Place name corruption is causing garbage search results
Today I noticed that a marriage record sourced from the UK BMDs collection had a garbage place name : Gakufax, Yorkshire, England. I knew that this should be Halifax, and that the BMDs collection has already been properly indexed and that place names were correct, so I thought it was a bit strange that this place was mangled.
I decided to search only this collection to see if other records were affected. Setting the place to be Gakufax, Yorkshire, England and checking the Exact Match box, I was surprised to find many, many results that did not match the search criterion. Not only that, but that "Bradford on Avon" is apparently in Yorkshire. This was a real shock, because it would have meant the forced removal of many Wiltshire Residents along with their houses and land and having to transport them all a couple of hundred miles north.
I am led to conclude that some nefarious intelligence has been at work substituting place names in a collection that has already been completed and should be locked.
How has this happened ?
Answers
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Gakufax is beyond me, I'm afraid. Just utterly bizarre...
However, I do expect things to change in regard to place names. My understanding, which dates back to the GetSatisfaction forum, is that the background auto standardisation routine runs every so often (no idea how often, nor whether it's a manually submitted job) to go through and redo the standardisation of place names.
As a general rule, this makes sense because the correct standard value might not be on the standards file to begin with, so the value put on the index file might be incorrect. Repeating the standardisation run after the correct standard has been entered onto the placename standards file should enable the correct standard to get picked up.
That, at any rate, is the theory. Or rather, that's my understanding of the theory. Updates welcome.
Locking an index collection is an interesting possibility. It might be a valid idea in this case if all the standards were correct on the index file, but I suspect that there are very, very few collections where that's true. And even the UK BMD files are potentially extended every year or so.
As for Bradford on Avon being in Yorkshire, rather than Wiltshire, that's presumably just the auto standardisation routine matching Bradford on Avon to Bradford, Yorkshire rather than Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire. We can only hope that this will be fixed as promised. And when it is fixed, then the next run of the auto standardisation routine should get the correct match. Cross my fingers…
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I agree with Adrian that FamilySearch appears to remain completely committed to its auto-standardization program and continues to use it in updates to its existing collections.
On the issue of the BMD collection itself, the records appear to now (well, over the last few years) be based on both national (GRO) and local register office collections. The latter stand out because they frequently add a UK postcode to a record. Deaths are also indexed differently: some now being indexed as a "Death" and others (as previously) as a "Death Registration".
For search purposes, this is a reminder to take care in specifying an "Exact" search on the placename. Following your report, I would now be very wary of entering "Bradford, Yorkshire,England…" or "Yorkshire, England.." as the place of Residence. Probably best to input "Bradford*", which will have the disadvantage of producing results for Bradford, Yorkshire and Bradford on Avon, of course, but at least you won't be missing those records that (we now know) have been incorrectly standardised.
(For those unfamiliar in using wildcards in FS searches, one enters the "bare" placename (e.g. Bradford), followed by the wildcard symbol. When this appears as an option - on the line immediately below - click on that line, then on Search.)
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Of course, I forgot two things. Firstly, after getting your Results (I initially got 11), one has to use the Filter option and pick (as in my example below) just those from the 1861 E&W Census collection. Secondly, have to also accept that the search criteria will lead to records merely including the name Bradford being produced. Open up the result for Bocking, Essex and you will find a Residence Place of Bradford Street West Side! (Oh, and the third result has Bradford in the Registration Place field!)
Still, I'll stick with my (rather flawed) suggestion, but hope that FamilySearch will (eventually) find a way (better AI tool?) to overcome the corruption of perfectly good location names, so we don't have to look for (somewhat dubious) workarounds!
(Sorry that - in this post - I have drifted somewhat away from your specific BMD issue, but feel the example still illustrates the wider issues of finding records that have now been assigned incorrectly standardised placenames.)
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