Some notes on checking

I would like you all to change the way you name your checking documents. From now on, name them in the following manner.

SOLDIER'S LAST NAME,  Soldier's First name by Checker name

For example:

SMITH, John by Heather

There is no need to add the RecId, since you type it in the checking document.

Please use care when selecting which soldiers you want checked. Try to send soldiers with 5 or fewer children. If you've just begun a new assignment, and all the soldiers you've completed so far have 9 or 10 kids, then you may go to your previous assignment and select a soldier. We want current work to be checked, but we don't want the checkers to have to spend hours and hours checking.

If you had a difficult soldier you want checked, please let the checker know that is the case. That way, she/he can make that the full check rather than the quick check.

Please send the soldiers you want checked to your partner in a timely fashion. Choosing the day before a holiday that's near the end of the month to send the soldier is unfair to your partner.

Most of you have gotten your November checks done. That is appreciated.

Death information for grandchildren

We recently had a question about entering death information for people such as the soldier's grandchildren and spouses of the soldier's children. You do not have to enter this information. Definitely, do not go out and search for it.

Often we will input it, because we see it in Find a Grave, and it's easy to do, and it's good information. Feel free to do this. If you've already spent a long time on a soldier, it might be best to move on.

Summary:

If you have it, you may input the death information for non-target family members into the grid. It is not a mistake to leave it out.

Good job, Lisa!

We thought this was fun, so we decided to share it with everyone.

Lisa input Nathan Stewart. He had five households. Lisa found all census, marriage, and death records. All her data was quality code 1. How often does that happen?

Great job, Lisa!

Progress report

Here is the weekly progress report we sent to Dr. Costa on Wednesday. To finish our data collection on time, we want to complete 75 soldiers per week. As you can see, you exceeded that. Great work!

• Project 1
• 1732 total soldiers complete
• 88 soldiers completed this week
• 199 soldiers without children (to be removed from sample)
• 1533 total soldiers with children complete
• % of sample with children complete (n=8,500) = 18.0

Adding hints to the family tree

A question came up about adding hints to family trees. Here is Sandy's response.

There is no requirement to clear all the hints (either by attaching or clicking ignore). Some people like to do this because it makes newly added information more apparent when a new leaf pops up.   Please be sure to attach all the records we use for inputting (federal census and all death records) and the ones we've requested that you attach (WWI and WWII draft cards). Adding state censuses is optional.  A State census can be helpful especially when it provides new information such as additional family members or a new address, and in those cases probably should be attached to the tree.  But you do not need to attach  everything.  Often there will be numerous city directories and state censuses.  Also there might be lots of pictures, which I don't like to attach unless I'm sure it's the right person.  I have noticed when you click on pictures that sometimes the person who posted them is unsure of the accuracy of the person's identity and is requesting other relatives to weigh in, so be careful. Sometimes there are just too many records and it becomes too time consuming to attach everything.

Another note on quick checks

We're still noticing that many of you are spending a long time on quick checks. Please keep it to no more than 60 minutes. Check the most important items first. When you hit 60 minutes, please stop. You do not have to check everything when you're doing a quick check.

Our booth at SSHA

Last week, one of our Senior Investigators presented a paper and we had an information table at the SSHA conference in Baltimore. It was a success, and we got to introduce a few people to our data.

Here's our table. Pretty cool, huh?

Quick checks - a reminder

Just a reminder about quick checks. As I stated in the email assigning the November pairs, we would like you to keep the quick checks to under 60 minutes. Several of you have spent considerably longer on your quick check this month. We really would like it to be a quick check. If you need to do more checking than fits into 60 minutes, then please make it a full check.

Summary:

Spend no longer than 60 minutes on a quick check.

Home values

We had a question about home values this week.

The manuscript said that the home value was 12.50. The checker thought we only take the dollar amount. That is incorrect. This decimal will not break the screens. Please type what you see. The value of the home should be entered as 12.50.

Display

This poster, designed using data from our project, will be displayed in our booth at the SSHA conference this week.

Race and ethnicity in the US census

Thanks to Donna for informing us of this interesting article in The Washington Post about how the US census has described various races and ethnic groups since 1790.  You might find the descriptions of African Americans especially interesting since we will begin USCT VCC in January.

Hope you enjoy the article.

Servant inferred relationships

We've noticed in the checks that sometimes you're asking the inputter to change a servant's inferred relationship from unknown to non-relative. You don't have to do this. Occasionally servants turn out to be relatives. Enter whichever makes sense for your situation. Checkers, you don't need to comment on it, as it's not that important.

If you have an argument for why it should be one way or the other, please let me know in the comments.

The hardest people you've found

We are going to be participating in a round table discussing both mechanized and human census linking. We like to provide examples of difficult finds that our inputters have made. Please let me know of the find you're most proud of. Who was super-difficult to find, but you still managed to find her/him?

Please provide the RecId number and all relevant information, so that we can use these as examples.

Evidence of how awesome you guys are

At the request of our PI, Chris has been testing a system of mechanized searching and matching of soldiers to the census. Most people who use the census in their research use some form of mechanized linking. We've always maintained that humans are better than machines. It looks like Chris has proved us correct.

