tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512311610334754148.post6392622763607591541..comments2023-04-20T12:46:11.858-06:00Comments on The Ancestry Insider: Monday Mailbox: Errors in Ancestry.com City DirectoriesThe Ancestry Insiderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02490682912125335188noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512311610334754148.post-23245433701027004202012-12-04T14:41:02.415-07:002012-12-04T14:41:02.415-07:00IMO that's not as bad as the transcription of ...IMO that's not as bad as the transcription of the 1870 census for Philadelphia - the first enumeration - which was probably transcribed way before they outsourced! I haven't checked every district, but lots and lots of people were born in the Philipines! I let them know when I saw it. I would never have found it if I hadn't been trying to drill down in manually. Now I know why I can never find anyone in this census! :) <br /><br />Name: Richard Dennis<br />Age in 1870: 45<br />Birth Year: abt 1825<br />Birthplace: Philippines<br />Home in 1870: Philadelphia Ward 14 District 42, Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18112795760783577400noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512311610334754148.post-41144566700534268972012-11-04T15:14:43.521-07:002012-11-04T15:14:43.521-07:00The recent City Directors so obviously do not use ...The recent City Directors so obviously do not use OCR. The older ones did and had a better success rate, These are being indexed by humans who can't read English and users who can't figure out where to add corrections! Kamdesignshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14629031307849143312noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512311610334754148.post-68750512794149456952012-11-04T10:03:26.542-07:002012-11-04T10:03:26.542-07:00I too have noticed ridiculous errors at Ancestry, ...I too have noticed ridiculous errors at Ancestry, and not just in the city directories. Many times the transcribers will write a name that couldn't possibly exist in Ireland (where my ancestors come from) or much of anywhere else on the planet. This cannot be computer error, though, since computers can't read handwriting yet as far as I know. The point is that at Ancestry quality control is unknown. And we pay 25$ or 30$ for this?Johnny Cure-dentshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15762795382889962687noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512311610334754148.post-38795796593015246162012-10-30T07:57:54.566-06:002012-10-30T07:57:54.566-06:00To all concerned with indexing errors. I suggest ...To all concerned with indexing errors. I suggest you just simply don't use the index and look at the actual Directories or Ship Manifists or Census Enumerations or whatever yourself. <br /><br />I agree the indexing is bad, so just don't use it<br /><br />I am sorry to sound cynical but it should be fairly obvious to all what the best course of action is.Above The Branches Genealogy LLChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07166753724607903381noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512311610334754148.post-89174608772436476702012-10-29T20:00:35.934-06:002012-10-29T20:00:35.934-06:00Quite a different problem with the City Directorie...Quite a different problem with the City Directories is that the encoding for saving the extract (to a tree individual) in every instance omits the County identification from the place-name field.Geoloverhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12050268303916428230noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512311610334754148.post-22881833286869528102012-10-29T09:56:33.344-06:002012-10-29T09:56:33.344-06:00As an example of how OCR can be used effectively l...As an example of how OCR can be used effectively look at the National Library of Australia's newspaper digitisation program at http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper where users are encouraged to make corrections to the OCR results. It has become an immensely useful site which allows tagging (both public and private), displays the original text and translated text side by side, and provides a number of ways to save an article with examples of the proper citation.Rosemaryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07230436754902585388noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512311610334754148.post-89108133752349967612012-10-29T09:37:56.920-06:002012-10-29T09:37:56.920-06:00So they apparently need to hire proofreaders to ch...So they apparently need to hire proofreaders to check on the computers. Maybe a few underemployed humans, such as myself, could be of help.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512311610334754148.post-8706021992048251192012-10-29T05:52:10.026-06:002012-10-29T05:52:10.026-06:00That same OCR process, when applied to database &q...That same OCR process, when applied to database "Oconee County, Georgia Probate Records, 1875-2010," has led to the appearance of an enormous military population. Many of those records date from when an era when race was distinguished on the records, and "black" was marked by "Col." for colored, as was standard in that time and place.<br /><br />So, now we have hundreds - thousands? - of male and female colonels, in an era when women did not even serve in the military.AnnieBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03626903304385961834noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512311610334754148.post-70744989408046886402012-10-29T05:24:31.373-06:002012-10-29T05:24:31.373-06:00I am not employed by ancestry.com or have any affi...I am not employed by ancestry.com or have any affiliation with them. The computers use something called OCR, which stands for Optical Character Recognition. This can be a great aid to adding records to a research database, but like you've seen it does have it's drawbacks. The OCR prgram probably looks for patterns to put names into it's index. If any particular set of words falls into the pattern, it's indexed.<br /><br />I use OCR sometimes on my small research database I use. However, I manually check almost every record to make sure it looks right. I don't think ancestry.com could use this method with the large volume of records they load.<br /><br />Regards, Jim<br /><a href="http://www.hiddengenealogynuggets.com" rel="nofollow"> Hidden Genealogy Nuggets</a>Jim (Hidden Genealogy Nuggets Blog)https://www.blogger.com/profile/15493118494172970052noreply@blogger.com