Poor transcriptions

[GrahamSimons]

Returning to the SoG Great Card Index, we have great difficulty when we can 'transcribe what you see' but it makes little sense. Often we are getting placenames from the 14th century which simply can't be found now - written in neat hadwriting (for once) but without a county or other details to give a  clue. As for personal names with dreadful handwriting all we can do is make a best guess - not so much 'write what you think you might see if only this person could write even slightly legibly.'
I'm reminded of the rubric on my university exams which said, "Candidates are advised to write legibly. Those who do not may place themselves at a severe disadvantage."

[Andrew Tarr]

I had one family with children born in:
Carcroft - straightforward, about 30 miles from the residence place
Skyler - not in any gazetteer - but the next village to Carcroft is Skellow

If the writing is legible there is no problem with following the instruction, clearly.  When it's not, then transcribers are on their own.  Your example shows that early enumerators were in a similar position - they wrote what they heard rather than what they saw.  That's why surnames have so many variants; by the time many people could write, those variants were established and their owners insisted on keeping them.

[Sloe Gin]

I think Ancestry's approach is by far the most practical and useful.

The main aim is to get to the original image, where we can use our own judgement. The index is principally a finding aid, so recording every reading or version of an entry in the index improves our chances of finding someone whose name may have been misspelt or just wrong.  When you search for someone on Ancestry, the results will include any alternatives that have been contributed.

Only yesterday I benefited from this while looking for a Romani person in the censuses. Romani can be particularly hard to find as some have unusual forenames which can be recorded in a variety of spellings, and some went by more than one surname, using that of either parent at different times, and men sometimes used their wife's surname.

Findmy past could only find my man on one census, but thanks to the alternatives Ancestry gave me three.
.

[Sloe Gin]

Are Ancestry's suggestions indexed?  I doubt it.

Yes, they are. They wouldn't be of any use if they weren't.

[MollyC]

Unfortunately Ancestry does not make that clear.  I have hesitated to make suggestions because it seems they are only visible after you have arrived at the answer anyway.  Where a suggestion is definitely the better solution they could help by changing the main transcription and leave the original interpretation under suggestions as a "previous transcription" or similar.

As I said it would also be helpful if Findmypast had space for (indexed) suggestions.  I am stuck with the last line of a Canada census page where the surname has been copied from the family above, instead of being transcribed as a different single person household.  The RH side of the page shows it is a different building.

[Nick_Ips]

...Where a suggestion is definitely the better solution they could help by changing the main transcription and leave the original interpretation under suggestions as a "previous transcription" or similar....

But that would make no difference to finding a record, provided both (all) versions are indexed.

Deciding which record was definitely the better solution would take resources (=cost).  I'd rather Ancestry use the resources they have to give us access to more record sets, or else keep the subscription costs down.

Achieving greater accuracy in the transcriptions of records that have already been described doesn't really gain us much, so long as there are tools to find the records in the first place.

[Sloe Gin]

Unfortunately Ancestry does not make that clear.  I have hesitated to make suggestions because it seems they are only visible after you have arrived at the answer anyway.  Where a suggestion is definitely the better solution they could help by changing the main transcription and leave the original interpretation under suggestions as a "previous transcription" or similar.

There's no need for any of that.  Any of the suggested transcriptions will bring up the same result as the original transcription. That's all you need. 

To give my example, the person I was looking for was named Lock, but on some records he is Boswell. Because someone had kindly added Lock as an alternative, the Boswell entries came up in the results as well as the Lock entries.

As I said it would also be helpful if Findmypast had space for (indexed) suggestions.  I am stuck with the last line of a Canada census page where the surname has been copied from the family above, instead of being transcribed as a different single person household.  The RH side of the page shows it is a different building.

Yes, there are lots of cases like that. I have an entire family entered under the wrong surname in one census.  I've added the correct surname to Ancestry so they can be found now, but didn't bother with FindMyPast as I knew they would not accept it.

[Ayashi]

Just spent a while looking for a DAVISON on census. Eventually found under DANISCH. Silly me 

[Sloe Gin]

Just spent a while looking for a DAVISON on census. Eventually found under DANISCH. Silly me 

If this is on Ancestry, hope you've filled in the correction.
I had DAIRS for DAVIS once.  It's still there, but DAVIS finds it now.