Another howler from Ancestry

[cati]

Cati, I'm just amazed that people believe that the Chinese could do it at all ?  

Well, I hadn't heard the one about China, but I've been told several times that the trancribers were in India!

Cati

[Jean McGurn]

I think some of the problem could be 'looking' or 'reading'

I say that because I have a certificate for Robert Stables and if you just look quickly at his surname it appears to read Stubbs but if you look at the letters it is obviously Stables.

I think in the long run most transcribers are doing a great job especially looking at some of the writing on census images that in some cases having to be posted on RC for others 'eyes' to translate.

I think we should be thankful that there are dedicated people out there doing all of us a great service.


Jean

[Nick29]

We see the errors more readily because we know the name that we're looking for, and we often get angry when the transcriber didn't see what we knew.   However, when you put yourself into the position of a transcriber (which I have done in the past for Ancestry in their WAP project), and you see record after record after record, and you don't have any clues to work out what the handwriting actually says, then it becomes an entirely different ball game 

[cati]

I think in the long run most transcribers are doing a great job especially looking at some of the writing on census images that in some cases having to be posted on RC for others 'eyes' to translate.

I think we should be thankful that there are dedicated people out there doing all of us a great service.

Oh, I agree with you Jean - I'm very grateful for anyone who has helped me by transcribing etc - and I must admit that I have enough problems transcribing for my own records when I'm pretty sure what the name ought to be: but nonetheless there are some wonderful howlers.

Cati

[LizzieW]

I find FindMyPast are very good at correcting transcribing mistakes if you notify them.  Just the other day I found one address which must have been divided into rooms or something, which had 4 families living there.  The transcriber had started with the first lady, a widow, and then - although the enumerator had divided each household clearly with lines - the transcriber had missed out the next 2 households and given the 4th household the same surname as the widow.  I notified FindMyPast and within about 3 days it had all been corrected.

Lizzie

[Koromo]

I think you'll find that the China myth started as a joke by a forum poster ...

Quoted from Ancestry's 2009 IPO filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission when they put up shares for public ownership:

"In 2008, one of our transcription vendors, Beijing Formax, performed a majority of our data transcription as measured by cost."

www.formax.com.cn

[Chris_Beds]

I thought it was a fact that the first transcriptions had been done abroad.  It's good to have it confirmed, because as some have said there are glaring errors - it is much easier to transcribe if you know the country and possible names.
I have transcribed for both FreeBMD and WAP - WAP is quite a different ball-game from FreeBMD due to the variety of projects.  But with both WAP and FreeBMD they are transcribed twice by different people and there are arbitrators who sort out any difference between two transcriptions.  With WAP it happens before they are published.  AND I have worked on some very interesting projects.  It's worth having a go

[LouiseA]

Anyone (whether an Ancestry member or not) can volunteer for the WAP.  And if you think transcribing is easy, then feel free to volunteer ! 
http://community.ancestry.co.uk/wap/dashboard.aspx

Where did I say that I thought transcribing was easy?

[Marmaduke 123]

I think the transcribers of the West Yorkshire records have done a fantastic job. There are a lot of errors, but as Nick says we can find our names because we know what we are looking for.

I'm working through mine, and that's all my tree, correcting the names where they are wrong. I can find them, because I had the dates and places from the incredible transcription work done by local FHSs. I've got quite a few who don't show up on a search, but I have found almost all by browsing. 

Some of the pages don't have an index at the bottom at present, so they are clearly not going to show up on a search.

Ancestry were reasonably quick in removing "Nomina" as a parish, and replacing it with Huddersfield St Peter. Some of the unindexed pages might be because of that error - maybe they are having to be redone.