrews, that's the autostandardization bot being applied "on the fly" by the search results page. There was no human involved in picking Barbados to go with whatever text is actually in the index. That text is almost certainly the Event Place of "St Peter, Chester, Cheshire, England", but I have no idea why/how the search results page has (erroneously) decided to label it as a birthplace.
@N Tychonievich, is this kind of on-the-fly autostandardization also part of the long backlog of things to be fixed? (Can it just be turned off, please?)
Here's a search that produces the Mary White that's in A's screenshot: https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=100&q.givenName=Mary&q.surname=White&c.collectionId=on&f.collectionId=1614792&c.birthLikePlace1=on&f.birthLikePlace0=4
And here's her index detail page: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F3FB-88S
(Given that there's no sign of birth information anywhere on the image, this is not a matter of anything being removed from the index detail page. It's the search results page that's gone bonkers; it's making up facts out of whole cloth.)
I'm not sure editability of this index is within FS's control. The index-to-image association is labeled as uncertain (although it's correct in this particular case), and the image has the Cheshire Record Office notice but nothing on the Image Index tab, so I think we can simply be happy that there is an image to look at. (Most of the English parish registers and censuses are now behind paywalls.) And in any case, given that there's no sign of "birthplace = Barbados" on the actual detail page, the results page's invention likely wouldn't be correctable anyway.
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@A Andrews Thank you for your report of the error in correctly identifying St Peter within several England record sets. We have confirmed the issues and sent it to the group that can make a correction. Because they are a small team with a large backlog of similar issues, we cannot predict how long it will be before you see a correction.
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If you wouldn't find reporting another one while you are at it... On the early Canadian censuses if a place is given the abbreviation UC meaning Upper Canada as Ontario was called then, the search is defaulting to Australia for some reason. Both people above were born in Upper Canada.
Searching for Francis Clark in just the 1861 census with a birthplace of Canada showed no results while one with no birthplace gave the above result which is the one I was looking for. If I hadn't eliminated the birthplace, I never would have located it.
The actual record page is correct with no mention of Australia.
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@Michael Houde Yes, I'll get that one reported too.
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@N Tychonievich It seems that this month someone has either set up an ' autostandardization bot' (or as implied by the record a volunteer has edited the record) on the burial (and other records) for Barbados because all of a sudden a vast number declare the Standard Event Place as "Bridgetown, Saint Michael, Barbados" when they are almost always in other parishes on the island ! If I try editing the record I am offered a blank field select so I can't edit anything !
!
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@A Andrews I see that the correct place is showing in search results for John William Jordan (https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?f.collectionId=1923399&q.birthLikeDate.from=1808&q.deathLikeDate.from=1881&q.givenName=John%20William&q.surname=Jordan) even though it is inaccurate on the record details page. When we clicked to edit, we saw this page: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSNF-VHKC?view=index&personArk=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AD9GM-FBMM&action=view. Not sure why you saw something differently as it seems to be the same no matter what kind of account you have. Anyway, on that page, the event place also shows correctly. So, we will report the disconnect between the place showing on search results and the image index as opposed to the record details page.
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