When obits are indexed duplicates are being created for descendants who are already set up.

LegacyUser

EG Sylvester said: A warning pops up on the screen if you try to change the status of someone from dead to living. If there is not a warning about maiden vs married names of descendants when entering an obit THERE NEEDS TO BE! I have experienced multiple duplicates of people being added from obit with the married name, when that person has already been entered with their maiden name. Not only that but living people seem to be automatically be entered as deceased with no source whatsoever...just that they were mentioned in their parents obit. This takes sooooooo much time to fix each one. There has to be a better way. It seems that those people doing the indexing are determined to add as many names as they come across, no matter if it is correct information or not. In this situation the search feature for duplicates doesn't really work. Maybe it should be standard to have a source that proves a person is dead before listing them as such. You would get an error message and not be able to leave the transaction until you provided a source, change the status to living, or cancel the entry.
I, myself am currently listed as dead after someone entered my mother's obit. LOL
There is another person in my tree who had four husbands and children from each one. When her obit was input, all seven of the children had the same last name. Again it was very time consuming to correct. Also, hardly anyone gives a reason for their entry. That should also be a required entry, as well.

LegacyUser

David Newton said: Are you mentioned in your mother's obituary? If yes then you should indeed be indexed. HOWEVER that does not mean someone should have entered you into the tree itself.

You are not dealing with bad indexing here. What you are dealing with is careless and ignorant people creating FSFT profiles where they should not. That also said most obituaries will also distinguish between living and dead relatives in their text, so the indexing should also distinguish between relatives based on that criterion. The living at the time of the obituary should be indexed but marked as living at the time of the obituary. That won't stop the careless and ignorant, but it might slow some of them down.

LegacyUser

Juli said: Many obituaries available on FS were machine-indexed: converted to machine-readable text using optical character recognition, and then run through a parser looking for people's names and relationships. Both steps can get things completely wrong. Given how much trouble the parser has with basic relationships, I doubt it could be counted on to determine living versus deceased.

Of course, the big problem with the machine-indexed obituaries is that the originals are unavailable unless you're Mormon and/or pay money to GenealogyBank. This means that the vitally necessary step of comparing the index to the image is impossible for most people, rendering the index basically useless.

But all faults of the indexed databases aside, none of that transfers to the FamilySearch Family Tree without human intervention. Indexing does absolutely nothing to Family Tree. There has to be a user involved to transfer any information from one database to the other.

LegacyUser

Cindy Hecker said: As stated above Indexing does not add someone to Familysearch Tree. Some person (volunteer) who adds an indexed obituary as a source oftentimes adds all the people in the obituary to the tree (creates profiles). That should not be done unless you know if a person is living or deceased. I myself never add anyone from any record unless I can prove that person is over 110 or is deceased. Too many people do this from census records too. There are plenty of people in the 1940 census still living. More education should be given. If you see someone adding these living people as deceased kindly send them a message and educate them. They can add their family as living from obituaries but they should not add them as deceased unless they know they are dead.

LegacyUser

EG Sylvester said: You have all described the problem better than I did. I realize adding the actual obit itself does not automatically add all mentioned in it. What I should have stated is that the person indexing the obit is then creating profiles for all the descendants listed in the obit. And yes, the obit distinguishes living from dead descendants, but the indexer doesn't know/understand/care if the information is correct, only that they have created another profile. It would seem that giving warnings and making it harder or impossible for someone to add a deceased person without proof is worth a try.
While I appreciate the input, no one so far has had a suggestion as to how to remedy the problem. Its reminds me of all the litterbugs in the world when they discard there trash and expect someone else to clean up after them.
FYI I did email the person who created my 2nd profile as a dead person. They have not replied. And as for the machine indexed process, I have not heard of that and have no words. Yes, I do. Again it is as if they know they are leaving a mess for others to clean up.
Thanks to all who have commented.

LegacyUser

Juli said: Once again: NO, the indexer is NOT CREATING PROFILES. Really. First of all, as I wrote above, the indexer may very well be a machine, not a person, and second of all, the two processes (indexing and profile creation) are NOT CONNECTED. At all. In any way.

LegacyUser

EG Sylvester said: I'm so sorry that I am having trouble processing in my mind what you describe.
Whether it is an indexer or a relative...whoever is doing this...it seems there is a need to make this problem go away.
And if the indexer is a machine, it is still leaving a mess for others to clean up and should be dealt with in some way. It has no regard for the Genealogy Proof Standard. We can put a man on the moon but we can't figure out how to make a clean tree?

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The indexing process is not related in any manner to FamilySearch FamilyTree. It is completely separate and whether by machine or computer or person, it does not add, change, or do anything else with the massive tree and records found in the tree.

The only way a duplicate of an existing person’s record can be created is when a user, who is not doing indexing makes changes or creates a new record.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Records of persons in the tree are not automatically or magically created by machines/computers.

LegacyUser

EG Sylvester said: Got it! I understand indexing is separate from creating a file for a new person. So whoever is doing this needs to be guided by improved software that will guard against such issues. Correcting my own mistakes is a full time job. I don't have time to fix all the errors of everyone else. It isn't necessarily their fault. It is the software that needs to be improved.

LegacyUser

Juli said: As a t-shirt I own says, "Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot". There is no such thing as software that can't be used incorrectly.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: a corollary to that is, "If you make a system idiot proof, then only an idiot will WANT to use it".

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The idea to build better software is a good one, so don’t be disheartened by the comments. Unfortunately, as much as computers appear to be intelligent, that is still a matter of science fiction.

