World Archives Project

Now you’ve got me worried Anna!! I had arbitrated/reviewed a lot of these cards and (hopefully) corrected all the things you mention above. However when I look on the Project Stats I notice I have disappeared from the Arbitration list. I had done over 14,000 of these cards – does this mean all the ones I did were wrong and have been returned to be redone?!

I don’t want to sound over-confident and we all make some mistakes – but I don’t think I got the whole thing wrong here! I’m not the only person to have “disappeared” off the top arbitrators list either.

I don’t think that the instructions were clear on this project.
Initially I did not have the “court” event at all, and the way the instructions were written it seemed like all that was wanted was names and more names.

Every project goes to extremes explaining given name, surname, etc, but not the “purpose” of the project. A paragraph before the instructions explaining the the project is looking for birth, marriage, death and court records ONLY would have been really helpful. Maybe explaining why these records are being recorded.
I also did many of the records and know after reading the blog that I made many mistakes.
I would also like to see a paragraph in the Delaware land project with more specific information about what is really wanted- names of lots of people, but for what reason.
I have decided to stop keying until more explanations are in the instructions.

I have arbitrated most of the 70 sets that just came up for keying. The quality, or lack of, simply amazed me! The event was not keyed; using 3 lines for a marriage; and on and on and on. I suspect most people just open up a project and start keying. By the time the sets are finally arbitrated (months afterward), the damage is done because there is no timely feedback. The INS cards are the same way!

Jeanne, Anna isn’t saying that the project is looking for birth, marriage, death and will / court records ONLY – just that any record which is not one of these still needs an Event Type to be selected, and the Event Type for these should be “Other”. We still key the names and any other info such as date and location which is given for these “Other” events.

I’m trying to arbitrate, but no info is showing up on the Arbitrate tab, even though it does appear on the Match tab.

Jan, I may be wrong, but it seems that the correct way to enter a marriage takes two lines so that the spouse is cross referenced..starting with the title name on line one then beginning line two with the spouse. If this is not correct WAP needs to make it clear. I do this as do many others because we want both names to show up in the reference index not just the primary name. But, you are right it never needs three.
And Pat I am having the same problem with the arbs. It is making us completely re-key everything which is much more difficult and time consuming than just putting them back in the pile to re-key. For some who don’t understand this it means we have to blank out every unused line to get the thing to go in. It takes forever. And, I am wondering what is happening to the keyers scores since neither A or B is being accepted..gads zooks!..Later ya’ll…John

John (and Pat), the arbitration glitch has been fixed now, so you shouldn’t see too many more of those sets where the keyers’ data doesn’t show up, but if you do come across any such sets, PLEASE cancel them “with problems” instead of arbitrating them, because, as you say, if you arb them it is very bad for the keyers’ stats.

As for the marriages, you should only key one record for a marriage, and there are boxes for entering the spouse’s name. This means that the spouse’s name will indeed be in the index. (Also there is almost certainly a corresponding index card where the spouse from the first card appears as the primary person.)

I purchased a new hp computer, windows 7. When downloading the Key tool, the process stops abt about a third of the way into the download. I have contacted Microsoft and was told that I needed to contact Ancestry. I am eager to continue with the WP indexing and hope that you can give me some pointers in order to resolve this problem. Thank you.

Earlier last week, I noticed that my rating on the Alabama cards went from excellent to good job. I’m assuming it was because the blanks were arbitrated. Very disappointing.

I had an experience using Ancestry records of the Kentucky Death Index.
Page after page of indexing showed a totally wrong first name, e.g. Benjamin, when the document showed the first name was Alice, and it was legible. The name Benjamin did not appear on the page at all.
Makes me wonder if there might not be something akin to hacking going on.