Allow users to correct transcribed records
I have noticed several transcription errors on a certain database of the town where my ancestors lived in Germany. For example, the profession was entered as the last name for one family member, so it took a year to find her, as I happened to have the idea to enter only first name, mother’s name and year of birth. Another one was entered as age 7 when he died, but he was 72, so he didn’t come up in a search because his year of birth was off, although he showed as a married seven-year-old. When I got the original records from another source, I submitted them and requested a correction, I was told that the company does not correct transcribed records. Why knowingly have incorrect records out there?
Comments
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FamilySearch does offer user-correctable indexes, but one of the necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for it to apply is the availability of the image on FamilySearch. If all that FS has is the index, then it cannot be corrected on FS, since there's nothing to refer to for the correction.
I've encountered a very wide range of indexing errors, but my favorite remains the one where they simply skipped over the (clearly-written) father's name, changed the mother into the father, and created a new mother out of the father's occupation and religion. Because of the ubiquity of such errors, I routinely search by given name only. (There were a lot fewer of those in common use than there were surnames, so indexers were slightly less likely to misread them.)
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If you are referring to indexed records here on FamilySearch, we can edit indexing errors in many cases. If the record image resides on FamilySearch, for general public viewing, we can generally edit the index.
If the image is not on FS (an index-only collection), or if the image is restricted to viewing only at an Affiliate Library (AL) or FamilySearch Center (FSC), then we cannot edit because it would be impossible to know if the edit was correct.
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This issue appears to relate to priorities and resources. I can easily suggest changes to indexed records (even without linked images) on websites such as Find My Past and FreeBMD, but these have to be approved by administrators. As stated, how do you supply "proof" there your version of events is correct?
Also, there will always be a huge amount of errors that exist in the original documentation (two of my ancestors are listed as being aged 36 in both 1871 and 1881 census records). There seems little argument in favour of correcting these errors, so there will always be the need to use "known facts" (ages and birthplaces) with great caution when making a search for an event in FamilySearch, or elsewhere.
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