There are a number of things FamilySearch can do to help prevent some of the problems that we see, but it all takes time and resources, of which FamilySearch is in short supply.

LegacyUser

EG Sylvester said: Please let me apologize to any/all the dedicated indexers I inadvertently offended in my frustration with discovering (according to Family Search)that I am deceased. I myself have been an indexer in the past so I know the issues of just trying to read the document being indexed. If you are a regular indexer then you are an execeptional person, no doubt.

I don't think the reasoning that software can't be used incorrectly is a reason not to try to improve it. I don't think it is too much to ask that a person have proof that a someone is dead before classifying them as such. And I don't think that it is asking too much for care to be taken to avoid duplicating women with their maiden name AND their married name. It seems that would benefit the goal of FamilySearch to have one world-wide ACCURATE tree. If that makes me an idiot...so be it.

I realize that whoever did this particular entry was actually a distant relative and possibly new to the site. Thank you Tom Huber for acknowledging there are problems with the process.

LegacyUser

Cindy Hecker said: There is one safe guard in place already when you add someone less than 110 years old or without a date (birth or death) the system asks you WHY do you think this person is deceased. The person entering the information must be ignoring that response. When entering in names it does prompt to use Maiden names too. There are things in place if people will follow the directions. More education is always good.

LegacyUser

Juli said: The system could undoubtedly use improvement, but the question is, how?

As Cindy points out below, it is already set up to ask for a reason you believe the person to be dead if you enter someone without dates or with a recent date (and sometimes even when you just finished entering a birth date three centuries ago, but I digress).

One problem with requiring proof before allowing entry is the chicken-and-egg quandary: unless you're allowed to enter and save the profile, there's nowhere to *put* the proof.

And then there's the other, even more fundamental problem: how do you define "proof"? The something-anything approach of the reason statement clearly doesn't stop some people from proceeding with ill-advised additions. So what would it take to stop such people, and what burden would such measures place on the normally more reasonable users of the system?

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Education can certainly help in some areas, but it is important to remember that there are folks out there who intentionally ignore some of these things. (Sheepishly, I must admit to having done this in the past). Frequently this is to avoid what they consider "limitations" imposed by the implementation of the website.

At one time this was partially because marking a person as "Living" would limit them in searches and hints. If you attached a name of a person born only 100 years ago, there is a high probability that they have already passed away. By marking them as deceased, it was easier to find sources and get hints for them showing death type events. Furthermore, if they are marked as Deceased, patrons other than yourself could also find such sources or see those hints.

I believe that FS has improved this to some degree, but I don't know to what extent.

LegacyUser

EG Sylvester said: It is nice to see the tone of this discussion is now focusing on the problem. Thank you all so much for your input. I am learning from your comments. Unfortunately, I forget as quickly as I learn. I don't use FS often because it seems everytime I come here I get frustrated.

The good news is FS has notified me that I am now living. Thanks again and stay safe out there.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Welcome back to the land of the living!
:-)

FS *IS* pretty idiosyncratic. And since it is a constantly evolving system, as the FS team figures out how to deal with so many circumstances, the User Interface has a habit of changing frequently. Also. I'm not sure where else you work on your Family History, but if it does not use a single shared tree as FS does, it is BOUND to be less complicated.

For some of us the solution is to use FSFT a *LOT* and continue to peruse the GetSatisfaction forum for FamilySearch to keep track of any bizarre things that may be happening.

Something that I would like to see is some kind of a FamilySearch system "map" created. When people first come into FamilySearch, it is not quite clear that they are dealing with multiple databases, each serving a different purpose (e.g., FamilyTree, Historical records, personal tree collections (GEDCOMs), etc.). Many don't realize that there are other forums run by FS other than this one as well.

As far as forgetting things as fast as you learn them, in my case that's a senior thing. There are some benefits. As they say I can hide my own easter eggs and wrap my own Christmas presents :-)

LegacyUser

EG Sylvester said: Ancestry.com is my primary family history site. On FS I have my immediate family on "watch". Maybe I should do my BP a favor and turn that off.

Thanks

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I have Ancestral Quest on my Mac. Initially I used it to research and then make appropriate additions to FamilyTree. However I now do almost all my research and vetting of existing records on FamilySearch and then using Ancestral Quest mainly as a backup for all the work I've done on FS.

When I have gone through a person's record and their relations on Family Search to the point that everything looks good and there is no more "low hanging fruit" in FS's indexed records, I will sync that PID record with its match in my AQ database, and set the record on FS to be watched. When changes on FSFT occur, I can instantly see what has been changed through a comparison with my AQ DB (as opposed to using the FS change logs which are so cryptic that they are nigh impossible to follow some times). If the changes made in FS make sense, I simply update my DB by running a sync back to my AQ DB (only takes a few seconds).

If the changes made in FS are nonsense and/or have no documentation, I will go and do what is necessary to either change it back, or clean it up (e.g., add sources) as necessary. Then I'll sync it back to my AQ DB again.

If severely inappropriate changes have been made (e.g., incorrect merges, etc.), I have a full tree in my DB to use in rebuilding the FSFT sections that were damaged.

Frankly, with the rampant damage that frequently occurs in the FSFT (many times by "unrepentant" individuals who keep repeating the same offense), I don't see how anyone can maintain sanity trying to watch the accuracy of the work they've done there without some kind of backup of the work that they've done.

LegacyUser

EG Sylvester said: Sounds like a great system. I basically do the same using Ancestry's site.
Thanks for the input.