Rant About Making Corrections to Free BMD

At the risk of incurring the wrath of Dave Mayall, I have to complain in the

Dave Mayall...

It depends on where you saw the entry!

"FreeBMD scan"
"GRO fiche at blankshire library"
"1837online"
"FRC book"

are all good sources. They say everything that needs to be said. Going
on to say any more is superfluous.

Dave Mayall...

Why?

The purpose of the source field is to allow us to filter out the
corrections that are not valid. Verbosity is not necessary and is not
helpful. It just means that somebody has to read through more words to
see if the correction is a valid one.

Including arguments as to why this is the correct reading is a waste
of time, because we are not going to pass those arguments on to the
person who makes the final decision on the correction.

Dave Mayall...

Yes, in most cases.

Dave Mayall...

No.

The transcriber has all that they need to come to a conclusion,
namely;
1) The GRO index
2) The suggested entry.

"The fuller picture" consists of information which the transcriber
must NOT take into account when transcribing.

Dave Mayall...

I will look at putting in some examples, but the error message *does*
point you back at the instructions, and the instructions tell that
verbosity and advocacy are no appropriate.

nicest possible way about the difficulty in trying to forward a correction
to Free BMD and failing miserably 3 times.

Marriages Kings Norton Mar 1900 6c page 588 - Simeon Hill

Marriages Kings Norton Mar 1900 6c page 688 - Olive Maud Bedwell

but Simeon Hill married Olive Maud Bedwell so one of the page numbers is
wrong. From looking at the page, that for Simeon is correct ie 588. If you
look at the entry for Olive, it is not clear. It has been transcribed twice;
one thought it a "6" the other was not sure and thought it could be a "5" or
a "6" yet if you enquire for Olive Maud Bedwell, you only get the "688". But
the clincher seems to be that if it were a "6", it does not look like any
other "6" on the page.

As I say, I have tried to send a correction 3 times but got it knocked back
and I cannot see why. I'm not saying an entry is wrong, merely that it's
been misread. So now I'm giving up because I'm tired and it's past my
bedtime. Why should I bother; I'm alright, I've got the information I wanted
but some other poor sod might be misled.

Dave Mayall...

You say it was knocked back, but not what message you got. Without
that information, it's difficult to comment.

However, I'll make a guess that the corrections form said that the
source was invalid?

A few weeks back, I gave some examples of the dross that gets
submitted through the corrections system.

Writing detailed instructions on the corrections page, and insisting
people tick a box hidden in the body of the instructions didn't
improve things much.

So, we took a step further, and wrote some code which reads through
the source that you enter, and analyses it.

The analyser "scores" the source, based on;
1) Length - We ask for the source to be concise, because there is no
need for more than a very few words to say where you found the info,
and we are explicit that advocacy arguing the case for the change is
not permitted.
2) Good words - We look for certain trigger words which indicate that
the source of the information is something that we accept (i.e. a copy
of the GRO index)
3) Bad words - We look for trigger words which indicate sources that
the instructions say we don't accept (grandmother, family, bible,
ancestor) These words indicate non-GRO sources which just aren't
relevant.

All three are scored together, to reach an overall score.

So, for example;

"FreeBMD scan"
- short, contains good words, and no bad words - pass

"GRO certificate"
- Certificates are not the index, and not a valid source - fail for
bad words

"FreeBMD scan, this lady was my great grandmother, and I know that her
middle name was hermione from the family bible"
- Starts well with the information that we need, but goes on to
over-egg the pudding by quoting irrelevant information from invalid
sources - fail for bad words and verbosity

Tids...

That word verbosity again !

Fortunately, inspite of MY verbosity my correction
was accepted.

Dave Mayall...

:-)

Ah, but when was this?

Source scoring is very new.

You can also get away with a bit of verbosity provided you use some
good words in there!

Tids...

Last week David.....you commented on it :-)

Dave Mayall...

My memory isn't what it once was!

Source scoring came in after your correction.

Cheers David !

"From looking at the page, that for Simeon is correct ie 588. If you
look at the entry for Olive, it is not clear. It has been transcribed
twice; one thought it a "6" the other was not sure and thought it
could be a "5" or a "6" yet if you enquire for Olive Maud Bedwell, you
only get the "688". But the clincher seems to be that if it were a
"6", it does not look like any other "6" on the page."
- Contains the information that this is from the GRO index, but goes
off into lengthy explanations and advocacy relating to the proposed
change - fail for verbosity.

If you still can't get the correction through, post what you put into
the source box, and I'll advise further.

Brian Austin