Indexing software is missing some basic features

LegacyUser

Milan Tyler-Pohontsch said: The software that is used to index parish records does not work well for corrections. For example, if the original indexer only entered the given name of a person, there is no way to add the family name during the correction process. Also, if the indexer skipped the names of the parents in a christening records, there is no way to add it. Corrected can be only what was originally established by the indexer. Fields not established cannot be added later. If this software should do for what is was programmed, you need to allow those who can read the records better then the indexer to make those edits.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: The correction of index feature is still under developement. FS needs permission of the record owners and sometimes of companies such as Ancestry, FMP and MyHeritage to index and alter the index of records, and that means some record sets cannot be corrected (at least at this time).

LegacyUser

Paul said: I don't know if there has been a change in the programming, but when I made searches similar to the one below in the past I would get far more results if I did not input "Smith" as the last name of the person on whom I was conducting the search. In other words, I would be presented with a number of results that were for just a "Charles" who was the son of a John Smith.

However, the search I just carried out had a last name against every result. True, in a handful of cases this was not "Smith" - they appear to be instances involving the census, where (in this example) John Smith was apparently the stepfather.

But the good news for me is that I seemingly no longer have to worry about the last name being omitted for the child during an indexing project - where the indexer took the instruction to record a christening record exactly as written. (e,g, "Charles the son of John Smith" would only be indexed with the father's name as "Smith").

Nowadays, the FamilySearch program must automatically insert a last name, because - unless another user can show an example to prove me wrong - there appear to be no results with a blank field for the last name, as I had expected from my searches in earlier years.

Although the second image illustrates individuals named Charles without the same surname as their "father", it no longer seems to matter (in terms of finding them) if the child was indexed without a surname. Inputtting "Smith" as their surname would previously have excluded them from the results of such a search - as they would have appeared as just "Charles" here:


Towards the end of the results pages, those without their "father's" surname appear - but there are no longer any results showing no surname at all:


In summary, whilst none of this should detract from the validity of the specific problem posted here, it does appear to illustrate it no longer matters whether the indexer records (or rather doesn't) the last name of the child - as long as this is recorded for the parent.

LegacyUser

Juli said: I haven't explored the current state of affairs, but there was definitely a conflict earlier between indexing projects and the search interface.

The example I know best is of course Hungarian, specifically the civil registrations of births. None of the various formats of the register-books include a space for the child's surname, so it makes perfect sense that all of the indexing instructions told you to leave the surname blank unless specifically recorded _for the child_ (such as in an addendum or marginal note). However, that instruction was ignored just as often as it was followed -- indexers always feel they know better than the people setting up the projects -- so the current project doesn't even have a child's surname field.

But what makes sense in indexing doesn't necessarily mesh so well with searching. The surname-less birth records used to be nearly unfindable, unless you repeatedly ignored the stupid warning about including a surname next time. As I said, I haven't explored whether this has changed at all lately (I've found most of my Budapest births the long way already), but a change was certainly in order.

LegacyUser

Slotbuddy said: There was a change in some birth, christening and death projects wherein the indexer would be permitted to include the surname of the child if it was given for the parents and also vice versa; it could be given to the parents if it was given to the child and not given to the parents. Previously, the indexers were not given this permission and perhaps this is making the difference in your searches.