1851 & 1861 Scottish Censuses on Ancestry.com today ....

[sporran]

Hello all,


the indexing by Ancestry has caused much amusement with English and Welsh censuses long before they turned to Scotland. However, I am certain that indexing is done by humans and OCR is not to blame. It would appear that little or no training takes place and quality-control is missing.

OCR has been used for a long time with special characters, such as those printed on the bottom of cheques, and it is becoming more successful with typewritten fonts. PDAs (hand-held computers) also use OCR but generally they have to "learn" a person's writing and the person must write each character separately. The technology used in Palm Pilots seemed better than the Compaq PDA that I formerly used, where anything other than Ladybird-style letters caused problems. Even the best OCR software will have severe problems with cursive handwriting; and lots of lines, such as on census forms, would add to the woe.

If OCR were any good with handwriting, it would be used. As FreeBMD puts it, with my apologies for the dreadful conversion of an acronym into a verb:
"Handwritten records
No-one thinks that OCRing handwritten records is feasible."


Regards,

John

[DavidWW]

Hello all,


the indexing by Ancestry has caused much amusement with English and Welsh censuses long before they turned to Scotland. However, I am certain that indexing is done by humans and OCR is not to blame. It would appear that little or no training takes place and quality-control is missing.

OCR has been used for a long time with special characters, such as those printed on the bottom of cheques, and it is becoming more successful with typewritten fonts. PDAs (hand-held computers) also use OCR but generally they have to "learn" a person's writing and the person must write each character separately. The technology used in Palm Pilots seemed better than the Compaq PDA that I formerly used, where anything other than Ladybird-style letters caused problems. Even the best OCR software will have severe problems with cursive handwriting; and lots of lines, such as on census forms, would add to the woe.

If OCR were any good with handwriting, it would be used. As FreeBMD puts it, with my apologies for the dreadful conversion of an acronym into a verb:
"Handwritten records
No-one thinks that OCRing handwritten records is feasible."


Regards,

John

Hi John

Repeating my response on a parallel thread ........

See Sally's post re the www reference that she found in relation to proven use by Ancestry of OCR and allied technology ........

This reinforces my belief on the basis of many '51 and '61 entries that I have now seen, that however untrained the personnel, be they in the Indian sub-continent or SE Asia; however deficient their lack of knowledge of the English language and never mind Scottish names, place and personal; however deficient the lack of training; however lacking the provision of lookup tables for occupations, locations, and surnames; and however lacking the quality control procedures involved, it verges on the extremely unlikely that many of the 1851 and 1861 census entries on Ancestry could have been produced other than by a method involving in some manner OCR technology.

That's not to say that previous inanities in earlier English datasets available on Ancestry weren't the result of untrained, unsupervised human beings, most probably furth of the UK, with no proper QC procedures !!

David

[sporran]

Hello all,


I sent a question to Ancestry before posting my thoughts yesterday. Their reply was received a short time ago:

Dear John,

We appreciate your message.

We have a team of humans that transcribe the records.

If there is anything else with which we might assist you, please let us know.

Justin W
Member Solutions
Ancestry.com


Regards,

John

[Bertha]

John

At least you got a reply. I e-mailed them 2 days ago re my missing Ross's in the 1851 but no reply. I had a look for other's on the same page without any luck so beginning to think someone turned over 2 pages!
I have even tried putting the names in as they are entred eg Rob for Robert, Cath for Catherine etc and no surname, my eyes are getting sore looking.
Still better make use of the free viewing whilst it lasts, don't know if its worth buying a membership though
Regards to all
Bertha

[Jack]

We have a team of humans that transcribe the records.

Hi John,
If that reply to you is true - and i've no reason to doubt it is,
then it certainly doesn't look like English is their 1st language, and that quality control is non-existent.
--
Many companies know of the moneymaking aspect of the fast growing genealogy industry.
And have jumped on the bandwagon.
Just churning out old records, either online or CD, with no care whatsoever if there are transcription errors.
--
Accuracy? Sorry, you've lost me. What's that?
Checking? Eh? You've got me there too. Never heard of it.
--
Jack (who needs a wee cynical Smiley)

[Jean Jeanie]

This gets more and more ridiculous!

My latest find:-

Andrew Neill born in Uphall abt 1828....sooooooo the correct one.

Address:-

Zue Onaf Aryroad Nennll
St Michaels
Linlithgow.

Jean

[Bertha]

Hi All
Finally got a reply from Ancestry who regretted I hadn't been able to find my family but suggested I phone one of their paid researchers who could either do the research or talk me through how to do it!
As you can imagine, I gave them short shrift.
Suggested they ought to look at the information on their census transciptions and see for themselves the errors you have all highlighted.
Anyway goodnight all of to bed
Bertha
PS
By the way finally found them in the 1841 due to a little something I had missed on the 1851 (using SP offcourse). A whole load of other children too!

[AndrewP]

Zue Onaf Aryroad Nennll

A look at the census page showed Queensferry Road, but the word squashed in underneath was not clear. That took a read at the "free header page" to see the Enumerator's area described. Mystery solved.

Queensferry Road Kennel

A look at an old map showed the location on the edge of the grounds of Bonnytown house. Or in modern terms, on the Queensferry Road, leading out of Linlithgow, close to the end of Linlithgow Loch.

All the best,

AndrewP

[pinkshoes]

At David's suggestion I'm posting this wee tale. I did post last night, but after a quick look on SP I thought I was doing Ancestry is disservice and removed the post. However ...

I found the Stewart family of Drem in 1851 on Freecen a long time ago, so I knew they were there, but I was short of a daughter so decided to have another look. To refresh my memory I thought I'd look at Ancestry index for the father, James Stewart. Nada. But I found the family by searching for daughter Marianne. The index showed Marianne and a bunch of sibling Stewarts, mother Anne Stewart and father James Hewart, all at the same address.

I did my rant on here, then check on SP and found that indeed James is indexed there as Hewart, but so are the rest of the family Unfortunately there is no image available on SP so I can't have a look.

So, isn't it a bit odd that SP have the whole family as Hewart, yet Ancestry have decided they are all Stewart bar the father?

Best wishes
Pinkshoes

[David Lang]

I have had some fantastic variation in the 1851 census and even the 1861 , i am glad i knew where they were born as it allowed me to narrow down the possibilities before looking on SP for the image.

All in all , its free , so we shouldnt complain too much