Feedback Site for Reporting Possible Indexing Errors

LegacyUser

Gerald Enz Garfield said: I would recommend providing a place where we can send feedback for possible indexing errors to be corrected. For example, I am researching one of my ancestors Henry Kelly/Kelley. There was a link in search for "United States Census (Slave Schedule), 1860" Coosa County, Alabama for a Henry Kelley. Looking at image 10 of 22, I found what appears to be a Henry Haynes next to the # 32 on the left side instead of Henry Kelley as the search would indicate. If we have a place to report these possible errors, Family Search cold have a team of arbitrators to review these finding and make the corrections or to provide feedback to the submitter why it shouldn't be corrected. Approving this suggestion could have direct impact on improving search function of Family Search.

LegacyUser

FamilySearch Moderator said: We have currently undertaken what is a great effort to re-architect our software to allow users to change and document the indexes of the records, or to make notes about the records themselves. We have been rolling this out slowly and in phases. In the meantime, please feel free to state your case and your documentation and reasons in the accumulated Notes or Discussions about the person, under the Collaborate tab of the person's record.

LegacyUser

Paul said: But have there been any efforts to address metadata issues?

Lots of them have been around for years, each of which affects the (in)accuracy of thousands of individual's records: not just the odd ones that we can already can, or will be able to change in future, ourselves.

Only FamilySearch can feasibly undertake this work.

We need:

(a) An email address / link to report these
(b) An expectation this serious problem will be addressed, if instances are reported.

LegacyUser

Paul said: FamilySearch Moderator

Would you please advise how problems like this can be dealt with. The description for Digital Folder Number 007903839 is correctly shown in the Catalog as

"Parish register transcripts of Sunderland and various other parishes in Durham and Northumberland, 1719-1879"

I am receiving a huge amount of record hints (for different IDs) relating to this collection. All of those checked so far refer to events that took place at Sunderland (County Durham) parish church, yet these sources are headed

"England, Northumberland Non-Conformist Church Records, 1613-1920"

Worse still, the event place is shown as "England, United Kingdom" for all sources.

This detail is not only unhelpful, but incorrect and misleading. There must be many thousands of sources appearing like this, leading users to believe their relatives were born in another county (Northumberland) to what was actually the case (Durham). True, a relatively small amount of records under this reference probably do relate to Northumberland events, but the source title needs to be changed to something close to how the Catalog records them.

No individual user(s) can undertake this work, so please advise how this (and many similar errors) can be reported / corrected - and/or pass this on to someone (in Indexing or wherever) who can correct such inaccurate detail.

Fortunately, in this particular case, a "Similar Historical Record" (with link) does happen to be available. This does show (see 2nd screenshot) the accurate detail relating to this specific event. However, in most cases I have encountered (involving a similar problem) a second source would not be available.

Even the event type shown here is wrong - the date is for the birth: other records show the baptism took place on 6 August 1815.


It is fortunate that, in this particular case, there is another source available to give accurate details of the event:


At the moment I am very reluctant to add the unattached, incorrectly described source (that also has inaccurate content) to this ID, given a fully-detailed correct one is already attached.

LegacyUser

joe martel said: Thanks. The teams are aware.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Your response is much appreciated, Joe.

Bob Wylie

Indexing Errors: The state of Maine only indexes those that occur in the state of Maine, yet many towns in Maine are being indexed as being somewhere else other than Maine. Here's an example for you that I took a screenshot for you. The town was indexed as being indexed in the state of Washington. Below it you will see the same town with it's proper county & Maine. These all through your entire system for Maine Indexes, Maine Vital Records & others. Hope this helps so others may search without them being confused by all the errors. The link below is the link where you will see this for yourself.

https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=100&q.anyDate.from=1942&q.anyPlace=maine&q.deathLikeDate.from=1988&q.givenName=daniel%20e&q.surname=chase

Thanks,

Bob Wylie

Maile L

Thanks Bob. I have reported the error.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

@Bob Wylie, no, these were not indexed as being somewhere other than Maine. That 1988 death, for example, was indexed, correctly and simply, as "Edgecomb". The erroneous place in the search results list is being supplied by on-the-fly autostandardization, which is a process that for some inexplicable reason appears to incorporate zero data validation: it does not check that a Maine death index was definitely not referring to a place in Washington.