Mistakes and statistics

Yes.

 

Fuzzy-matching only looks at names, not ages. Ages have to match precisely.

They may well be matching with each other if they are the same age and the forenames begin with the same letter. The red exclamation marks won't disappear until you Confirm your entries (see Help info) and click Search.

Please remember that the exclamation marks are merely a prompt to check the entries carefully against the census - they are NOT telling you that your entry is wrong. We don't have a copy of the census to check against (but you do!).

 

LostCousins is all about accuracy - if members are careless they may well miss matches. You reap what you sow.

When I introduced the grey arrows a few years ago I described them as being for reference checking., because up to that point at least 99% of all missed matches were the result of incorrect census references. It is only since the automated uploading feature was added to FTAnalyzer that incorrect ages have been a problem.

 

Yup I did want to add an automated verification system by comparing the checked data on the Lost Cousins website with the GEDCOM data. However I needed a means of working out if someone had checked a record or not at present there doesn't seem to be any method on the Lost Cousins site of verifying if you have already checked the entry or not. I suggested to Peter this would be an extremely useful addition to users as they would then be able to see if they'd already checked an entry. However this was shot down in flames as putting members who had entered a lot of data at a disadvantage as they'd have a lot of un-verified entries.

To be honest I couldn't see anything but positives. If someone is taking the time to enter all those records the piece of mind of seeing you've checked them and being able to visually see you've checked them is surely a good idea. It would massively improve the quality of the data to know what percentage of records had been checked and what percentage hadn't.

Sadly without a method of knowing what records had been checked and which hadn't I couldn't do any verification. In theory it should be possible to entirely automate the reading of the data from the Lost Cousins site, following the link to the FindMyPast records and verifying the data matches all without human intervention. The program could then show what had been mismatched. The problem is you really, really don't want an automated system continually telling you things you've already fixed. So having a flag to indicate it shouldn't re-check a record is vital.

I've still got the code ready to automate this checking in FTAnalyzer and it's pretty much good to go to fully check everyone's records are right. It just needs the last little missing link that will help improve the quality of the data on the site and give an actual measure of the level of checking.

 

To me the best of all worlds would be automate updating your Lost Cousins page then automate checking it was all correct by searching the links to Find My Past and reporting those that don't exactly match to the end user. This would eliminate the current issues people have pointed out.

The less work people have to do the more likely they are to take those small steps to fix the highlighted inconsistencies. To trawl thorough all of their records when 90% of them are likely to be right is off putting and sadly that's what reduces the accuracy of the database overall.

 

I agree - it's better that members who are able to enter more relatives focus on that, rather than worrying about the small possibility that one of their entries isn't quite right. The arrows are there primarily so that members who are worried that they-re entering the wrong census references can check them out at the time of input.

When I reminded members about the grey arrows in January I suggested spending 5 minutes checking entries - I was horrified to hear that someone had spent hours doing it.

 

Peter, while we're talking about manual checking, have you considered adding an Age Field? Or replacing the Born Field with Age?

When we enter the data into the household form, we add the age and not date of birth. When we add a corrected date of birth this is then used and displayed, which means I have to open each member of the household to check if the age I entered is the same as is on the transcriptions.

 

When you click the checking arrow the Search results show birth years, not ages - so I don't see that it would help to show ages on the My Ancestors page. (If you look at the household transcript it shows both ages and birth years for the England & Wales censuses.)

What would be helpful is to be able to suppress corrections, the information that appears in italics. This is something I've been looking into, but so far I haven't been able to achieve it - it's always difficult working with somebody else's code, and it's especially difficult when the code is a mixture of several different programming languages.

 

But as you've pointed out before, you have to click on the transcription to see the whole household which shows the ages that were recorded.
Yes, suppressing the corrected age and showing the age that you've calculated from the age that was entered is also an option.

 

You don't have to view the household transcript - for a start, unless you're a Findmypast subscriber you can only do that for the 1881 Census, and even then it's only necessary when the household is split over two census pages, which only happens now and again.

Even if you do view the household it shows both the age and the birth year. So showing the age instead of the birth year on the My Ancestors page wouldn't help unless you were checking against the census image, which isn't going to happen very often.

 

I don't quite understand what you're saying, Bob, so I'll restate my comments in a different way.

How should you check your entries against the census? Click the grey arrow then compare what you see on your My Ancestors page against the Search results. (Both show year of birth - neither shows age.)

Are there occasions when it is necessary to view the entries themselves? Yes, but they are fairly few and far between. It's most likely to be necessary when you've entered corrections, in which case they'll be shown in italics on your My Ancestors page - if you've made a correction then you have to look at your entry to see what the information is in the first part of the form. (Corrections are optional - if you don't make corrections it's not only quicker to enter the data in the first place, it's also quicker to check it at a later stage. But I am trying to find a way of suppressing corrections to make checking easier.)

The other likely situation is a household split onto two census pages (this only applies to the 1841/1881 censuses). In this case the Search results will only show the entries from the first page, so if you want to check the entire household you need to view the household transcript (which is free for the 1881 Census).

The third case in which you might think it's necessary to look closer is when the names you've entered from 1841/1911 don't tally with the transcript. But in most cases it ISN'T necessary, because you'll know instinctively if the transcript is wrong. For example, if your entry reads Arthur William Jakes and the transcript reads Arthur Wm James it's likely you have erroneously expanded the middle name, but got the surname right (since a householder is unlikely to have misspelled his own surname).

In general the process of checking is intended to be quick and easy - if it takes more than 20 seconds per household on average there's something wrong somewhere. And remember, the best time to check is when you're entering the data in the first place.