HUGE number of incorrect Record Hints on Scandinavians in the tree
Comments
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Dale Hein said: Unbelievable. Those bad record hints in my last post in which I said 8 of them are for his other wife. I just checked her page. All of the ones for the Preis wife are on HER page!!! Seriously! You have to see this! And the wrong there are sources for the wrong Wendling woman on her page, too. Unbelievable.
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...0 -
Dale Hein said: More. All 6 of these are totally wrong. Wrong wife, wrong place in Germany. My ancestors were in Rhineland. These are in Bayern, Hessen, Nassau. And the two that are in Rhineland are in different places in Rhineland. And there is a totally different wife on his page with lots of children and sources for those children with that mother. ???????
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
At least 80% of the hints I have found in the last week or so are wrong. Very wrong. Obviously wrong.0 -
Dale Hein said: 7 more. The only thing these sources have in common with this ancestor is the first name -- Anna. ha ha
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...0 -
Dale Hein said: Another one. Wives of totally different names and again a totally different part of Germany and again there are plenty of true sources already on the page.
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...0 -
Dale Hein said: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
This John Scott (very common name) was right in the middle of having 11 children in Ohio with a woman named Ellen (very common name) who was born in Pennsylvania. How could he have had a child in England in 1833. Somebody will attach this if I don't get it off of there soon.0 -
Gordon Collett said: This really sounds strange. I hope the engineers can determine what is going on. Over the past few days I've been working on cleaning up some Norwegian families. I've probably attached well over 50 hints. All of them have been correct. I have not had to dismiss a single one. I wonder what the difference is.0
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Paul said: Brian
Would be grateful for an update to show you are still following this thread and these examples have been noted / passed on to the relevant team. Thanks.0 -
Paul said: It does seem the whole issue of algorithms being used by FamilySearch needs to be investigated urgently.
I know this thread relates to Record Hints but, as illustrated above, this also applies to the problem with Possible Duplicates. Now I find there are equally silly suggestions being offered with "Add Child". The example below shows the suggestion of an Elizabeth MARTINDALE born 1581 Westmorland being a possible match as a child of a Matthew MARTIN who was buried in 1706 in the county of Essex. The only "reason" I can see for this being offered is the father's name was Matthew. The baptism occurs 125 years before the father's burial and the locations over 300 miles apart.
Continuation of the current algorithms could lead to a lot more damage to the integrity of data being inputted (often by very inexperienced users) to Family Tree.
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Paul said: One thing that baffles me when it comes to possible duplicates or record hints is when they are suggested for one member of the family, but not another.
Take the possible duplicate shown on the page of Elizabeth GMPC-9SY. Again, a strange one - as it relates to a family in France instead of Essex, England. But the main point here is why it is not shown on her husband Matthew Martin's page, as a possible duplicate for him?
Naturally I am pleased it is not, but confused over the inconsistency, nevertheless.0 -
Dale Hein said: I have been seeing crazy Possible Duplicates, too. And on top of that I have had to merge quite a few TRUE duplicates that are very obvious by ID. Like two children right in the same family under the same parents that the system didn't find. I'm going to start adding links to those, too. The whole Research Helps section on the person page has an oxymoron title. They should change it to Research Warnings.
Thank goodness you can see the Record Hints icons on the pedigree Landscape View at a glance so we don't have to go to every person page to check, or I would really be freaking out. I look for blue icons first thing every morning and last thing every night. And I have about 360 ancestors on my Watch list -- every direct line person and any others that I have spent days fixing. And I don't wait for a weekly email to find out if anybody changed anything. I check that list at least twice a day, too.
It's a shame people who have worked hard on this all their lives and know how to do research have to spend so much time on tree patrol and fixing things just to protect their precious data and the temple work that goes with it instead of being able to move on to finding more records, adding photos and stories and documents, etc. I would love to do more research but there are only so many hours in the day. And saving what I've done from destruction is way more important than finding more and putting it out there for destruction, too.0 -
Dale Hein said: Well, this is upsetting. I just declared 5 or 6 Record Hints on this page. Then I went to the Record Hints on the wife's page to check those (all wrong, too) and I went back to the husband's so I could copy and paste my long detailed reasons, because some of them are the same. I was able to do that, but you have to jump through hoops to find the Hints I dismissed.
