BUG - Text of obituary not seen
Comments
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Tom Huber said: Justin, some of the sites that feature newspaper obituaries previously did display a clipping, but those sites, including GenealogyBank no longer provide an image of the clipping itself, but a transcription.
That's unfortunately, because the transcription is computer generated, so seeing the actual clipping would be a guard against any error that can occur with either a human or computer generated text.0 -
Lundgren said: I'll ask the team over this to look at it.
If there is an unencumbered image that we can show then I expect that it would be visible.
Many obituaries no longer have physical media associated with them. (Online only).
I believe this collection is a mixed set.0 -
Justin Masters said: Thanks Lundgren.
Tom, I'm in agreement regarding making text available in lieu of images. As an example of how bad it can be, I would suggest that you look at clippings made from newspapers.com (now owned by Ancestry), click on the OCR link at the bottom of those clippings, and see what comes out. I've had to type obituaries in by hand because the computer generated output is so poor.
That said, I want to point out that GenealogyBank is a business, and they have a right to preserve their business. If they have made an agreement to provide text only, then we need to respect that (and be grateful for what we do have).
Ancestry has shown a business model where SOME clippings are available for people to look at by non-subscribers (possibly limited by copyright agreements with newspapers who provide the original images?), with access to full-page images being held back for subscribers.
So I want to be very clear that my questions revolve around proper operation of this site, and I don't want to foster allegations about what should happen.
We're not behind the scenes in the negotiations that happen. I'm grateful for this site and partner organizations have offered what we do have.0
This discussion has been closed.