• FamilySearch introducing errors

    From Steve Hayes@21:1/5 to All on Fri Oct 29 10:07:58 2021
    XPost: soc.genealogy.britain, soc.genealogy.misc, alt.genealogy
    XPost: england.genealogy.misc

    FamilySearch has been plugging standardised place-names, which is not
    a bad idea but has now gone too far -- their software triest to
    automatically substitute "standard" place names for non-standard ones,
    but in the process it often inserts a place name that is entirely
    wrong and misleading, wand will ruin the usefulness of their
    collaborative family tree.

    See

    <https://hayesgreene.blogspot.com/2021/10/familysearch-introducing-errors.html>

    or

    https://t.co/a8XuL86WsA



    --
    Steve Hayes
    Web: http://hayesgreene.wordpress.com/
    http://hayesgreene.blogspot.com
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afgen/

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  • From Ian Goddard@21:1/5 to Steve Hayes on Fri Oct 29 09:48:08 2021
    XPost: soc.genealogy.britain, soc.genealogy.misc, alt.genealogy
    XPost: england.genealogy.misc

    On 29/10/2021 09:07, Steve Hayes wrote:
    FamilySearch has been plugging standardised place-names, which is not
    a bad idea but has now gone too far -- their software triest to
    automatically substitute "standard" place names for non-standard ones,
    but in the process it often inserts a place name that is entirely
    wrong and misleading, wand will ruin the usefulness of their
    collaborative family tree.


    FamilySearch have a long history of mangling places. From the errors
    I've seen it appears that batches of records from multiple places must
    have been entered without changing the place name on the data entry
    screen and any QA procedure has failed to trap it.

    This casual attitude seems to have affected search. It's a while since
    I used FS until recently when I found that the 1st search page has been
    dumbed down. I entered a name, place (Holmfirth) and year (1911),
    looking for the 1911 census date. There would likely have been one
    record that fully matched. The search returns pages of hits for the
    name and county. None of the initial hits have either year or place.
    About 2/3 or the way down we finally get the subject: it's his death registration in 1911 but the place name in Huddersfield, the
    registration district. The combination of name, year and place, the one
    and only fully matching hit, appears one up from the bottom of the first
    page.

    I was using search engines that worked properly - including the ability
    to include NOT terms - in the mid '80s. Nowadays any search engine I've
    used (including Google, Bing and Amazon) seems to be based on quantity
    of output, not specificity. (FreeBMD and its relatives are an
    honourable exception.) It might be reasonable to allow a margin of
    place and date but at least make the effort to order the results in
    closeness of match to the search terms.

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  • From Richard Damon@21:1/5 to knuttle on Sat Oct 30 09:30:27 2021
    On 10/30/21 8:51 AM, knuttle wrote:

    In my opinion, the location is so that I can go to any current map and
    locate where the family lived. In this way when in the area I can easily travel to that location.   If I use the name of community that no longer exist, I may never find the family farm.  The historical location is put
    in the description, or a note if the information on the historical
    location is to large for the description.

    The problem with trying to record what a place is called 'now' is that
    'now' changes. Do you really work hard to keep up on how EVERY place
    might get adjusted. For some places, that may be fairly stable, but for
    others (like eastern Europe) it is quite fluid.

    That is why MY standard (and I will allow that others may do it
    differently) is to record the place as it was at that time, with
    comments of how that might have changed in more modern times.

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  • From Ian Goddard@21:1/5 to Richard Damon on Sun Oct 31 17:06:15 2021
    On 30/10/2021 14:30, Richard Damon wrote:

    On 10/30/21 8:51 AM, knuttle wrote:

    In my opinion, the location is so that I can go to any current map and
    locate where the family lived. In this way when in the area I can
    easily travel to that location.   If I use the name of community that
    no longer exist, I may never find the family farm.  The historical
    location is put in the description, or a note if the information on
    the historical location is to large for the description.

    The problem with trying to record what a place is called 'now' is that
    'now' changes. Do you really work hard to keep up on how EVERY place
    might get adjusted. For some places, that may be fairly stable, but for others (like eastern Europe) it is quite fluid.

    That is why MY standard (and I will allow that others may do it
    differently) is to record the place as it was at that time, with
    comments of how that might have changed in more modern times.

    I haven't looked for a while (and I doubt it would have changed) but
    baptisms etc were shown as "Manchester Cathedral" although it was still
    a parish church at the time.

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  • From Steve Hayes@21:1/5 to rail@greywall.demon.co.uk on Sun Oct 31 20:32:01 2021
    XPost: soc.genealogy.britain, soc.genealogy.misc, alt.genealogy
    XPost: england.genealogy.misc

    On Sat, 30 Oct 2021 08:38:07 +0100, Graeme Wall
    <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> wrote:

    When I copy this event to my own family tree, it does not copy the
    original event place, but the spurious Chichester one.

