FamilySearch Community

Errors in profile quality score.

Foote, Gavin Jesse — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 16:56:00 +0000

In my grandfather's profile page, the quality score states that the death happened before the marriage. This is false because he died in 1984, and both of his marriages took place decades before his death.

Well this is delightful

davidrathbun — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 14:56:35 +0000

Just a quick note to thank whoever wrote this gem in the FAQ:

How can you call my grandma a medium?!

The quality level is not a judgement of your grandmother's character

Good idea but needs to understand sources not hinted by FamilySearch

Kimball G. Carter — Sun, 21 Jul 2024 17:03:15 +0000

I really like the idea behind the profile quality score, but as of now it doesn't really recognize excellent sources and citations that aren't indexed records on FamilySearch. I do a great deal of early Colonial America research and attach sources with images and citations that are excellent sources, but it appears that this tool can't really recognize their value. Because I have so many ancestors in the U.S., (Virginia), in the 1600s and 1700s, I get virtually no hints and all of my research is in unindexed records. I'm a Certified Genealogist with over 40 years of experience and I don't add sources unless they have been well analyzed. But, even with all of this, I don't think this tool does a good job recognizing these sources and their strength. I tag my sources where possible, but the research I do is largely for ancestors with no birth record or death record, sometimes there is a marriage record. So, court records, land records, tax records and probate records are heavily used in documenting my ancestors.

I still think this is a good idea, but not sure if it will ever recognize the type of documentation used in these types of research problems.

Confusing text message in Scoring Section

monnettohio — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 19:07:12 +0000

I have come across some very confusing text in using the scoring section. This can be found on the profile for Hannah Monnett (married name, Hannah Gurley) K23S-M47. When I click on the profile rating, and the sidebar launches, under "Data is Conflict Free" the following text appears:
"This person had life events in Ohio Township, Crawford, Indiana, United States, then in Bucyrus, Crawford, Ohio, United States, and then in Ohio Township, Crawford, Indiana, United States again. These places are 257 miles away, making this unlikely. This may indicate a bad merge."

Based on the current visible information in sources, this makes absolutely no sense.
- Active sources do not mention anything taking place in Indiana. This person lived her life in either Pickaway County Ohio, Crawford County, Ohio, or Marion (city of), Marion County Ohio, or Marion County Ohio. Could a record set have the wrong key words assign to it?
- Looking at her details page, there is no mention of an Ohio Township, Crawford County Indiana. So the "Consistency" issue doesn't tie back to a specific record.
- I did check with FamilySearch support which handles records, but they couldn't see where the two marriage records that happened in Crawford County, Ohio, were tied to Crawford County, Indiana, and they were not.

So why is this coming up? There were merges done by a distant cousin a few years ago. If that's the case, why is the system referring to possible relevant sources that are clearly visible?

I know I can dismiss these, but I haven't because it's important for you to see what I am seeing.

https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/K23S-M47

This person is older than usual?

monnettohio — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 18:19:29 +0000

Today I got this warning: "This person's birth and death dates indicate death at age 93, which is older than usual." So we are going to redflag people's profiles because of acceptable longevity when they are less than 100? And how does one correct this when it is accurate? Seems a bit like dooming the profile to LOW unless someone fiddles with a date

This seems a bit much, especially when the birth and death are documented with sources. This person was born in 1909 and died in 2003. Nonagenarians are not uncommon in today's world as they were in the early 1960s when my great-grandmother made the newspaper for making it to 97.

I could understand getting this IF the person were listed at an extreme, nearly impossible age at the date of death, say 125 years old - that is a red slag. But Jean Calmont lived to be 122 and is the oldest person ever documented from recorded birth, life, and death. So its possible, but it is rare.

Thanks for working on such a difficult project.

Gordon Collett — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 20:06:47 +0000

I've been fiddling with the Quality Score as I've been working through some Norwegian relatives of my wife's and working through parish registers. I can't imagine the work it is to try to get a reasonable balance between over flagging and under flagging in light of historical statistical information.

I had this flag pop up on a person: "The burial date is 21 days after the death date. Burial usually happened within 8 days of death" and it did get me, as intended, to double check the dates to make sure they were correct, which they were.

But just for fun, I took a lot at the entire section of death/burial records here: https://www.digitalarkivet.no/kb20070507630009 and found the following for this parish for 1856:

Recorded death date - Recorded burial date - Days between

March 24 - May 8 - 43

Apr 10 - May 24 - 44

May 9 - Jun 14 - 36

Jun 2 - Jun 14 - 12

jun 21 - Jul 12 - 21

Jun 19 - Aug 9 - 51

Jul 11 - Aug 9 - 29

Aug 17 - Sep 13 - 29

Aug 6 - Sep 13 - 38

Oct 31 - Nov 11 - 11

Sep 27 - Nov 11 - 45

None of the burials were 8 days or less after the death. (I have read an explanation as to why this is the case).

I hope users can get used to the idea that you are stuck using the most reasonable statics you can. Is there some way a notice can be posted that these flags are meant to be a help to double check things and are not meant to be an annoyance?

Data Is Conflict Free: "Something went wrong" message

JulianBrown38 — Sat, 29 Jun 2024 08:39:21 +0000

In the Quality Score panel for Alice Redemans GCVS-CSG, there is claimed to be be one entry in the Data Is Conflict Free section. If that section is expanded, an "Oops, something went wrong. Please refresh the page." message is displayed inside that section.

Refreshing the page makes no difference.

Low score comments

vhasapes — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 18:29:20 +0000

Dorothy E Smith, GHBZ-8HS, is given a Low Profile score because obit gives residence after the death. That is generated by FamilySearch. I can't change that. That seems a bit frustrating to me. I would like the score to be higher but I've done all I can do.

This is an unusual circumstance where the individual has 2 obits & 2 Find a Grave entries.

Thank you for listening. 🙂

Low Score does not reflect the real issues

Áine.ní.Donnghaile — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 15:12:51 +0000

As I have time, I've been working to clean up some family profiles that have been badly merged over the years. An Irish couple in New York has been blended with a same-name family in Massachusetts. The matriarch, Margaret, is KGJP-Z1Y.

I hadn't really worried about their profile scores because I know there is a great deal of work still to be done to disentangle the mess. This morning I had a notification that someone had made an edit so I took a look, hoping the profiles had not been made even worse. And, I happened to notice a "Low" profile score. I was hoping that meant that the algorithm was calling out the impossibility of some of the connections. No, it's mostly just harping (sorry) on ages on the census being just a couple of years off or the surname spelling from the census index being slightly different.

Not a peep about half the children being born in Brooklyn and the other half in Boston - sometimes in the same year.

I don't expect an algorithm to be smarter than a good researcher, but I would hope that it could nudge a sloppy or novice researcher into thinking twice before making a bigger mess.

Thank you.

Lack of connection

monnettohio — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 19:14:42 +0000

When we are looking at a person's quality score details, and we review the list of items to look at, I am finding that it is very confusing to find the right records in question - this is especially true for marriage licenses if:
1) That one person was married multiple times;
2) That person has multiple sources tied to their marriage(s) because the database is in the system in multiple ways because of various sources. For example, one database is nothing but transcribed information, but a second separate database could have images of the marriage licenses and a transcription.
3) When the system sees parents listed on their children's marriage documents and assigns their child's date of birth to the parent as date that conflicts with the actual birth date of the parent.

It would be most helpful if the help to resolve this told you which record the system views as an issue with consistency. For my 2x great grandparents we are dealing muliple marriages, multiple children marriage and the system doesn't tell me which on it has an issue with.