World Archives Project

Sorry, don’t have Twitter and won’t be getting it either.
My question tho is why there aren’t prefix and suffix fields for Person #2 and Person #3? My first set was all about traffic accidents and some of the 2nd and 3rd folks were Mrs or Jr. No place to put that info.

Gretchen,
Great question. We went back and forth about this a few times and decided to not include the additional Prefix and Suffix fields so we could keep the overall number of fields down. (And I know Twitter isn’t for everyone – I think it’s great to use for these brief question sessions but you won’t see me posting daily. :))

It’s a lot of fields.

Jr/sr/III get included with Surname in the absence of a dedicated Suffix field.

Prefixes will simply be dropped

Don’t and never will use twitter either. Regarding guidance, I find that there are too, too many places to submit questions and no centralized answers. Wiki submissions aren’t for everyone, board questions are literally “across the boards”, then there are questions addressed to WAP for which answers are not posted. Guidelines are coming to and from too many directions and this continues to be frustrating.

Thanks Paul, I too just raised the prefix question/suffix question and others.

Seraphine10, I totally agree, there is way too many places to get help from, the wiki’s, the message boards, the WAP help, it gets confusing.

Good, I thought I was the only one who spends too much time trying to find info on how to do a project. Every time, I run into to something weird and don’t know how to proceed. I don’t twitter, hulu, and the wiki – I don’t even get that.

All this twit and wiki is all just to much for me.

Would rather use the boards as they are more central. Too confusing when having to search for answers or ask a question.

Keep twit for the twits, and for the wiki for those game enough to venture there.

Don’t do twitter. Re the immigration and naturalization service records. Every one I open seems to be about car crashes which is nothing like the pages on the ‘help’
Am I missing something ?

Francis, they’re alphabetized by subject, and “accidents” comes early. next is “accomplishments”, a REALLY short file, and then “accounting” and “accountants”.

@paulmd199: Since when are we dropping prefixes? What about the instructions: when no field is given for prefixes or suffixes, key the prefix in the given name field and the suffix in the surname field?

Hi all,
Here are a few answers to questions I have seen.

1. Prefixes are dropped for Persons 2 and 3. Suffixes should be included in the surname field after the surname. If you saw the name John Smith Jr, and there wasn’t a suffix field, you would enter “Smith Jr” in the surname field.

2. You may encounter titles such as Partol Inspector – these will not be keyed.

3. The Subjects are in alphabetical order (the ones I was keying were Abandoned Houses) so you will see a wide variety of entries.

4. When entering the Reference Number key it as seen, including dashes, slashes and commas.

I also appreciate the feedback on helps – there are a lot of places you can go but the main source of information is the wiki, http://www.ancestry.com/wiki/index.php?title=Ancestry_World_Archives_Project
This is where we update all of the instructions to include answers to the questions we see in Support and on the message boards, and on the blog, etc. The wiki should be able to answer most questions you have, and if the answer isn’t there emailing our support team would be the next step, worldarchivessupport@ancestry.com .

Happy keying!

I have just keyed my first set of these and been appalled that the month issue has crept in again. We are asked to key the month in full, but what does the drop-down list have? – you’ve guessed it – Mar, Feb, Dec etc. If you want the keyers to key the month in full, do not put in these options! In fact if you have auto-fill on and key M A Y you get a blank field. This has been complained about so many times. I used to work in software development and if I had kept releasing projects with the same errors in them I would have been fired. I will not be keying this project again. Totally fed up!
Kate

@dwc

Not what the general Keying standards actually state.

“In cases where a name is listed as Randolph, Jack, Baron of Friedmar and there are not prefix or suffix fields only the surname, Randolph and the Given name, Jack. If there are fields for the prefix and suffix you would enter Baron of Friedmar in the suffix field. In cases where the name is listed as Rev. John Smith, or John Smith, MD, and there is not a prefix or suffix field the name should be entered with John in the Given Name field and Smith in the Surname field, without either prefix or suffix”
am not able to post urls in the blog (any url an the system thinks its spam 🙁
Will try putting the link on “your website” and see if it works. If it does, clicking on my name will bring you to the keying standards page.

Kate, We have a new dictionary manager so we are working through these issues and hope to have most items worked on in a few months time.

My first set of this group gave me a 71% accuracy rate. Yesterday I keyed my second set of this group. I had no names at all, just “contract labor” company names. So I “blanked” all Person columns, filled in date columns. When I checked today my % of Accuracy had gone down. It would help if we were told what mistakes we are making rather than continuing to make the same ones, apparently.

Help! I keep running into “Naturalization Courts Discontinued” and haven’t a clue if or what to key. Now I’m hitting them in arbitration and don’t know what to do with them. I also can’t find where to go to get help. This is my last resort. I don’t want to keep cancelling these sets because I can’t find help. Thanks,

HELP: I have been keying the Subject Index to Correspondence and Case Files of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1903-1952.
I’m coming across stowaways and seamen being fined, but have no ‘field’ in which to key in this information. It feels important to record this.
We need a ‘notes’ field for miscelleneous stuff like this.
Have you any ideas of how to deal with it?
I have used the suffix for the stowaways but the fined seamen won’t fit in this because it is a mixture of words $signs and numbers.
I’m loving doing this project, and have little flights of fancy imagining the people waiting in queues…
Eileen