I recently emailed Family Search about an individual in my family that was indexed from a census as Raymond Booker. His name, as I see it, is really very much clearer as to the man's actual name: Benjamin. His wife shows up clearly as Sarah, though part of the end of the name is kind of messy, as is the case with many of the records. I emailed Family Search and got an almost rude reply about how corrections to the indexing can NOT be made. (They didn't even spell my name right when they copied it from my email, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that some people don't think much of a name being misread on a transcribed record.) Am I the only one that is running into this on Family Search's indexed records? Even with a request to at least put up an alternative as Ancestry is finally starting to do, the person who replied wasn't willing to discuss the issue. I figured we had a higher degree of accuracy with it going through three different sets of indexers, counting the arbitrator--but I'm beginning to question it. Karen -- Finding ancestors is like eating potato chips--you can't stop with just one!

I have had this problem as well with my ancestors from Michigan. Then it gets put it into nFS incorrectly and start ordinances and it can be very difficult to figure out and combine the family. One of my families names was Bandkau which is a German name so I added another name in the Summary Menu for the name and made corrections. It had been indexed with a number of spellings. (Amazing that the name did not get an American spelling right away.) FS seems firm about not allowing an alternative spelling as you say so really nothing to do about it. The accuracy on my Michigan ancestors, meaning others besides the one mentioned family, was not that great but the original records can be difficult to read as well. Nancy Scott -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Karen Tippets Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 10:05 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [LDS-WC] Changes in the indexed results I recently emailed Family Search about an individual in my family that was indexed from a census as Raymond Booker. His name, as I see it, is really very much clearer as to the man's actual name: Benjamin. His wife shows up clearly as Sarah, though part of the end of the name is kind of messy, as is the case with many of the records. I emailed Family Search and got an almost rude reply about how corrections to the indexing can NOT be made. (They didn't even spell my name right when they copied it from my email, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that some people don't think much of a name being misread on a transcribed record.) Am I the only one that is running into this on Family Search's indexed records? Even with a request to at least put up an alternative as Ancestry is finally starting to do, the person who replied wasn't willing to discuss the issue. I figured we had a higher degree of accuracy with it going through three different sets of indexers, counting the arbitrator--but I'm beginning to question it. Karen -- Finding ancestors is like eating potato chips--you can't stop with just one! Please send the one word message SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE to [email protected] ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Karen, I'm sorry you are frustrated, but I'd like to add a comment that I hope will be encouraging--but will likely require all of our continued patience. I'd like to think the rude missionary was exhausted and just as tired of our correction questions as we are of the response! I do know that the ability to edit or add another alternative to the indexes is coming. When? I have no idea. What I would suggest is that we all keep a list of the things we find that are indexed incorrectly, and when that function is released, we will be able to go to those entries fairly quickly and help to make the indexes more accurate. I assume that all of us on this board have done indexing, and we all know how hard it is to get names correct when we don't know what they should be. All of these FamilySearch programs are a beta situation where we are being allowed to work and move forward--even though the programs don't have all of the intended functionality yet. FamilySearch does care about accuracy, but they are dealing with tens of thousands of volunteers, and hundreds of thousands of patrons. I can't imagine trying to get that many people to follow the same rules at the same time! :o) Can you imagine how much the accuracy of the indexes will increase when all of those patrons go in with quality corrections because they know the individuals being referenced? One day at a time, but we'll get there eventually! Have a good day, Jill Crandell