Tuesday, June 26, 2012

FamilySearch Indexing App Q and A

Mobile App ScreenshotI recently wrote about the FamilySearch mobile Indexing app. (See “The Betaness of FamilySearch iPad Indexing.”) FamilySearch must have been listening because almost simultaneously a post appeared on the FamilySearch blog. It addresses the questions raised in my review. (My ego would like to take credit, but a close inspection shows the FamilySearch post appeared several hours before mine.)

The app uses a different quality model than regular indexing. Regular indexing uses two indexers and an arbitrator to insure high quality. With the mobile app, the same snippet is sent out multiple times until a minimum of 3 of 4 indexers provide the same answer.

According to the post, snippets come from both new projects and already published projects. The already published projects are used as a control group to measure accuracy.

In answering the question as to whether the work will actually be published, the FamilySearch answer was “eventually.” It will “be added to increase the searchable database.” I don’t know if that means it won’t be independently published or not.

I wondered if the app was a dead project. No. “FamilySearch will be working to enhance the user experience of the app as well as to add more features.”

To see the full article, go to “The Mobile App-Unwrapped.”

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