Transcribers repeating records

LegacyUser

Melissa Johnson said: Although I appreciate all the volunteers who have transcribed records, I am placing 4-5 marriage and birth records on an individuals page. Today I noted 4 marriage records I attached in 2015.
I just spent five hours on "Record Hints Available" the other night only to be adding additional marriage & birth records, the identical records you sent me years ago (particular spelling, middle initial not capitalized). How can that be?
I want to attach records but I don't like when you have people transcribing the same records over and over. One individual I did the other night had 31 records, less than 10 were necessary, the rest were repeats.
You all are so smart. Can't you figure how to assign transcribers so they are not repeating records? And how is it that an identical record from two years ago showed up again and I again attach it - so now there is one more identical record with the other four for marriages, births, whatever. I could ignore these identical records but I'm afraid someone is going to add them to a wrong tree so I have to add them to the correct tree.
What you are doing is so valuable. I hate to think of the hours kind volunteers are wasting. It wastes my time too.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: Sometimes the same record was filmed twice, the same event was recorded twice, or the record is duplicated in two seperate record collections. Also if a record spanned two pages it might be possible that the record could be transcribed twice. I do not believe that the same page in an indexing project would ever be transcribed twice.

For example, a record in the collection "England, Births and Baptisms", which dates from the IGI decades ago, could be repeated in a collection that focuses on a specific county of England.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Melissa,

A van Helsdingen is right and there have been a lot of Hints and citation out there that looked like duplicates that were not.

However, in the last couple of weeks there was a problem. It APPEARS as though FS was trying to create updated persistent URLs for the FS archives where these citations as sources are saved, and something went wrong. I now have exact duplicates of the same records now with different URLs.

If you could give us a PID and the names of the attached sources that you are talking about, we could have a look and see if it is one of the first or the second type of issue.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Hints for Marriage-related records often include a number of records at the responsibility.

FamilySearch has not accurately identified the type of marriage-related records.

Here is a list that can include the names of one or both of the couple:
- Affidavit providing permission for a person to marry
- Index of the affidavits
- Banns
- Marriage Licenses
- Index of the Licenses, often copied because the original was becoming unusable.

Note that the above may not actually contain a marriage record. They only indicate an intention to marry.

The following are actual marriage records:
- Marriage Register
- Index to the marriage register (and copy if one was made)
- Marriage Certificate
- Index to the marriage certificates (and copy if one was made)

So there are nine different records that can deal with a marriage-related event. That doesn't include index copies that were created because the original index was getting badly worn and fragile.

And all of those can end up on the couple's profiles, along with relatives of the couple.

The error mentioned by Jeff (above) created an additional problem and I'm not sure it has been resolved.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Oh, I am fairly convinced some identical records have been transcribed twice. The problem lies in FamilySearch either not having the resources, or not using them, to keep accurate records on exactly what has been already indexed.

In the example of duplicate filming, there seems no reason why one of the films should have been marked as needing to be excluded from the indexing process. In other cases, I feel a check should have been made and priority evaluated for adding sources multiple times. I have at least four sets of sources attached to numerous IDs for christening events in Northumberland, England. I cannot see any difference in their content, so feel adding sources for other areas should have taken precedence.

More recently, identical looking records for Essex parishes have been added twice in a short period of time. There are no detailed citations against them, so it is impossible to see how this might have come about.

Updates of England & Wales census collections are completely inconsistent, so while the update usually replaces the older record, often we are left with two sources for the same transcription.

I understand FamilySearch does keeps logs of all its work, indexing and otherwise, so it is a little disappointing these do not seem to be compared to see if certain material is truly identical. Users could play an important role in such monitoring work (reporting, say, sources that have been added twice - perhaps in error), but we are rarely provided with sufficient detail of added material to identify if it truly is "new" or relates to an identical, existing source.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Whether or not this example relates directly to Melissa's point or not, the screenshot below illustrates a very time-consuming problem.

A random check has shown most of these new record hints relate to events for which I have already attached a source. However, this latest batch of sources are of no help as they cite an incorrect, or incorrectly titled, collection. Many are said to be from a collection of Northumberland non-conformist records, whereas the sources already attached are for the same dates, but correctly show these events took place in Sunderland, which is in County Durham, not Northumberland.

So I not only have the bother of attaching sources (probably hundreds of them in this and other branches of the tree) but having to note the place name ("Northumberland") is incorrect! Surely users who like receiving hints and attaching multiple sources for the "same" event cannot be experiencing issues like this, or they would quickly be begging for a solution to this issue.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Melissa,

If your example is true duplicates, it would be good to let FS have some PIDs and source names so that they can address it.

I have seen a couple of these recently showing up as hints, but I can't remember where I saw them