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
Hope if the engineers care to they can see the source I dismissed.0 -
Dale Hein said: 5 bad Record Hints and two Possible Duplicates I had to declare Not a Match.
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...0 -
Dale Hein said: This one is really bad! There is a Joannes Adamus Contz in my tree with lots of bad Record Hints, but I’ll be getting rid of them right now.
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
I don’t know if he had a wife and children yet. All of the Hints have him married to a Susanna Ottili, but she was having children in a place 125 miles away. It’s possible, but I’m sure not going to just attach them because FamilySearch put them there as Record Hints.
So I did a Find by Name for Susanna Ottili and sure enough she is in the tree, too, and married to Johannes Adamus Contz!
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
Maybe it’s MY Johannes Adamus Contz and maybe he’s a duplicate, but I’m not going to make that call based on FS Record Hints.
So I looked at HER Record Hints and hers are for ANOTHER Susanna, but her last name is Feldt and she also married a Joannes Contz! But they also lived in a different place.
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
So why are there Record Hints for Susanna Ottili in Beckingen on a page where she is not even mentioned and that Joannes doesn’t even have a wife and he lives in Boppard? Why aren’t the sources for Susanna Ottili from Beckingen on the page for Susanna Ottili from Beckingen with the same children showing that the Hints are for? Why are they on MY Joannes’s page who has no wife, no children and there is no indication on his page that any of his family ever lived in Beckingen? If I didn’t catch this somebody else would have added all those sources and that wife and those children to my ancestor instead.
It gets worse. The Record Hints that ARE on Susanna Ottili’s page are for Susanna Feldt and another Joannes Contz and their children!
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
And here is a Susanna Feldt married to a Joannes Contz! Why didn’t those Hints for Susanna Feldt end up on her page instead of on Susanna Ottili’s? They should have. There are 15 similar Hints on this Susanna Feldt’s page, so that's all the more reason they should have, right?
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per... Ooops. All except the last one. It’s for Susanna Ottili! This is so terrible.
I was really trying to fix all of this, but I’m so confused trying to get the right sources on the right pages, dismiss them from the wrong pages, merge the correct duplicates (because they’re all over all these pages, too) and declare those that aren’t duplicates Not a Match that I just have to stop in the middle. I have to just worry about my own lines. I have spent every spare minute dismissing bad Record Hints and incorrect Possible Duplicates since the day I started this thread 9 days ago just protecting my own ancestors pages from all the Research “Help.” I don’t understand why FamilySearch is ok with this.0 -
Dale Hein said: This page also has Record Hints for two different Susanna's -- some Feldt and some Ottili. 17 of them. Ugh. This page also has at least one for yet another Susanna. Susanna Schmitz.
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
Yikes! That one DID get mixed up with my family!
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/619...0 -
Dale Hein said: Found more of the Susanna's like above. This one has Feldt's and Ottili's all mixed in the same page's Hints.
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
Here are two Joannes Contz's with Record Hints for all 3 different Susanna's:
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...0 -
Dale Hein said: I was just thinking -- you probably don't hear many complaints about the bad Record Hints because either people don't pay any attention to them (that would be a good thing) or people just attach them willy-nilly and they think they're helping. That would be a bad thing.0
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Dale Hein said: Check out this ridiculous possible duplicate.
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
My ancestor, Anna Tullis was born in 1731 in Germany and there is a birth record on her page. She married a Johannes Jacobus Cuntz and they had 6 children between 1759 and 1773 and there is a birth source for every one of them on her page. So the possible duplicate is just "Anna" MARRIED in 1646 in Switzerland to a Jacob Kuntz. I'm going to leave it for today to give Brian a chance to see it before I fix it.0 -
Dale Hein said: Another one: Neither the husband nor the wife ever lived in Finland. And all of their 6 children were born in Sweden, too. I doubt they traveled to Finland just to get married. Lots of people in Scandinavia had the names Gustaf Johannesson and Lovisa Johannesdotter. I'm fixing it right now, so you won't see the Hints. It'sll be in Latest Changes.
