{"id":5354,"date":"2017-09-08T17:59:22","date_gmt":"2017-09-08T17:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=5354"},"modified":"2017-09-08T17:59:22","modified_gmt":"2017-09-08T17:59:22","slug":"why-we-mention-errors-and-other-issues-at-ancestry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=5354","title":{"rendered":"Why We Mention Errors and Other Issues at Ancestry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Occasionally I get asked &#8220;why&#8221; I mention errors and other issues at\u00a0<em>Ancestry.com.\u00a0<\/em>There is really one reason: it&#8217;s fun.<\/p>\n<p>Actually that is not the reason. The real reason is that I believe informed users make for better users. It really is that simple.<\/p>\n<p>I do not spend hours trolling a database in hopes of finding a problem I can write about. Issues mentioned in this blog are ones that come up in my own personal research. I like those issues. They are easy to write about because it involves my own family. It all goes back to only writing about what I know something about. And chances are that the issues I encounter are not all that unique.<\/p>\n<p>I also do not expect all errors to be fixed. That&#8217;s unrealistic and somewhat naive. A better approach is to remember that errors can be anywhere and can be the reason why our searches come up empty. It&#8217;s also possible our relative is not in the record that we the think he should be.<\/p>\n<p>Keep in mind that there are several different kinds of errors at\u00a0<em>Ancestry.com\u00a0<\/em>(or just about any of the large fee-based data sites):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>errors in cataloging<\/em>-this covers a variety of issues including items that get &#8220;keyed&#8221; to the wrong geographic location, are titled incorrectly, etc.<\/li>\n<li><em>errors in transcription<\/em>-when a name, date, or other item on a record is interpreted incorrectly when being transcribed for an index.<\/li>\n<li><em>errors in digitization<\/em>-when images from microfilm (or original records) are somehow not digitized or are overlooked.<\/li>\n<li><em>search errors<\/em>-when an online search query is not conducted the way it should be.\u00a0<strong>Note:<\/strong> this <em>does <strong>not<\/strong> include searches<\/em> where the user is not aware of how to perform searches. Search &#8220;errors&#8221; can very easily be the fault of the user.<\/li>\n<li><em>database management errors<\/em>-indexes that do not link to the correct image, missing images, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The number of errors of this type are small. We tend to think there are more of them than there actually are because errors get remembered. Accurate results don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>Errors in actual records&#8211;those are not\u00a0<em>Ancestry.com<\/em>&#8216;s fault. It is not\u00a0<em>Ancestry.com\u00a0<\/em>(or another company&#8217;s) fault that the census taker got your ancestor&#8217;s age wrong, the county clerk mixed up which child of your ancestor died, etc. Those are errors\u00a0<em>in the record<\/em>. If\u00a0<em>Ancestry.com<\/em> (or whichever provider) is providing you an image of the record, their job is to provide that image&#8211;not to correct errors in it.<\/p>\n<p>And while it is frustrating to find index transcriptions that are incorrect&#8211;keep in mind that without the indexes searching many of these records would be an all-encompassing time drain. A huge time drain. Indexes (imperfect as they are) facilitate the finding of records that was virtually impossible twenty years ago. I&#8217;m thankful for them. But I am aware of their limitations.<\/p>\n<p>And don&#8217;t use the\u00a0website&#8217;s transcription of the record as your own transcription. Read and transcribe it yourself (or at least check the transcription to see if it&#8217;s correct). When I get frustrated with errors in index transcriptions, I remind myself of how I found many of these records twenty years ago&#8211;page-by-page searches.<\/p>\n<p>Try doing that with a 1920 census for Chicago when the family has moved all the way across town and you are unaware of it and they don&#8217;t appear in city directories.<\/p>\n<p>Errors in the tree submissions are the responsibility of the submitter. It&#8217;s in the agreement.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Occasionally I get asked &#8220;why&#8221; I mention errors and other issues at\u00a0Ancestry.com.\u00a0There is really one reason: it&#8217;s fun. Actually that is not the reason. The real reason is that I believe informed users make for better users. It really is that simple. I do not spend hours trolling a database in hopes of finding a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}