Thoughts on Correcting Errors in the Records
Comments
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Ana Maria Hernandez de Quintanilla said: English is not my firs language, but I will try to expres my idea... I was so happy when several years ago I start to work in family search and I spended some time to collect some information about my family, but not long after, I realized that some of my father, and my grandfather, and my mother records, was wrong for some reason...
I stoped my work, and now I start again... to found that even my name, is wrong registered, because my last name given at birth, is before, and after my name...
I realized that my family records was sended to family serch by a thirt party, that was related, but was not worked with documents or "first hand" information, thinking that do the work, was more important, that be specific with the names or places, or dates, or oficial relationships... I think that have the option to have access to our self fields for living people, will be so helpfull, even if we can not have access to correct the info for the ones that pass away alredy...
I am so happy that people that know how the programs work, are willing to do the necesary changes, so program will be more productive, efficient and accurate. I will not give up this time, and I thanks to every one, that make this possible, to have this family serch working, and keep us toghether...
Thanks again, love you all!!0 -
Ronald Edwin Riding said: Perry F. Keith born 13 Dec 1842 in Winchester, Clark County, Kentucky had 9 children:
Frank M. Keith (1860-1943)
Leslie R. Keith (1863-1915)
William "Boney" Keith (1869-1957)
Felix Orset Keith (1871-1947)
James Liza Keith (1873-1950)
Benjamin T. Keith (1879-1953)
Perry Hussie Keith (1879-1957)
Mathe Keith (1884-1946)
Listed in NewFamilySearch is another Frank Keith or Frank M. Keith as the first child. He is listed as a female and is married to Martha P. Sorters, a male. According to Find a Grave Memorial the second Frank M. Keith is a male married to Martha P. Sortor a female. This is also according to the US census for Perry F. Keith and his family.
Please remove the first Frank or Frank M. Keith from the records.
Thank you
Ronald E. Riding, Provo, Utah0 -
Pamela Lynn O'Brien said: Contact NFS not this Site. ContaCT Feedback click on Problem and tell them what you put here and they can helP yOU
That's the way it works
Sorry0 -
Don Cameron said: Ronald,
Nobody on this page or at the LDS are going to do as you request. This page is not about actually correcting errors. It is a page about discussing how in the future, the LDS might introduce a method of correcting or allowing annotations. So best save your list of errors for then.
Don Cameron.0 -
sue rowe said: Yes....why doesn't everyone stop listing corrections to their family records here?! You are all wasting your time.....! This is simply a forum to suggest better ways of recording mistakes to any existing listings! Your details won't get changed by anyone listing them here!!! I try to keep up with the discussion of correcting listings but my email is getting clogged with people listing personal details.....!!!0
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Warren Ellis Whipple said: I think the most important aspect of this work is to identify the individuals so their work can be done. All tho mistakes such as mispellings hinder the research in some instances, more important is the ties to parents, spouses and children. When a person can be proven to have different ties than those already entered, there needs to be a way to correct those errors so the flow of ties that bind can be continued, so that others aren't misled to research down wrong paths. At some point after a record has been researched and proven, the record needs to reflect that and further corrections should be done only with substaniated or new information. I commend the work thats being done to fulfill this great work. Thanks to those who work so hard.0
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Marsha Thomas said: A way to make corrections to known errors in spelling is essential. I just purely by accident found two generations of family I had been researching for years. Due to the misspelling of the names, Bauden for Bowden, Gaylor for Taylor and Heartnets for Hortense. With these spelling errors on the part of the census enumerator it is as if the family never existed, lost to research other then to be found by incredible luck, as in my case. When the information was found it was like a pot of gold.0
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Pamela Lynn O'Brien said: I agree with you about spelling errors What we NEED is some way of saying there are other ways to say that this is an additional way of spelling the name and let us use as a tool and We will see if those are our correct person.0
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James Bridges said: Ancestry has a way for users to suggest corrections. What is wrong with expecting Family Search to do likewise??? I presume they are "working on it".0
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Pamela Lynn O'Brien said: That's what I am saying also!0
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Jerry Wayne Rechtenbach said: There are too many people that can freely add to a person's family history. Mine has been created with an entire generation skipped. This could be solved if the record were allowed to be edited only by family members with documented sources. perhaps a person/contrubutor for each family could be designated and all corrections would have to be approved by that person to make the correction.0
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Don Cameron said: Jerry,
Your suggestion seems to me far too restrictive. Who is going to decide who is the designated person to make all the corrections? Furthermore, if corretions were only able to be made by a "family member" what constitutes a "family member," is that immediate family like brothers and sister, mothers and fathers or uncles, aunts, cousins? What happens if I'm the 6th cousin 9 times removed, and I'm the only person doing the genealogy of a particular family, and there is nobody else to make the correction at the time I notice the error; do I wait for someone closer to the actual person to come along and make the correction for me? What if nobody comes along? How long am I supposed to wait? It's all too messy and all too restrictive. I don't think you have thought through this suggestion. Sorry.
