Bring back letting us see our reviews
Years ago I used to index and after a while, I would be able to see the review of what I had indexed. I would go over them and learn from my mistakes. I was doing poorly until I did this. After reviewing them I was able to do them with perfection. It made me a better indexer. The way it is now you have to ask all of these questions to understand and have to wait for someone to answer you. I feel bad for asking all of these questions because I feel I am bothering people. If we could see our reviews we could free up other people's time too. I feel I am doing them blindly now. I have just started indexing again and really feel lost. Thank you for listening.
Comments
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In the old indexing system, Arbitration was final. In this new indexing system, the Review step is not always final. If there's not enough agreement between the Indexer and the Reviewer, the batch goes on to a different Reviewer.
The best way to get help in indexing is to share your batch with someone before you submit it.
FamilySearch has been gradually adding the ability to edit indexed records because even with 2 or 3 sets of eyes on a document, indexing errors do occur.
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I don't totally understand all the indexing rules, still yet. Example, I just started indexing a Kentucky agricultural project. When I clicked on the first project, there were 41 entries that auto populated for me to fill out. When I went over the project, there were only 20 names across the image. I still don't know if I did the project correctly or not. According to the help fields I did, but why were there 41 entries and only 20 names?
This is why I need to see reviews to let me know my mistakes. I must confess that sometimes I did take it personal, but I soon got over it as I learned. I was grateful after my next few reviews. I even looked forward to seeing them.
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Some projects are set to a certain number of records/entries. When your image does not have that many, use the trash can icon to delete all blank entries.
Here are some really helpful indexing videos:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoiZaETrnV0>
13 minutes; Judy Sharp; BYU Family History Library; October 2019
<https://fh.lib.byu.edu/2019/06/17/web-indexing-kathryn-grant-13-jun-2019-60-min/>
54 minutes; Kathryn Grant; BYU Family History Library on 6/13/19
Here's an interview with Jason Pierson and discussion about indexing, including what's coming in the future.
<https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=589395128384425&ref=watch_permalink>
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One helpful thing you can do is contact a ward Temple and Family History Consultant. Give them your Shared batch code and have them walk through a batch with you.! That is their calling.
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I also miss being able to see how I was doing. I could be talking to two different Family History Consultants and they'll say different things. I also am a huge nerd that likes to be graded. I want to see myself what I did wrong.
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I strongly support this idea: Below is a version of my comment elsewhere on this issue. I'm pasting it here for context and in support of this suggestion.
"You are among those who want feedback on how accurately they are indexing and give input to indexers whose work you review. I'm with you on both issues and have suggested an opt-in procedure where willing Reviewers and Indexers could provide and receive DIRECT feedback on their work. It might even work in both directions "(360-degree" feedback?). But, at least Reviewer>Indexer. It might work/look something like the Labs optional "Reasons for Reindexing" form but without the "middleman" approach of having FS Support reach out to an egregiously wrong, even malicious Indexer (or Reviewer). The feedback would go directly to the "willing" recipient.
You remember the Indexer/Arbitration Desktop Indexing days when Indexers had precise feedback of what "corrections" an Arbitrator made to their work. You may also recall the tension and disagreement surrounding it, which is why FS didn't carry it into the Web Indexing program. There were poor Arbitrators, just as there are poor Reviewers, and the poor Arbitrators "corrected" already-correct work, annoying and frustrating good Indexers.
But I think that we've "thrown out the baby with the bathwater." We can conceive and execute a feedback system that won't be perfect but will do a lot more good than harm. And it should be pilot-tested with willing participants to try to get it right.
This "feedback" might also be an opportunity to improve the way we give review credentials to Indexers. I think that indexing just 1000 records with no idea of the accuracy of that work is not sufficient to produce good Reviewers. The threshold for becoming an Arbitrator was much higher - I indexed 30,000 records with a high "accuracy" before my mentor (yes, we had mentors) gave me those privileges. Even with those precautions, we still had poor Arbitrators. Imagine what might be happening with Reviewers today. Finally - with feedback going both ways, we might improve our Reviewers and our Indexers." JE
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I am just starting back indexing after not being able to index after an illness. Before I learned so much from seeing the reviews and am missing the “old” way of doing things. I feel I am wasting so much time looking for answers to questions that would have been answered by seeing a review. I agree “the baby has been thrown out with the bath water”. I have indexed and reviewed a little over 100,000 names and do miss the old way in training for new batches. Thanks to everyone for good input on different batches.
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I understand the frustration of "the arbitrator has the final say" particularly when they weren't reading the rules! To get around this, there are two different options that I can think of:
1) Not every little thing should be reported. There are lots of small errors that don't really make huge changes when indexing (ex. writing Guitierres when it says Guitierrez when the z and s are written the same). IF it is a big deal issue, the arbitrator can have the option of making a report, but they need to do so WITH A COPY of the specific rule from the project instructions. Arbitrators aren't perfect and having them review the rules before they tell someone they are indexing incorrectly will keep them from telling an indexer to do something wrong.
2) The arbitrator never actually directly sends corrections to the indexer. Once again, sometimes it's the arbitrator that is in error (like me sometimes!). Having a third party person receive a message and having that person be able to directly talk to the indexer for re-education will prevent misinformation from spreading and from tempers getting heated. The baby in the bathwater of some kind of communication between indexers and arbitrators is some people just don't know they are doing something wrong. The two biggest things I see indexers do wrong (indexing a record that ends on the page instead of the record that starts on the page and not knowing how to access the 10 pages before and after the pages to be indexed) make life harder and make indexing take longer. One time, some poor soul indexed ALL of the 10 pages before AND after. I really hope they figured out not to do that, but I have no idea if they did or not. It also took so long to delete all of those records so carefully indexed.
If I could change one thing about indexing, this would be it.
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