familysearch.org not to be trusted

[Wes Groleau]

I've long lamented the incompetence and negligence of volunteer indexers at
family search.org

Then I volunteered to do some myself. Now I think some of the nonsense may
be poor judgment and/or carelessness on the part of familysearch.

The instructions tell me to assume that I know the geography of seventy
years ago in an area I've never been in and can "correct" the "errors"
that I think are made by the people that lived there.

It asks me to intentionally omit punctuation from abbreviations in the
original.

It asks me to omit "Jr." from the name, without offering another place to
record it.

In a Spanish document, it makes no attempt to counter the infuriating
custom American have of omitting diacritics from letters, e.g., writing
"ano" for "año" ("anus" instead of "year")

It uses artificial stupidity to highlight the place to read the city from,
when the city is not actually there (and reducing the readabiity of the
image at the same time)

Perhaps this explains some of my earlier complaints, such as seeing a
column clearly labeled "license issued" indexed as data of marriage
all the way through a record book, ignoring the column clearly labeled
"Date of Marriage"--even on rows where the latter column clearly says
"License returned; no marriage occurred"

--
Wes Groleau

Nutrition for Blokes: Re-engineering your diet for life
http://www.phlaunt.com/quentin

Wes Groleau <Grolea...@FreeShell.org>

[bob gillis]

> I've long lamented the incompetence and negligence of volunteer indexers at
> family search.org
>
> Then I volunteered to do some myself. Now I think some of the nonsense may
> be poor judgment and/or carelessness on the part of familysearch.
>
> The instructions tell me to assume that I know the geography of seventy
> years ago in an area I've never been in and can "correct" the "errors"
> that I think are made by the people that lived there.
>
> It asks me to intentionally omit punctuation from abbreviations in the
> original.
>

snip
>
> Wes Groleau


You should post this to the FS Blog.

bob gillis

bob gillis <robert...@verizon.net>

[Bob Melson]

> I've long lamented the incompetence and negligence of volunteer indexers
> at family search.org
>
> Then I volunteered to do some myself. Now I think some of the nonsense
> may be poor judgment and/or carelessness on the part of familysearch.
>
> The instructions tell me to assume that I know the geography of seventy
> years ago in an area I've never been in and can "correct" the "errors"
> that I think are made by the people that lived there.
>
> It asks me to intentionally omit punctuation from abbreviations in the
> original.
>

> It asks me to omit "Jr." from the name, without offering another place to
> record it.
>
> In a Spanish document, it makes no attempt to counter the infuriating
> custom American have of omitting diacritics from letters, e.g., writing

> "ano" for "a?o" ("anus" instead of "year")

>
> It uses artificial stupidity to highlight the place to read the city
> from, when the city is not actually there (and reducing the readabiity of
> the image at the same time)
>
> Perhaps this explains some of my earlier complaints, such as seeing a
> column clearly labeled "license issued" indexed as data of marriage
> all the way through a record book, ignoring the column clearly labeled
> "Date of Marriage"--even on rows where the latter column clearly says
> "License returned; no marriage occurred"
>

> Wes Groleau <Grolea...@FreeShell.org>


I would ask who CAN be trusted. I wouldn't trust Ancestry as far as I could
fling 'em, RootsWeb suffers from it's association with Ancestry, and the rest
of the bunch, including Linkpendium, Mocavo and GeneaNet, are questionable, as
well.

But, then, what is it we're trusting? Are we saying we trust any of these
groups/organizations to provide information we can incorporate into our
personal databases without checking?

It was Reagan, I think, who said in a different context, "trust, but verify".
Might that not apply here?

Suspicious Ol' Bob

--
Robert G. Melson | Rio Grande MicroSolutions | El Paso, Texas
-----
The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated
in the name of the noblest causes -- Thomas Paine

Bob Melson <amia...@mypacks.net>