Don Cameron.0 -
Jerry Wayne Rechtenbach said: Wow Don, get a little worked up over a suggestion to a problem that obviously exists in Family Search? I simply pointed out a problem (per the request in Family Search) and suggested a potential direction to take. Perhaps you could focus on being useful rather than attacking a post by someone who is just trying to help work towards a solution.0
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Anne England said: Ancestry's way is best: a mark indicating an alternate fact/spelling. I have made many comments on family members that way when I found an error. It was often the census taker's fault. The comments are kept along the side, and the alternate spellings appear in the searches, as well as the original ones. Sometimes the fact is changed when an indexer misread a name/date, & it is verified. I'm looking forward to a sidebar on the pages where corrections/comments can be made.
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Don Cameron said: Hi Jerry,
I'm not attacking you. I'm simply pointing out that your system would be unworkable. I'm sorry if this has come across to you as an attack. It was not meant to be such. If you knew me, you'd know if I really was attacking someone, it would be quite unequivocal. I just get a bit annoyed by people who don't think through their ideas well enough. Of course I'm not perfect here, I've been known to put forward some rather useless ideas in my time. I would hope that my time is spent being useful. I have helped hundreds of people starting out in genealogy. I started researching when I was 9 years old, and I'm now 61. So I can safely say, I've been quite productive and helpful. Please accept my humble apologies if I have offended you.
Sincerely,
Don Cameron.0 -
Joe Mode said: I believe, after all of the suggestions, that the way Ancestry allows for corrections, or suggested corrections, to be the most prudent and secure method to correcting mistakes. Nothing but the suggestion would be permanent. I know my own genealogy and know, beyond a doubt in most cases, what a name should be, etc., but would not want just anybody correcting a record permanently. At one time it seems, even as a non-member, I was able to make corrections on Ancestry, but find that I cannot do this now. Anyone know if there is a way to make corrections without being a member? I appreciate all of the hard work that goes into transcribing records and hope FamilySearch can find away to include suggested corrections.
Happy Hunting!0 -
Terri White said: look for help in new.familysearch.org and submit the problem. Listing it here will probably get you no where. This is for comments about the fact that they are considering "how" to make it possible for people to submit corrections to indexed work. This is not the group that would make changes to links and information in a family tree.0
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Terri White said: A note area sounds great, but it does not help a "search" function of the name field at all.0
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Terri White said: I have been on ancestry.com. You can make changes to a chosen field and add a note about the details of *why* the change. The chanes are linked to the original document and are searchable as well as the oringinal indexing entry. My g-g-grandfather is Ozias Kilbourn/Kilburn. He had a grandfather and great-grandfather also named Ozias Kilbourn. The youngest of them went by Bans, which was his nickname. No one would know to search for "Bans" which is what is shown in the census unless they knew he had a nickname that he went by. The ancestry.com changes are very helpful since they show up in the search results.0
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Anne England said: Like 0
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David Fleer said: I should think that one of the modified Soundex searches in Ancestry or FamilySearch would mitigate these differences and produce satisfactory results. In FTM, all these variations can be accommodated as aliases (also known as) if you need to maintain some link between what's reported and the name you believe is "accurate".0
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Edith Harris said: Wayne's comment is spot on. E.g., I found a marriage record transcription (actually 2 separate ones) that showed the bride I was looking for to be 18 years old and the groom to be 21. This threw me off, since I knew they had to be much older at the time of their marriage, based on other records. Fortunately, the original record was available and it proved to be a form that only indicated that the bride was at least 18 and the groom at least 21 at the time of the marriage, i.e., of legal marriageable age. The transcriber evidently had taken that to mean the bride and groom were actually those ages and even took the time to do the math to put in the incorrect birth years, which were nowhere indicated on the original record. Makes me wonder how many other marriage records had the same error.0
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Bernice Mistrot said: I agree that the Ancestry method of listing alternates, rather than allowing submitters to change the original transcription, is the most prudent solution, especially in the following two cases:
1. The recorded document is in error (whether simple spelling errors, or more complex situations, such as reversing the first and last names, or giving a step-parent's name as the parent).