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...0 -
Dale Hein said: There is no son, Elias M. Thurmond, at all on Philip Bennett Thurmond’s page. He never had a son Elias. And considering the father Philip was born in 1704, which there is a source to prove on this page, it’s highly unlikely he would have any child born in 1843 as is the child in the Record Hint. The child’s marriage happened in West Virginia and West Virginia is not a place for any event for anyone on this page of 17 people. They don’t get more far-fetched than this Record Hint.
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
When will I have put enough links here to convince somebody who can do something that this is a serious problem? I just counted. I have put in 32 -- not bad Record Hints, but pages with bad Record Hints. Some had as many as 15 bad Record Hints on them. And I haven't put all of the bad ones I have found in this thread. I have only put the obviously ridiculous ones. I have dismissed a LOT more than I have put here. And it's a futile task, because every day I find new ones. I will never be able to keep up with all of them.
I hope there is going to be a class at Roots Tech -- Beware of Record Hints.0 -
Dale Hein said: Still finding them. Let me know when you have enough examples. Here is page #33. https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
This one is really crazy because besides the father's last name on this birth record being Conradsen, but the father on the page is a Thomasen, look at the data. The husband/father was born and died 3 years BEFORE the wife/mother was born. The strangest part is how a SS happened for her parents in 1936 -- and it isn't an empty parent box either. The "husband/father's" page says he died right after he was born!
But aside from all that, why would the birth source for Elsa Marie Pedersen, daughter of Peder Conradsen, be on the page of Else Marie Thomassen, daughter of Peder Thomasen? Only because the mother on the record does match -- Trine Christensdr.
BUT why didn't it end up on this page instead? https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
Father is Peder Conradsen. Daughter is Else Marie Pedersen. AND THERE ARE ALREADY THREE OF THE SAME BIRTH ON THIS DUPLICATE OF THE MOTHER!!! AND ON THIS DUPLICATE OF THE DAUGHTER!!! https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
Well, they might not really be duplicates. More investigating needs to be done to say for sure. But the mother's page says they are duplicates. https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
I need to hurry and figure it out, because they might not be, but somebody will come along and merge them without even looking at the information, because if FamilySearch says it's a Possible Duplicate and the name is the same and they both lived in Denmark, they must be. Ugh.0 -
Juli said: I've been finding tons of ludicrous hints and possible dupes that seem to all come down to two fundamental errors in the hinting algorithm: it ignores the wife's surname completely, and it considers "same country" to be close enough. I'm also not certain it's "paying attention" to dates, but I've been so taken aback by the completely different names and places that I haven't really looked at the dates.
And by "ignores completely", I really do mean completely, utterly, and wholesale. Like zero letters in common, different length, no connection to be found anywhere. Does the hinting algorithm assume that nobody ever enters a maiden name correctly? It's annoying and makes for some highly tedious work.0 -
Merlene Juergens said: I agree with Juli. Big increase in the number of totally wrong hints...which would not be a problem if everyone did their due diligence, but it seems there are a lot of people who think "close enough" and attach hint. Then they bend the information to fit by adding a middle name or adding an incorrect name in quote marks, adding "about " to incorrect dates, or just changing it to incorrect data. I try to be charitable because just about the time I think "What idiot did this?" it turns out to be ME, but last night I was detaching sources for Sarah Anspach from April Miller. Even I know that's not a match.0
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Dale Hein said: It might be helpful if others put links to the crazy hints here. I was asked to the day I started the thread and I have posted 33 links to pages with wrong Hints. But that's the last I heard. I was asked by an engineer to post an example. I've posted 33, and he hasn't said anything more.0
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Juli said: Most recent dismissed hint suggested that Eva Mlinarcsik was the same person as Eva Bohus: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
Granted, this one's close enough (same place, husbands with same name) that I did actually check, but it's biologically impossible: one had a child in August 1833, the other had a child in January 1834.
