Problems with Verify Places
I see that AI is now involved with Verify Places, which is fine, but the ability to correct anything has been taken away. For example, if a city is misspelled, I am no long able to click and correct it. Please advise.
Answers
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As an incidental, what makes you think that AI is involved with "Verify Places"? It seems to have been mildly prettied up but otherwise looks the same as it has done for years.
In my living memory, "Verify Places" has only ever been about correcting the standardised place-name for an event. It has never offered the ability to alter the spelling of the original displayed place-name.
If I recall correctly, "Verify Places" was originally introduced to overcome (slowly) issues with place-names on Profiles where the automatic standardisation messed up somewhere. As a side result it allows the correction of missing standard place-names that were manually input (or not, as the case may be).
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Re: "If I recall correctly, "Verify Places" was originally introduced to overcome (slowly) issues with place-names on Profiles where the automatic standardisation messed up somewhere." Actually this was never the case. It has always only been to add standardized place names to profiles in Family Tree where a place name was not linked to any standard. If a place name had a standard linked, no matter how incorrectly, it would never show up in the verify places routine.
Also, it never allowed correcting anything. All we could do and all we can still do is just add the standard.
Which makes me wonder if we are talking about two different Verify Places here.
@SusanLewis2 , is this the Verify Place Names you are talking about?
If so, the only thing that has changed is the display format to make it a bit fancier. Here, the only goal and the only change we are suppose to make is to remove the red notice from Daisy's profile:
We've never supposed to change what the user entered even if mis-spelled.
If there is a different Verify Place name in some of the new indexing parts of FamiySearch, please clarify what you are referring to. I know there are some AI assisted person name routines for indexed records but I though that just looked at people's names, not place names.
(There does seem to me to be a widespread tendency these days throughout the internet to refer to any computer routine, no matter how basic and traditional, as "AI." It also seems that this is being reinforced by a lot of companies (not FamilySearch as far as I can tell) to make their products seem more cutting edge than they really are. It sort of like saying we used to drive automobiles but now we have cars!)
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Correct me if I misunderstand, but the way I see it, one of the problems with standardized place names is that what is "standard" in the 20th-21st century isn't necessarily the "same" place as on an 17th-19th century map.
Another problem with VP is the FS mandate about using outside sources. Here's an example
Rebel that I am, I checked Google to find that Bemmelstr could refer to 2 places in the Netherlands or could be a street name anywhere. I also went to Christiaan's Person Card to see if I could find any more clues there so that whatever I decide for VP is correct for this Christiaan Wiertz. If I correctly choose to Skip, I end up throwing it back into the pile for another reviewer who may not investigate as I did and choose the Philippines or Mongolia — not very likely in 1876! Being a stickler for accuracy, I choose to stop and fix the Person Card, putting "v. Bemmelstr" in the Reason For Change Box and replacing the standard names with "Netherlands" then I fix it in Verify Places. This activity is not fast at all, so why put it out for possibly less experienced folks to mess up some family's research?
Am I wrong? I don't think so😎
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Regarding your two comments, first I'll say that there is nothing in the verify places routine that forbids using outside sources. This is not indexing. That is one of the reasons that every other bit of place information on the person's profile is displayed.
Since you are going to the profile page to try and do the best job you can, then the first thing to determine is where that v. Bemmelstr came from. These unstandardized Residences under Other Information almost always come from people attaching the sources using the source linker and never going back to fix a place name that was incomplete in the source.
Taking your example, the name came from that single Population Register source on his record: https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/sources/viewedit/SGKF-YT6?context
Going to the source itself by clicking on the image, one can see that he is the second person listed in a family living at v Bemmelstr 106, that is, Van Bemmelstraat 106. This registration done on September 29, 1876 was for Amersfoort, Utrecht, Netherlands, and the standard could be set to that. And this is not even using any outside sources, just the original source itself.
And that is all I would do, as you have done. I would leave it to the users working on the profile to change:
to
I would also leave it up to those users to realize that the registration only has a two digit year and it appears all the birth years were assigned to the wrong century.
As far as less experienced users working on this, I assume the expectation is that the reviewer would see that this man was born in Amersfoort and there is the population listing for him in Amersfoort, and to assume that v. Bemmelstr is in Amersfoort and again end up linking that standard to the entry.
Regarding place names changing through history, the Places database which is the source for the standardized names does account for those changes. The database is far from complete, but for places for which it is complete, you will see a listing of all important place name variants and all the different jurisdiction it has been under that lasted for more than five years. Here is a place I was checking on just today:
Here you can see the various names it has had and, if you click through the four tabs at the top, the four jurisdictions it has been under. (To keep the image small, I did not open the Historical Information or Research Links section. There is usually helpful information there. Also, below the Names section is a list of citations that also can lead to more infomation about the place.)
If you've never looked around in the Places database, it is here: https://www.familysearch.org/en/research/places/
You can request improvements or missing places be added by following the instructions here:
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@Gordon Collett Thank you for sharing all this "new to me" information. I can certainly see how all these new FS features are making family history more accessible/accurate for more people. I am struggling to absorb and use everything I read in this community to make my own contributions more helpful and meaningful. Do you have any suggestions for classes or books, technology, FS dashboards etc?
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@Gordon Collett said (responding to me)
Re: "If I recall correctly, "Verify Places" was originally introduced to overcome (slowly) issues with place-names on Profiles where the automatic standardisation messed up somewhere." Actually this was never the case. It has always only been to add standardized place names to profiles in Family Tree where a place name was not linked to any standard. If a place name had a standard linked, no matter how incorrectly, it would never show up in the verify places routine.
Yes - that was what I was thinking but what I typed was unfortunately a little too all-embracing. Thanks for the correction.
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Do you have any suggestions for classes or books, technology, FS dashboards etc?
Unfortunately, nothing beyond the Help Center and whatever you can find using google searches.
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Thanks. I found some classes at my local FS Center which are free and even avail on Zoom. I attended one today about Ancestry using the free church account. Even an FS Glossary would help 😊 If anyone on this forum is interested in Zoom classes (held on Utah time), let me know and I'll send you the link for the July schedule 😎
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