Bug with Source linker
There has been a bug with the source linker that has troubled me for quite some time and it probably should get fixed.
For some reason the source linker intentionally removes north/south/east/west from the name when attaching data and setting a standardized place.
For example I am adding a source for someone who lived in West Manchester Township, York, Pennsylvania, United States
The source linker will instead falsely change the location to Manchester Township, York, Pennsylvania, United States when adding.
Manchester Township and West Manchester Township are 2 different locations and both have standardized place names. The record matches the standardization name for West Manchester Township completely, so you would expect when attaching the source it should be attached as such and not changed. While you can redit it back to the correct name, most people don't notice that and I have had to change 1000s of locations after reviewing records to match their actual location
I have encountered this bug on any location that contains any of the 4 directions. This is very frustrating as there are thousands of places where north/south/east/west are part of official names. I imagine this was intentionally done as sometimes records do contain directions from census takers and the like, though that is very rare. The reality though is when an official place name contains it, it should not be removed. With the source linker standardizing all names these days based on the accepted place names if it can there is no reason to remove north/south/east/west as it will find the correct place name with those still entered.
Answers
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flagged as bug report
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@jaredallenjohnson1
Which record set(s) are causing problems? Please provide examples.
If it is with Find a Grave records and has been happening since early June, then it is a know problem being worked on, per this post:1 -
Its every record set that have specific places that I see this happen. Rather then specific records sets. This seems to be an issue with the source linker in general/whatever process the source linker uses to standardize places.
For example the 2 most common places I common across with my ancestry it does this with is
North Codorus Township, York, Pennsylvania, United States
this gets forcefully changed to
Codorus Township, York, Pennsylvania, United States
in every single census(1880 to 1950) when you slide residence events from the record from the left to the right it swaps the name.
Also West Manchester Township, York, Pennsylvania, United States
gets changed to
Manchester Township, York, Pennsylvania, United States
I have seen it happen to others but only these 2 places come up off the top of my head as I see them a bunch in my research.0 -
This is a known issue and is currently being investigated and worked on. Thank you for your feedback.
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