But this brings up a question: what's the official word (if there is one) on what to do with a hint if you simply can't figure out if it's a match or not? It's on the same person I linked above: a couple with the right names and living in the right place had a baby who died before baptism in 1850, eleven years after their younger child. (I can only find two daughters for them, six years apart.) Because the baby wasn't baptised, there are no godparents to compare, and the earlier records don't give a house number. Is it better to attach the record, even though it may be wrong, or would it be better to dismiss the hint, even though it may be right?0 -
Dale Hein said: Juli, About the baby born in 1850, maybe there are 11 years between children. Maybe she had others that just aren't listed yet. And in 1850 the mother would have only been 37. Maybe she just had a hard time having children and that's why 6 years apart and then 11. You could check that film the old-fashioned way, and go through page by page to see if there are other couples with both names the same. It actually goes faster than you think once you get used to recognizing the parents' names. You only have to look at that one column. If there aren't any other couples with the same names in that same town, the baby probably was theirs. Nothing works better than good old-fashioned pouring over records a page at a time. Way better than Record Hints, that's for sure!
That's why I get so upset when somebody adds wrong Record Hints to the many lines I researched that way, most of which have 6-7 generations. All that work I painstakingly did over the course of about 20 years treated so shabbily.
Oh, and if you aren't sure, I personally would dismiss it. If it is for someone really in that family you or somebody can always add it later. Better to NOT add the person and the source even if it's right than to add it if it's wrong. That's my opinion.0 -
Juli said: I *have* gone through the film, image by image. And the death/burial records, too. Even the years when the registers are in Slovak (which I don't know). There were at least seven different men named Andreas Majer having babies recorded in the Garamszeg Lutheran register in the 1830s to 1850s. There were at least three women named Eva Bohus having babies in the same place and time. Near as I can tell, only one couple combined the names, but it's totally not impossible for that to turn out to be untrue.
In my offline genealogy program, I solved the question by adding a note to the family, with full details about the unnamed baby (and some of the numbers quoted above). But that doesn't solve the attach-or-dismiss question on FS FT.0 -
Dale Hein said: Hello, all you engineers out there -- are you listening to this? THIS is the kind of tree user you should want adding sources in Family Tree. And nowadays they are a small percentage compared to the masses adding Record Hints willy-nilly.0
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Paul said: Brian Jensen (or colleague)
Please confirm you are still following this thread. I could have made some contributions of my own recently, but am not confident reporting them would be of any help if the current, weak algorithm is not being worked on and the examples noted.
Please remember, this is not all about the inconvenience to users in having to dismiss some of these ridiculous suggestions (wrong surnames / century, etc.) but to make it more difficult for inexperienced / irresponsible users to attach them to the wrong IDs. I have noticed most of the dates recorded against poor attachments are quite recent and believe the poor hints must be helping to make FT records even less reliable.0 -
Dale Hein said: Exactly!0
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Dale Hein said: Here is a really bad Possible Duplicate. Ann Maupin and Mrs. Turner are the same person? And the only information about Mrs. Turner is that she married a Mr. Turner doesn't say where Mr. and Mrs. Turner were born, lived and died, and they had a son named John. Ann Maupin had a son John. So I guess they have that in common. But seriously? John and Turner. Anywhere in the world. Can you imagine how many Mr. and Mrs. Turner's had a son named John anywhere in the world in 1796? But if I didn't catch this, I can guarantee you somebody would have merged it. I don't know what this link will look like after I do the merge, but here it is anyway.
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/mer...
And Maupin's aren't my family, but did you see somebody created a ridiculous duplicate of Gabriel Maupin, because of a GEDCOM file -- no other reason or source or anything. Just a GEDCOM file. Heaven help us all. https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
And then somebody else has been doing the ordinances and is already to do the endowment. For somebody who was done in 1948! And it's right there on the same page. It was probably one of those Ordinances Ready things. The person reserved it and never even looked at the obviously crazy page.0
This discussion has been closed.