Serious concern: Principal vs Non Principal persons on a death certificate
I have asked the question a long time ago regarding the PRINCIPAL person who have passed away:
Should the indexer who index death certificates not change to another form of indexing, to be able to change the rest of the family as non-principals, if no one else on the record have passed away on the same day? Is there a reason why the rule does not being applied, and the indexer was not aware of such rule, or is the rule outdated?
I have found hundreds of batches which this rule is not applied. This results in the arbitrator or reviewer has to change each and every one on the record to non principal.
Thank you
Hester
Best Answers
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You’re right to flag this as a serious concern. The death notices in this collection were grouped together with films containing probate material, and unfortunately the entire group was assigned the record type “Probate Records.” AI correctly recognized a primary event of death, but because of the misclassification, it applied that event type to every record in the group.
I will take this to engineering but expect that it will take time for a fix as several corrections will be required: assigning the correct record type, grouping individuals, identifying the true primary person, and
assigning relationships.Thank you for bringing this to our attention — it helps us catch issues that aren’t always quickly identified!
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@Hester Korff Wolmarans Thank you for your kind offer to help, but I anticipate that our engineering team will find the best ways to correct these records. As you said, there are just far too many for users—even many users, to update them one at a time!
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Answers
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@Hester Korff Wolmarans The main focus of FamilySearch is to discover, gather, and connect families. AI plays a significant role in gathering families and telling their stories. FamilySearch utilizes generative AI to process vast archives of records, enabling quicker understanding of relationships in documents such as census and vital records. AI helps translate historical documents and transcribe records for full-text searching. In reading records, AI does this process, which involves identifying not only the deceased individual but also their associated family members. This helps create a more comprehensive family history and connect individuals within the Family Tree.
You included a link in your post to the death record for Angenieta Maria Magdelena Olivier Maré. Here is a link to your same record and the transcribed record.
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Considero que al momento de la indexacion el dato mas importante es la persona principal siendo la secundaria el anexo para terminar de establecer el vinculo cuando se esta en busqueda de algun familiar, muchas veces encontre en la revision de indexaciones el nombre de la persona secundaria donde iria el de la persona principal. Ej Bautizmo, esta como persona principal (madre o padre ) donde deberia estar la persona bautizada, lo mismo sucede en las fichas de los registros militares. Otro error muy frecuente es establecer vinculo de matrimonio cuando en realidad es el padre o la madre. Intente modificar y salvar el documento, lamentablemente no se puede. Las malas indexaciones y las que hace de forma automatica Family provocan mas de 1 duplicado generando mucha confusion.
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@Sandra5759 Google Translation: Esta es la traducción del español al inglés para uso de los moderadores.
I believe that when indexing, the primary person is the most important data point, while the secondary person serves as an attachment to help establish the relationship when searching for a family member. During index reviews, I have often found the secondary person's name listed where the primary person's name should be—for example, in baptism records, where a parent (mother or father) is listed as the primary person instead of the baptized individual; the same occurs with military records. Another very common error is recording a marriage relationship when the person is actually a parent. I have tried to modify and save the record, but unfortunately, it is not possible. Poor indexing—along with automated indexing performed by FamilySearch—leads to multiple duplicates, creating a great deal of confusion.
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Thank you for your reply. I agree with what you are saying, and I understand that AI is helping a lot faster, but this doesn't answer my question. Let me explain: there can only be one person who has passed away on a death record (or two persons as principals on a marriage record); that person is usually the primary person, as you have mentioned. South African death certificates usually have the rest of the family on the record, and if you look through it, you will see a chronological reference of his/her life.
The rule of indexing is to show who the principal person is. The rest of the family on the record should be indexed as who he or she is known to the deceased: parents, spouse, children, siblings, in-laws, or others etc. They are the non-principals, and they cannot be called otherwise. If they have passed away, each will have their individual death certificate, which has nothing to do with this record.
My argument is: how will FamilySearch be able to show they are non-principals? At the moment, all the persons are principals, which means they are the ones who passed away. Who is responsible for correcting this entire batch, so that AI will understand it? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Look at this URL, the whole batch has each person as a principal person: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSQ8-6XQ8?view=index&personArk=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AQGLS-FBWT&action=view&cc=2517051&lang=en&groupId=.
Thank you
Hester
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Thank you for your efforts to improve historical records! For errors that can easily be corrected we always encourage user editing.
When you encounter global errors, please report them here in the Search category of Community so that we can get them to the right team for correction.
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Thank you for your feedback and kind words. I love working with the South African records; I always want to make corrections.
I could help you, or maybe you can help me to contact AI to work with them? Otherwise, I have to review it the long way by correcting everyone on a record in the batch, but my computer is old, and the screen is small. It will take me months on end to rectify this problem.
Best regards
Hester
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