Genealogy Chat

Nicky It is an infuriating problem and one which I am currently wrestling with on another, small site. Transcribers are told to 'write what they see' and not to make assumptions, and I reluctantly, have to agree with this - for all the Transcriber knew, they may very well have been called SPINE. I am currently having to provide bmd proof that my man was called Holden and not RELDING - looking at the original image, it does indeed look like Relding and I can see why they are reluctant to change it just because I say so! OC

Liz, have been back to BMD and made a correction for one of the larger mistranscribed qtrs. and explained in the source box about the compete qtr. however it wouldnt accept it, and would only take it as a postem? which will appear in 24 hours, not sure now wether theyve got the correct info or not, what is intresting that all those qtrs, were transcribed by many different people, im surprised so many all read it wrongly. Nicky

Liz, thanks for your reply, as ive been through and reported all my ancestors I think i will go back and report error on another one from one of the largest qtrs, and explain that all transcribes in that qtr. are wrong, hopefully someone will look at it and put the record straight, I understand how this can happen, but it is infurriating it took me months to find my grt grt grandfathers death tryink SPENK etc, didnt occur to me to try SPINE, but i also found a couple of births that I hadnt been able to find previously,so it was worth it in the end. Thanks again for your explanation. Nicky

There's nothing on the homepage or anything and I had a look on my transcribers page and all it says is to report errors in the data is to click on the info button like you presumably did for reporting your own ancestors. I had a look at one of the originals and I can totally see how it's happened, however... as it's difficult to tell whether it's a k or an e the transcriber should have erred on caution and stated that it could be either e or k. Looking at the form for the corrections, i would say that maybe when submitting a correction if you were to put in that there are a lot of errors of this nature... if you can give specific examples that will give them an idea of where to look. The reason why this error will effect the whole quarter is because of the way they're transcribed. First Surname is put and then you just tab the names underneath to keep putting it down until the next name. Depending on how the original image is set out this could potentially be a huge error. As I unfortunately have no other/special transcribers way of reporting it, I'll have to leave it with you to do it through the usual channels as you will have witnessed where these errors occur. Thanks, Liz

Hi all, does anyone know how to inform FREEBMD of complete quarters that are mis transcribed from the GRO index. The name is SPINK and SPINKS that have been mis transcribed as SPINE and SPINES, its not just the odd name its complete qtrs. on BMDs resulting in hundreds of wrong names. I have gone through and sent correction for my own ancestors, but each one has to be done individually and would take forever to trawl through them all, anyone got any ideas? Nicky