Take time to edit records for accuracy
May I suggest that if records have the EDIT available to use on it to please check and make sure the handwriting matches what the site says it should say? I find that at least 50% or more of the indexed records by the site don't match the writing and are in need of editing. I take the time to do that when I'm doing my research. It's a great idea to help eliminate mistakes too because you may find that certain records probably shouldn't be on some people due to errors in the indexing process by the site.
I know there are folks who are in a hurry to build trees so they don't look at the writing but instead take for granted that the Family Search site got it right. Most of the time it missed and in some cases I've seen it miss big! Volunteers are probably the biggest offenders because they never look. They click and collect records and put them on people just thinking they are helping clean up but in reality they really aren't helping much. In fact at times this draws errors later on if the records have not been corrected or checked for accuracy.
Let's work together to help improve the accuracy and maybe eliminate errors. I know it takes a bit more time to spend to do this and verify the accuracy but it's well worth it in the end. Make sure the site says what the writing says. You can also add additional fields too while you are editing that also help.
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Thank you, @StephenDespot — well said indeed.
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Oh my, yes !
I find an extremely high percentage of sources have at least one error that I have to correct before I attach.
I've been running into tons of errors lately where the place is indexed soooo wrong. Most of the time this will entail hundreds of pages that are indexed wrong, with thousands of entries. ugh
I always correct the indexing for everyone in the family, not just the person I am working on (and sometimes I will even correct everyone on the page in a census, not just my family). NOTE: indexing should be exactly as spelled on the original source, for example if your relative Sarah is spelled Sara or Cera on the census, that is the way it should be indexed. (However, if she was indexed as Tarah, and after reviewing the enumerator's other examples of T's and S's on the census pages, it is clear that she should have been indexed as Sarah, then please do correct that!)
I also add missing people IF I can figure out who they are/how they are related, for examples: marriage witnesses/bondsmen, the minister only IF they are a relative, informants for death certificates, etc. It's helpful because it shows the person was still alive at the time they were a witness or informant or whatever, and sometimes it will show the relationship.
I like to add missing information that the original indexer did not include. For example, maybe they indexed the parents on the marriage cert BUT did not include the event Residence with date & place for the parents (some marriage certs have 4-6 spaces for residence: for the bride, groom, his parents, her parents). Or maybe the indexer bare-bones indexed the census but did not include things such as occupation or own vs rent home or cannot speak english, etc etc.
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I know when I started doing a lot of stuff on here a few years ago they didn't have the edit function yet. It was something that came along later with a site upgrade. I've tried to retrace some of my steps to fix some of the records that were attached some time ago, starting mostly in my direct lines, taking a group and working out from there. I'm sure I will not get them all or miss some here and there but anything going forward with new research that's definitely something that gets done and take the time to do. A lot of records we couldn't edit before are now open for that with the options to do so.
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There have been a few times where I probably would have never found a source or relative due to these quick attachments. They usually also involve creating duplicates for existing people since the users didn’t go looking for them. So on one hand I am grateful for that.
Often these are by users with “helper” or “project” or “builder” in their name. But a lot of time, they seem to be family members.
For the first month or so when I started being active on FamilySearch, I did not know that I could change/add indexing. That is probably the case with many family members.
There are some people who haphazard by nature. But I think the main reason is that many users are not tech savvy and just don’t know how or are scared to complete indexing.
If I don’t have time to index, I sometimes write a Corroborate note, and check the Alert box. I state something like “records need to have their indexing completed before attaching”. This is in the hope that others will do so if they stumble across the profile before I’ve had a chance to return.
When a record has a lot of un-indexed info, I usually detach it from the person. Then after I’ve completed the indexing, I’ll reattach it so that it will auto-populate varies fields.
My much bigger pet peeve is when people carelessly don’t open up the source and actually read the document to make sure that they are attaching it to the correct person(s). It doesn’t just happen on FS, it also happens on Ancestry.
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@Angela84282 stated: "(However, if she was indexed as Tarah, and after reviewing the enumerator's other examples of T's and S's on the census pages, it is clear that she should have been indexed as Sarah, then please do correct that!)"
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I used to correct the name indexing, but stopped doing so because then it didn’t match the corresponding record on Ancestry, which makes it confusing when I’m trying to find new sources. Plus a couple of times it caused some other messes (I can’t remember exactly what).
Instead, I add one or more “alternate” names with my interpretation of the handwriting. That way if someone is searching either spelling, they should be able to find the record.
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I like that idea ! Thanks for that.
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@Angela84282 and @Nyx773 About "barebones indexing", on many censuses we indexers were following FS instructions where we were only given barebones boxes in which to record census information. I cannot tell you how my hands ached and my fingers itched to index every piece of information a census provides! And I reviewed/corrected sooo many censuses indexed by others who didn't even know (or bother to look up) the abbreviations for location/place names so they could be correctly found by future and current researchers!
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