    I hope the people at FamilySearch will soon correct this software bug,
    but until they do, people who use FamiloySearch should be warned that
    they need to treat every place name as suspect.

    Ancestry.com have long done this kind of thing, but it is new on
    FamilySearch.



    One I came across was my gg-grandfather's christening at St Thomas >Charterhouse, Clerkenwell (now demolished). The Family Search index
    shows it as St Thomas, Virgin Isles!

    Another good example of the kind of thing I am talking about.




    --
    Steve Hayes
    Web: http://hayesgreene.wordpress.com/
    http://hayesgreene.blogspot.com
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afgen/

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  • From Steve Hayes@21:1/5 to ianng@austonley.org.uk on Wed Feb 16 07:45:27 2022
    XPost: soc.genealogy.britain, soc.genealogy.misc, alt.genealogy
    XPost: england.genealogy.misc

    On Mon, 14 Feb 2022 23:23:54 +0000, Ian Goddard
    <ianng@austonley.org.uk> wrote:

    It seems to have gone from bad to worse. Of the browsers I regularly
    use (I won't use Chrome or its derivatives) only Firefox now works.

    This seems to be a recent trend in web-sites: using developers who are, >presumably young, inexperienced and not aware that the web was designed
    to provide a universal platform so that users with a wide variety of >platforms could access the same material. Too clever by half so not
    clever enough.

    A message to all web developers: if your site won't work on the user's
    chosen browser it's not the user's fault; it's yours.

    Hear! Hear!


    --
    Steve Hayes
    Web: http://hayesgreene.wordpress.com/
    http://hayesgreene.blogspot.com
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afgen/

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  • From Ian Goddard@21:1/5 to Nigel Reed on Wed Feb 23 15:45:13 2022
    XPost: soc.genealogy.britain, soc.genealogy.misc, alt.genealogy
    XPost: england.genealogy.misc

    On 22/02/2022 20:15, Nigel Reed wrote:
    On Mon, 14 Feb 2022 23:23:54 +0000
    Ian Goddard <ianng@austonley.org.uk> wrote:

    It seems to have gone from bad to worse. Of the browsers I regularly
    use (I won't use Chrome or its derivatives) only Firefox now works.

    This seems to be a recent trend in web-sites: using developers who
    are, presumably young, inexperienced and not aware that the web was
    designed to provide a universal platform so that users with a wide
    variety of platforms could access the same material. Too clever by
    half so not clever enough.

    A message to all web developers: if your site won't work on the
    user's chosen browser it's not the user's fault; it's yours.


    I use Opera and it works fine.



    That was my point. Opera is one of those Chrome derivatives.

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  • From Steve Hayes@21:1/5 to ianng@austonley.org.uk on Thu Feb 24 12:55:06 2022
    On Wed, 23 Feb 2022 15:45:13 +0000, Ian Goddard
    <ianng@austonley.org.uk> wrote:

    On 22/02/2022 20:15, Nigel Reed wrote:
    On Mon, 14 Feb 2022 23:23:54 +0000
    Ian Goddard <ianng@austonley.org.uk> wrote:

    It seems to have gone from bad to worse. Of the browsers I regularly
    use (I won't use Chrome or its derivatives) only Firefox now works.

    This seems to be a recent trend in web-sites: using developers who
    are, presumably young, inexperienced and not aware that the web was
    designed to provide a universal platform so that users with a wide
    variety of platforms could access the same material. Too clever by
    half so not clever enough.

    A message to all web developers: if your site won't work on the
    user's chosen browser it's not the user's fault; it's yours.


    I use Opera and it works fine.



    That was my point. Opera is one of those Chrome derivatives.

    And it doesn't always work fine.



    --
    Steve Hayes
    Web: http://hayesgreene.wordpress.com/
    http://hayesgreene.blogspot.com
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afgen/

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  • From Nigel Reed@21:1/5 to Ian Goddard on Thu Feb 24 17:34:10 2022
    XPost: soc.genealogy.britain, soc.genealogy.misc, alt.genealogy
    XPost: england.genealogy.misc

    On Wed, 23 Feb 2022 15:45:13 +0000
    Ian Goddard <ianng@austonley.org.uk> wrote:

    I use Opera and it works fine.



    That was my point. Opera is one of those Chrome derivatives.

    I just tried Firefox and it works fine. I could navigate trees and
    enter information, do indexing and a few other things. What doesn't
    work exactly?

    --
    End Of The Line BBS - Plano, TX
    telnet endofthelinebbs.com 23

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