What projects are high priority?


We receive emails and see message board posts with this question on a regular basis. This is a tough one to answer for this main reason – if you have chosen to participate you have the ultimate say regarding what projects you will contribute to. Are there projects that we will hope to draw your attention to? Yes.  Will we ever tell you what project(s) to work on? No.

With that said I want to share some data with you about the projects that are currently available to key and review.

There are 10 projects that are over a year old – not surprisingly these are some of the larger and more difficult projects.

There are 16 projects with a projected completion date in 2013, 2 in 2014, 1 in 2015, 1 in 2016, 2 in 2017 and 5 from 2023 to 2046. (These are calculated based on how many contributors are participating on that project and how many image sets are submitted in a given day – so they change on a regular basis.)

There are 11 projects that are currently 100% keyed but have review image sets available. If you are interested in becoming a reviewer please send us an email, worldarchivesproject@ancestry.com.

 

I know there are many contributors who will choose a project based on the location, others based on the percentage complete, and there are even some who like the really tough projects. Continue to choose the projects that pique your interest and that you feel drawn to- every contribution, no matter how big or small, no matter what project, is appreciated!

 

 

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Reader Comments

I have tried to arbitrate the Czech records numerous times. However, only keyer a appears, not keyer b. I have mentioned this to Support and on the boards, but have heard nothing since I mentioned it in December!

@Janet,

One cause of this is that the records may be a-review (there is only keyer a), if this is the case, you will see “review” in the type column in your screen.

If this is NOT the case, and the type says “arbitration” please cancel the image, and select “this image has problems that prevent completion” and enter a description of what you see.

Indicate if you are on a mac.

FWIW the images I have seen thus far seem to be normal.

There is a thread on the Arbitration board about that problem with the Czech records, dated 14 Nov 2012. (You have to go back a couple of pages on that board to find it.)

Both you and I posted on that thread, Paul. I seem to remember seeing a few of those cancelled sets and there was indeed a problem. But it’s a while back now, so my memory of it is hazy.

@Janet + Kate…. Ok, now that I’ve read. This problem can be caused by a bad or non-matching config file (on the part of the keyer) . The good news is that it will be a small number of keyers, you should be be able to cancel the bad ones, and arbitrate the remainder.

I have always loved doing indexing, especially the New Zealand directories. But, every since I bought my new Windows 8 laptop, the images bounce so much when I use the enter or tab key that my eyes are going crazy! It seems that most of the images will stay still if I can finish them all in one sitting, but that usually isn’t possible. If I turn it off and come back to it later, it’s awful! I sure hope that they find a solution soon! I wonder if anyone else is having this problem? AUGGGGH!

@mary

Try turning off the hilighter.

There shouldn’t be any projects remaining that still use it, but it may still matter.

Thanks for the projects’ stats, Anna, as I was one of many asking.

I guess I’m not surprised with your answers. It’s a little disheartening to see the projected completion dates of some larger and/or more difficult projects. Hopefully, I’ll still be keying when I’m 90+ and maybe learn a new language or two by then!

Seriously, is it feasible to breakdown all the larger projects and feed it to us a little at a time? That’s been done with some projects already as some have had a Part II or some have had to be rekeyed. Sometimes a project can get “old” to us and we move on to a different one. After a while, when it comes back, it feels like a familiar, old friend! We start keying it again.

Overall, smaller projects or breaking down the big ones would be nice. They seem to turn over pretty fast. Any smaller project could be processed faster and get out to the public faster. Smaller increments getting out to the public is better than waiting on larger ones to be completed. I would think that would be the case any way.

Personally this information has been helpful as it’s caused me to rethink and prioritize what I key and review.

Thank you for your reply. However, highlight is not usable on the ones I am doing. I have asked support about this a couple of times, and they said that they are trying to find a solution, but I guess they haven’t had any luck so far. I kind of hoped that someone doing indexing would have found an answer. Maybe Windows 8 just isn’t compatible with the Ancestry indexing? When I do indexing on Family Search I don’t have this problem. But, I like Ancestry indexing better! Hopefully they can fix the problem soon. Thank you again for all your help.

