Family Review is entirely TOO DETAILED & time consuming
I just completed my first Family Review (Oregon). I would suggest you are asking for way too much information to be entered.
As this index is supposedly being done for Family History purposes, I would STRONGLY suggest you limit it ONLY the info needed for THAT.
AI has done a reasonably good job of 'transcribing' the information. The MAIN purpose is to allow researchers to FIND the information - IN the RECORD. Way too much time will be required to fulfill ALL the columns.
Basically what is needed is Name, age, family, relationships, locations . . . The remaining info is too time consuming & personally I think you lose many volunteers!!
Just MY opinion, if more details needed, I could try to provide it, BUT . . . I let others opine.
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The 1950 US census Indexing project is a joint venture between FamilySearch and Ancestry. So FS cannot change this without Ancestry's permission. No doubt the end product is a compromise between what the two wanted.
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I completely agree with CaptBob. This isn't an indexing project anymore. They're asking us to transcribe the entire page with hundreds of data points, even the columns that say "Leave Blank". It's a waste of time for a volunteer group that could be better spent trying to decipher Irish marriage records or state archives.
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I see your point, however, I disagree, as I know that all of the information will be included in the Ancestry additions to family information (whatever isn't in the index has to be added by hand now). But then I'm a completist. I'm old and can read (and write) cursive writing, my grandchildren think it's hieroglyphics. Better to have all the information transcribed than to have any of it lost. Maybe they should change the name from "indexing" to "transcribing."
I find reviewing the names tedious (19.5K worth), and because they are not (apparently) ready to roll out more states, we are slowed to a crawl anyway. Reviewing the families makes me content that I am contributing to an organization that has given me information that it would have been a challenge to get otherwise. I guess my bottom line, as a volunteer, is do what makes me feel useful, don't do what seems like a waste of time.
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@Karan Simons I appreciate your comment "do what makes me feel useful, don't do what seems like a waste of time." Personally, I'm currently tending toward IGNORING the Family Review for that very reason. ALL of the information no being requested to be reviewed/verified/transcribed/ corrected or whatever it is that is being requested by the 1950 FSTeam will be readily available directly in this 1950 Census.
What is needed is very simply a convenient (& correct) index. THEN all the data therein will be readily available with the AI transcribed data (which appears to be quite well entered through that system.
Therefore my suggestion is to focus on the NAME, place & dates which will lead people to the page and allow them to then use, read, copy or whatever they desire or need to flesh out the biographical data for any PID to which they like to attach.
We the users, patrons, members, guests (or whatever term one would like for us) To get the attention and solving the "wasting" of time will only be accomplished by attracting the attention of the PTB (powers that be aka FSTech) to recognize that this process CAN be down much more efficiently. I see this as somewhat similar to the solution for the "Vacant" "No One Home" problem which was rather quickly SOLVE be adding the Not a Name button in a convenient spot.
A similar solution can be attained here, by simply 'indexing' the items necessary to lead the researcher to the desired page in the the 1950 Census. It is simply not necessary, IMO, to transcribe everything in that census, which was fairly well provided by AI.
So as FS seems to respond mainly to 'likes' & similar posting, that appears to be the way to get their attention. FWIW, personally, I may continue with name review only, which does seem to be somewhat useful.
Family Review has only recently started so we will see what happens.
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@A van Helsdingen Thanks for your comment, that may, or may not be true, but . . . we likely have less influence on Ancestry.
Have you actually TRIED the new Family Review? It would be interesting to here your comments.
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It appears we may be needing some thread consolidation:
"Since it is possible to do name changes during family review, it serves as a second review on names. Accurate names helps family review go faster.
What I don’t get is indexing all the minutiae with Family Review. Especially all the code number fields. Slows that process way down! Let the computer index those fields and if they are not accurate, then let people look up the original image!
Really don’t like the problems with family review not keeping track of the next line properly when it gets confused. Also don’t like not being able to back up to previous families if an error is discovered late.
Need some help to speed up family review or this will take way too long to index properly!"
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I've started ignoring all the Family Review "Leave blank" columns. The slow me down and are useless information. I just leave whatever is there stand as is. Even the occupation & every fifth person details are pointless, as those details will never be searched for. No one will ever search for Joe Smith the used car dealer. We should only focus on name, age, sex, family relationship, marriage status, birth of place, race and naturalized citizen columns. If someone wants further details on a specific person, they have the image to view. Let's ignore the unimportant data so that the review process can be finished faster. If the OCR is wrong, so be it. Focus on what is important.
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@Scott Sather thank you for your comments. It is out of our control as the automated system was set up with Ancestry.com and we review what we have been asked to do. If you are wanting to index, but you are unhappy with this program, we would love you to continue with the Indexing program as there are many, many records to do there. Thank you so much for trying and for all of the work that you do.
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