RECORD edit bug: Surname Disappears after correcting Location
Hi, I don't know how many other image groups are affected by this bug, in which a benign correction to an indexed record causes the Surname to disappear from the record. There is no indication that this is happening from the Edit "Indexed Data" page - you have to pull up the record page again in order to realize that it is happening.
Background Info:
Here's what I experienced: I found a record in an Ecuadorian image group with a Baptism location in Colombia. After confirming the image item itself, handwritten baptism paragraph, and change history all lined up with this Baptism definitely occurring in Ecuador, I decided to correct the Place as below:
- "Bolívar, Guanujo, San Pedro", per Change History was "Place History"
- "San Pedro, Córdoba, Bolívar, Colombia" = incorrect Place
- "San Pedro, Guanujo, Guaranda, Bolívar, Ecuador" = corrected Place
While in the "Indexed Data" edit page everything looked perfectly fine. So I corrected a few more pages before I realized that way too many pages had the same issue, and so I stopped for the day. It wasn't until a few days later when I went to go look at this again that I realized that my edits had created a new unexpected problem.
I had searched for this image group and decided to click on a record result that stood out because it was only one with only a given name and no surname. When I looked at the change history I realized I was the only one to make an edit to it - and that on the edit "Indexed Data" page it still looked perfectly fine - there was clearly a surname inputted.
Description of Issue:
Both Records Search page and the Record page itself will be missing the surname of the principal record. The parents still have surnames, but the principal record will show no sign of having had a surname.
Back to the edit index page, I messed around to figure out how to fix this and how to trigger it. I've found that a lot of different types of edits to the record can cause this problem and I've found only one way to fix it:
Edit principal record | copy text of pre-existing surname| "Add More Information" | remove existing surname | add surname back & Update | paste copied surname back in | Save
Weirdly enough, if I do this surname swap before any subsequent edits then the surname won't disappear.
The types of edits that trigger this issue include:
- edit Sex
- edit Date
- edit Place
- edit the name of parent
Please take a look at page 15 on Image Group# 4884384, Item# 3. I have edited the records on this page to demonstrate this issue.
- Carmen = left as an example of the default unchanged record
- Marcelino = swap out surname first, then edit Place
- Aurora = edit Sex (was Non-Standardized)
- Esteban = edit Baptism Date (was Non-standardized Date)
- Manuel = edit Place
- Lorenzo = (didn't edit)
- Maria = edit Parent's name ("Petroma", change "m" to "n")
Before and After example:
Anyways, I fixed up the records that were affected by my edits (mostly on the pages before page 15).
By the way, could I submit a second issue request in this same post? The Image Group# 4884384 has over 12,600 principal records that are incorrectly located in Colombia instead of Ecuador.
Best Answer
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@Ruhiyyeh It's been noticed that complaints of editing errors in feedback has been increasing. The scenarios described are not always the same so it's been a struggle to pin down when and where the edit goes wrong. This may not be the only issue, but you have documented this error extremely well. Often a bug gets reported and it bounces from one engineering team to another before it gets into the right hands, so thank you for such a careful analysis.
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Answers
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Here's a screenshots of my browser tabs below, in order to show at a glance what happened to each one. The results are as I described: doing any edits other than a surname swap-out results in the surname disappearing.
(I wanted to wait a few minutes to see if my post would disappear like it did the first time I submitted it. I removed my second image from my post, just in case adding too many images was the problem.)
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@SerraNola Please
@Ruhiyyeh This is an unfortunate known problem. You'll find numerous threads on the subject.
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