I’d love to take a shot at the French Electoral Cards, but the instructions are in French and I don’t speak or read French.

@mary

I tried the tool in windows 8 beta and did not have any issues with it. But since I decided not to purchase, i don’t know if the final version has issues.

@jane

I have discovered, that for the purposes of indexing you don’t really need to learn a new language. You can get by with just a couple of keywords. Especially for forms and tables. You do have to be awfully persistent for the first couple of batches as they WILL be tough, but after that they do get easier.

@paulmd199 Thank you for the link. As I said I’ll give it a try for a week or two and see how I do. *fingers crossed*

The only French you need for electoral cards is the names of the months (but use the drop-down list to enter them) plus maybe the occasional suffix — the only ones I’ve met so far are père (usually means “father”, but “senior” in this context) and fils (son/junior). Abbreviated given names can be tricky, e.g. Adre, Alexdre, Jh, Jn, Bte, … I keep meaning to make a list. Also, town names — the wiki tells you where online to find lists by Départment, which often helps eliminate multiple possibilities given by the tool’s drop-down lists. I’ve converted these web pages to text files for local searching (e.g. find from an MDSOS prompt or something more sophisticated) and I’m adding the old Départment names as I come across them. Perhaps I should make them downloadable somewhere?

As we’re only at Ba…, I find it difficult to believe we’ve really reached 19% and that they won’t sneak in a whole lot more later!

Janet, Paul, Kate,
We are aware of this issue and are able to fix these image sets on the backend.

Mary,
We are currently testing on Windows 8. Although we have not yet encountered the jumping image issue other contributors have aslo experienced it. (PS I am glad you like the World Archives Project better. :))

Jane,
For more recent projects we are working toward smaller projects with more parts…between 2 and 5 parts depending on the size. I am hopeful that this will also help with the review backlog.

Diane,
It sounds like you need to change the language settings in the keying tool. Click on File then Options. You will see a Field Name/helps language option – it can be set to either English or Same as Project.

I appreciate all of your comments and especially love seeing the community come together to help each other!

I have done several different things but am drawn to Kansas data because I was born and raised there. I also look for other states where relatives have lived and enjoy keying those. I am learning a lot. Have made some mistakes, I’m sure, but enjoy giving back in this way. I have a limited amount of time so only do 1-2 sets per day.

I work with windows 8 and haven’t had any problems, been using full version since Jan. 2013

I work consistently on the Kansas City records and they never go away. I try to key 1000 records a day. But do take time off, as I am disabled I have nothing else to do and need to feel needed.

@Mary Re “jumping” The following was posted on the keying tool board.

http://boards.ancestry.com/wap.keying%20tool/179/mb.ashx

“I noticed a comment on the World Archives Project blog that someone was having trouble with Windows 8 because the page kept jumping about. I had this problem initially when I converted to a new laptop but noticed that it only happens when the cursor is sitting on either the right hand side screen slider for the image being keyed or sometimes if the cursor is sitting on the image itself. Once I noticed this I make sure that the cursor is on the bottom part of the window – where I am inputting the data – and I have not had any more problems.

“hope this info helps whomever is having this problem

Pat “

Thank you for the hint. I tried it right away, but no luck! Maybe it’s just my computer? I usually leave my cursor on the “accept field as correct – f7” icon, since f7 doesn’t work for that on windows 8, either! I really appreciate all the help that I have received, and I will keep trying to figure it out. Computers don’t seem to like me, tho! LOL

[…] March we posted a message about which projects were high priority and we listed projects that have been available for over a year.  Here are updated statistics on […]

[…] March we posted a message about which projects were high priority, in June we posted a follow up to that message, and here is the latest […]