Community Reconstruction Project?
Does anyone know what the Community Reconstruction Project is?
They are using the userid: CommunityCensus Project
Seems they are creating records of families in Family Search maybe using the entries on the 1900
US census. The reason stated for linking the census source to this family is: Not Related. Participating in Community Reconstruction Project
Please see the family at:
John Smith April 1865 – Deceased • GWRQ-CC2 (father)
Mettie July 1865 – Deceased • GWRQ-XH2 (mother)
Lee Smith March 1892 – Deceased • GWRQ-2TN (son)
Cathan Smith September 1895 – Deceased • GWRQ-XHR (daughter)
Joseph Smith March 1898 – Deceased • GWRQ-2ZG (son)
Martha Smith May 1900 – Deceased • GWRQ-L6G (daugher)
The system is showing there might already be duplicates of the sons.
Inquiring minds....
Answers
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It's a BYU based project in which volunteers attach census records.
Generally, they do not resolve duplicates. That is left up to relatives to do.
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I have exchanged messages with a few participants in this project. They do good work but most seem rather inexperienced. They often create duplicates without realizing.
If I see them start work on a profile I am following, I jump in and do some tree building work on that family and local community. I just do the tree, leaving all the sources for them to attach. I may do a little coaching too. I hope to inspire them to do more good work for me.
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The current project guidelines for these volunteers is to attach the 1910 census (from a record hint), check to see if the 1900 census was correctly/completely attached, enter an approximate marriage date from the census record(s) if that field is blank, update the wife's name to her maiden name (if there's a source readily available to document that) and enter her married name in the Other Information area.
They are not supposed to attach all the available record hints. That is to be left to relatives. As is merging duplicates. When attaching the 1910 census from a record hint, often there are new children to be added to the family - children born after 1900 and before 1911. In that process of adding in new children or other relatives, if the system does not find a person already in the tree, they do create a new person and eventually that person might be found to be a duplicate. But there should not be a known duplicate being created at the time of attaching a record hint.
The extraction program created a lot of people for Family Tree which later turn out to be duplicates. There could be a man and a woman added to the tree based on their marriage record. (Often there are multiples of those). And then for each child added by extracting a birth or christening record, there could be another set of duplicates for that couple. All this was done in a previous database.
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@Dellory Matthews , thank you for the background information on the project!
As I said, the project participants often create duplicates without realizing. I do not blame them for it. The duplication often happens because data quality on the existing PID is low: dates, places missing, not standardized, the usual. If data quality is high the source linker tool will supply the existing PID during the process.
Polishing PIDs pays!
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My Credentials: Former computer programmer and 40 years experience in searching electronic databases.
I have found that there are not enough datapoints when creating ADDITIONAL Family Search records using the 1900 or 1910 US census records as a reference, to existing records ALREADY in the database. PLEASE STOP! You cannot use the information from one census to determine if there are no matches! PLEASE STOP creating MORE duplicates!
GIGO .....garbage in, garbage out
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Seconding what @Unabletodisplay said. If starting from scratch, systematically working a census is smart. But in 2021 when dealing with United States historical records there is no starting from scratch.
At this time, when I start a project I work first with existing PIDs. The main thing they need is standardized dates and place names. So aim those BYU volunteers at profiles that were imported in bulk in 2012 and not touched since. That would be a real service to all of us here!
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Amen and Amen
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A problem I found generated by the CommunityCensus Project was family members in the 1910 census from Wisconsin being attached to a couple with only names, but a fully identified daughter Hannah W Jurden born in 1798 in New Jersey! Hannah's mother, Tamer, had a source attached to her (which I detached) for Cluta Webster. Then Cluta's children with the surname Webster became siblings to Hannah with a surname Jurden. I am going to attempt to communicate with the project about this problem. No correlation between surnames, time period, or locality!
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@LuanaLHGilstrap remember to also remove any events that came in with the source. GDCD-DQZ has a residual 1910 residence that needs to be deleted.
I took care of that and also made some other improvements. Please review what I did.
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I just question the worth of these kinds of projects. They create a lot of duplicates and make wrong assumptions based on a single source. But what "good" is accomplished for their efforts?
I recently cleaned-up one of the Community Reconstruction Project additions to the tree. They created a household of 6 children who were already correctly entered into FT with their biological father and mother. The 1900 US Census showed the 6 children as step-children to the head, but the project just blow by that fact and went ahead and created a whole new family creating duplicates for the mother and the 6 children plus incorrectly showing the step-father as the biological father.
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