He took soldiers from our POW sample and did a mechanized search for them in the 1870 census. I will not explain it, because it doesn't matter, and I don't really understand it.

Chris searched for a subset of our soldiers. That is, he only searched for soldiers we'd already found. The mechanized search "matched" 37% of our soldiers. Unfortunately, 16% of those matches turned out to be incorrect. When we originally searched for these soldiers, we found 80% of them. Even if you just compared 37% with 80% we'd look good. But what that number really means (based on who Chris searched) is that the mechanization only found 30% of the 80%. Hope that is correct and makes sense.

What it amounts to is census inputters rock! This is one job that won't be taken over by robots.

Feedback on the new checking system

Thanks to those of you who provided feedback on our new checking system. Here are some of the issues that were addressed.

• Some of you don't like to do full checks. Sorry, for the time being, we will continue with both full and quick checks just as we've been doing. If you have any confusion about what either of these are, please let me know.

• Some of you found census or death information that the original inputter missed. Good job! Unfortunately, sometimes you did not write your search in the checking document. Please explain how you found the new information. The original inputter should be able to replicate your search and find the same information. This helps everyone improve.

• Some people were really good about getting their checks done in a timely fashion. Others waited until the last minute. Some people were stressed out because their partners didn't send them a soldier to check until the last few days of the month. They were worried that they would not have enough time to complete the assignment. From now on, please send your soldiers out to be checked no later than the 20th of the month. That gives your partner enough time to do the check. If you are unable to do that communicate with your partner about what is going on, so each of you knows what to expect. You might consider sending out soldiers for November and December checks even earlier since there are holidays at the end of both months.

On the whole, I think the system worked pretty well. I think you were all able to get a little more inputting done because you spent less time checking. If you think of anything else you'd like to say about the new system, feel free to contact me. Keep up the good work!

October 2015 checking stats

In October, we checked 40 soldiers under our new system. I've reviewed all of the checks, and I've come up with categories of errors. I've tallied the number of errors. I recognize that some of the "errors" were judgment calls. Sometimes, words are just really difficult to read. Sometimes a family is just difficult or Ancestry is acting up. Every person had errors, and there is always room for improvement. Here are the categories, their definitions, and the total number of errors for each category.

GRID Errors

• MILIN?/MAR? - Forgot to mark the column - 8
• Missing HH member - Forgot to add a person from the manuscript to the Grid - 4
• Duplicate people - An individual was included on the Grid multiple times - 2
• Wrong person - An incorrect person was added to the Grid - 1

Inferred Relationships

• Incorrect relationships - This is an incorrect inferred relationship (do not confuse it with the relationships on the manuscript) - 1

Census Errors

• Name - The name was not changed to match the manuscript - 46
• Typo/Reading/Wrong - This is a typo, a reading error, or some other way that data was entered incorrectly - 85
• State Code - The state or country code was entered incorrectly - 3
• Missing/Wrong URL - The URL for the census manuscript is missing or incorrect - 0 (yippee!)
• Missing data - A field that had information on the manuscript was not entered in the screens - 35
• Additional finds - The checker was able to find decades the original inputter missed (Some inputters sent soldiers they had difficulty with out for checks. That is fine. You can see by this number, that checking helped improve the data.) - 58
• Quality Code - The quality code is incorrect - 16

Death Errors

• Typo/Reading/Wrong - This is a typo, a reading error, or some other way that data was entered incorrectly - 8
• Missing data - A field that had information on the death record was not entered in the screens - 13
• Missing/Wrong URL/Source - The URL or death source is missing or incorrect - 11
• Quality Code - The quality code is incorrect - 9
• Additional finds - The checker was able to find death information the original inputter missed - 22

Tree Errors

• Missing/Incorrect information/relationships - There is wrong information on the tree or you did not include on your tree information that you entered into the screens or that you otherwise used to do the work. This does not include saving all those relationships in the early decades that aren't marked on the manuscript. - 16

The total number of errors for all 40 soldiers is 338. Some errors affect the data more than others. If we checked other pensions, we'd probably find similar errors. To put this in perspective, (provided I did the math correctly) at this rate, the total number of errors for all of Project 1 would be 71,825. Of course we corrected the 338 errors. We plan on checking and correcting about 10% of the sample. This means we will correct about 7,183 errors. At the end of the sample, we will still have 64,642 errors in the data. 

Thank you all for taking this so seriously. Let's set a goal to reduce our errors in November.

Births and deaths within the census year

There is a little confusion about what to do when individuals are born in the census decade, but after the census was taken. There is also confusion about what to do when individuals die in the census decade but before the census was taken.

If the individual was born after the census was taken in a given decade, the system will not add a black dot for that decade. Please make that decade a black X (for not searched). For example, if a person was born in 1880 after the census was enumerated, the system will have black dots for the decades 1850, 1860, and 1870. Mark 1880 with a black X.

If the individual died before the census was taken in a given decade, the system will not add a purple gravestone for that decade. Please make that decade a black X (for not searched). For example, if a person died in 1920 before the census was enumerated, the system will have purple gravestones for the decades 1930 and 1940. Mark 1920 with a black X.

This does not hurt the data. From a data perspective, black dots, purple headstones, and black Xs all mean the same thing. They are just administrative tools to make our jobs easier.