OK, now this is downright _insulting_.
Or offensive. "This person has no indexed sources". It's telling me that a dratted finding aid is worth more than all of my efforts to find documents without one. In fact, it's implying that the system considers all of those efforts to be utterly worthless.
Insult to injury? It cannot be dismissed.
WHY?
Also: I haven't yet turned up an example of this, but that statement is potentially false, because there are other indexes than the ones on FS.
Comments
-
I don't think any insult was intended, but I would like to know the definition of "indexed source" in this case. If it means "typewritten index created from a physical or digital historical record," then I agree with Julia that having no indexed sources probably shouldn't be flagged as an error.
I often attach digital copies of birth registrations as sources, and they don't qualify as an indexed source. Also, if I attach an unindexed image from FamilySearch Historical Records, then by definition it's not indexed either :) For some people/places/time periods, there may not be any indexed sources available.
Kathryn0 -
Not having an indexed source isn't an error in the profile. That's like saying that a missing card in the card catalog is an error in the book.
Clearly, what the message actually means is that the profile doesn't have a machine-parseable source attached, i.e., it's the algorithm that has the error: it isn't sophisticated enough to read and parse Notes fields, never mind images.
The message, especially given that it's not dismissable, indicates that the algorithm is placing a much higher value on machine-parseability than it is on the work of users in locating documents despite the lack of a finding aid. "I can't read it, therefore it's junk."
1 -
Specifically this flag can only be referring to FamilySearch indexed sources. Those are the only indexed sources that carry with them any additional information. I highly doubt that the data quality checker is going to take an Ancestry URL out of a source and go check the transcription of source. I would assume this is more of a request to attach all sources in the FamilySearch historical index collections, no matter how badly transcribed, than a quality issue.
Of course the fact that only a small fraction of the world's records have been indexed by FamilySearch means that this flag will show up a lot so it really should dismissible. Maybe they want that reminder there so 50 years from now users will remember to go back and check to see if an index containing a source for that data has been created between now and then.
1 -
All, thank you for the feedback.
The issue "This person has no indexed sources." is now dismissible.
3 -
@roberthparker3, thank you!
I've been dismissing it with the comment/reason "And this is a problem because …?"
1