2. The handwriting is unclear, and multiple interpretations are plausible, even though a family member may be certain that there is only one "right" way to read it.
But there is a third case, in which there is a clear transcription error, and once it is brought to an arbitrator's attention, provided there is sufficient manpower at FamilySearch to manually review the submitted corrections/alternates, these should be able to be corrected by FamilySearch (not by the submitter). Two recent examples:
A clearly typed death certificate, no faded ink, with the surname SCHEUER typed three times (deceased, parent, and informant) was transcribed as SCHEVER.
A death certificate in which the father's name was given but the mother's name was left blank, was transcribed with the name of the informant (who was the wife of the deceased) shown as his mother. The Informant box on this certificate is directly below the Mother box. It's an easy mistake to make; can it be as easily fixed?
In all cases, the person supplying the alternate information should cite a written source, both to demonstrate the validity of the alternate, and to point future researchers in the right direction. "I know my own mother's birthdate" is not sufficient; none of us can know that from first hand knowledge.
Ancestry requires a choice between "transcription error" and "incorrect in image." But sometimes it's both. For example, the correct name is Branard, the census taker wrote Menard, and the transcriber might read it as Miuand. It would be nice to allow the option to select more than one reason, or provide instructions as to which one to select when multiple reasons apply.0 -
Don Cameron said: Bernice,
On my grandparents marriage certificate my grandmother's maidend surname was spelt four different ways. The minister recorded it one way, she signed another, and two of the witnesses, both family members, spelt their surname differently again. Her surname was MacAulay or McAuley, or MacCauley, or McCauley, or Macauley, or McAulay, etc, etc, etc. I've never been sure how to spell it, so I've just settled on one spelling and kept to that.
Don Cameorn.0 -
Vernal Henry Gledhill said: How do I get reserved released? A reserve is on my family. It is by a distant second cousin. It has been there a long time with nothing done. I am 90 years old and a temple ordinance worker and the last of my family alive. I need to get this done soon or it will be too late.
How do I get this reserve released ?? I have tried to contact her by e-mail with no response. She may be deceased.
Thank you for a reply.
Vern93@cox.net0 -
Mary Susan (Carlson) Scott said: Perhaps you should contact New FamilySearch support directly at 1-866-406-1830 and ask them what to do. Explain the relationships involved and see what they can suggest.
Another task you might consider is see if you can find the relative on the social security death index at www.ancestry.com and see if you can locate the relative or his/her family.
This topic list isn't really able to help you with your situation but New FamilySearch support might be able to help.
I hope you can work out the situation so that the temple ordinances for your ancestors may be done soon.
Good luck.
Mary Scott0 -
Lorna Audrey Morrison said: Try uncombinning your person so the reserving person is no longer with your entry and then go through the temple process0
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Maria Teresita Lopez Caibigan Cosme said: the names of the children of maria teresita lopez caibigan cosme have been repeated twice or thrice0
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Pamela Lynn O'Brien said: You know it would be GREAT if PEOPLE who use this site would find out what it is ABOUT AND FOR> It is not for COMPLAINING ABOUT PROBLEMS that have happened or are needing corrections, That is where SUPPORT comes in. IT IS ABOUT SUGGESTIONS ON HOW the PROGRAMMERS OR ENGINEERS Can help us with the FUTURE Solutions.
PLEASE keep That in mind when you comment, which has been repeated time and time again.0 -
JEAN HARDCASTLE said: Perhaps ,Pamela if FAMILY SEARCH provided forum facilities for people to enter their queries then they would not use this wrongly -searchers are very frustrated by the lack of concern re.incorrect records.0
This discussion has been closed.