At least 10000 Ancestry records with the same error !!!!!

Question

On 21 Oct 2023 Christian Roy wrote on Breault-364:

My family, on my father side, have been living in this little village (St-Jean-de-Matha, Joliette, Quebec, Canada) since its fundation in 1855. Unfortunatly in Ancestry's collection (Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968) all the birth places, marriage places and burial places on all the records for that parish have been labeled St-Jean-Chrysostome instead of St-Jean-de-Matha. 

Looking around I also found that 6 other villages have had the same faith (St-Jean-de-Cherbourg, St-Jean-de-Dieu, St-Jean-de-la-Lande, St-Jean-des-Piles, St-Jean-Port-Joly (this one for the period from 1800 to 1940) and St-Jean-sur-le-Lac. 

I have communicated the problem to Ancestry using "Add or update information" a few times over the last 2 years with no success. This week I tried "Report a problem" to be answered that I have to use the "Add or update information". Looking at comments around the web, it seems Ancestry does not care.

What can we do to stop propagating those errors ?

Update 24 October 2023 :

Last feedback email from Ancestry (via Report a problem) (DeepL translate)...

Don't worry, we promise to get to work as soon as you've finished submitting a report on this particular recording on your end ... but in order for us to investigate the recording thoroughly, we must respect the protocol.
Correcting a record

Rest assured that we have carefully documented the problem in your situation, even if you have reported it on your own...

We greatly appreciate your patience and understanding....

Lets hope it sticks this time.

Answer 1

There are a lot more errors at Familysearch as well.

1) I have noticed that the location suggestion for two areas in Ontario, Canada have been merged here (and thus at Family Search).  All locations in Durham Region (all towns, cities) are now located in the town of Durham, West Grey, Grey, Ontario.  

Problem is the Durham Region (which is quite large; 25,000km2 and 650,000+ people in 2016) is approximately 2 hours and 200km away from the town of Durham (44 km2 and 2,500 people).

How would one go about changing every town, city in Durham Region back to Durham Region and out of the small town of Durham 2 hours away?

2) Scott Township, Ontario census records are being coded as being Scott, Niagara, Ontario. The two locations are over 2 hours away (based on today’s highways) . Scott Township is a large area and contains many villages and farming areas; Scott, Niagara,  appears to be just an intersection within a larger community.

those are just two issues from where i grew up, so assuming there are many issues like that all across the world.

Comments

I've run into a similar issue with data from New York State. Some of our Netherland Settler and Netherland Settler Descendent ancestors who lived in the town of Rochester in Ulster County got moved to the City of Rochester in Monroe County. It is an easy mistake to make. I only caught it because of the dates, A century later and it wouldn't have stuck out at all.

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There are others in Ontario, Simcoe County and Simcoe the town about 3 hours apart.

Wellington County and the town of Wellington about 4 hours apart.

Home District founded and settled in the early 1800s and Home Township first settled about 1860 maybe later, 800km apart and inaccessible except by water.

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Oh, that explains the Home, Algoma issue I keep seeing. Algoma is no where close to where my family lived, i never understood why Algoma kept being included in the census or records coding.

Answer 2

You could try the Tim Harbinson technique on Family Search, it takes a lot of patience.

Look at this thread from Sept 2022.

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1470809/many-of-the-ontario-place-name-conventions-are-wrong

Comments

Thanks for pointing this out.

Answer 3

Christian, simply enter the correct place name in the profile boxes and in the bio, and add a note to the source that it is mis-labeled as another location.  Don't use (FamilySearch) drop-down menus for locations here in this province, they are majorly messed up.  Have fixed her up.

Comments

Yes, of course!

I also used the Add or update information on the Ancestry record (to correct it at the source) and put something like :

Incorrectly indexed as : Délia Lemier marriage to Agnes Roy on 27 Jun 1899 in St-Jean-Chrysostôme (St-Jean-Chrysostome), Québec (Quebec), Canada.

... in the result of the Wikitree Soucer tool. 

But the real question remains : Can I help my fellow Wikitreers avoid making the same mistake, when the source problem affects so many records? A search for St-Jean-Chrysostome as birth or burial places shows already hundreds on Wikitree records potentialy mislabed. It's not much until you have to review them one by one.

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It's easy to put the right location for birth/ marriage/ death or burial instead of what is in the drop down list.

It's far more difficult to have the correct location show on the sources for birth, marriage, death when they are indexed incorrectly on Family Search.

I usually add Research Notes stating that the record has been indexed incorrectly as an example Algoma, Home Township, when it should be x place, Home District.

The only real solution for mis-indexed records on Family Search is to use the process as described on the Tim Harbinson thread as described in the link above.

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you can only tell Ancestry they are lost in their geography, Saint-Jean-Chrysostôme is nowhere near Saint-Jean-de-Matha.  Maybe sending them the Wikipedia links will make them see that.  Don't know what else we can do, Ancestry is as it is, no idea who does their location sorting.

Answer 4

It may be worth posting this issue on ancestrys official Facebook page. Or if there is a Facebook group for the location may also be worth a post there.

Years ago I found that ancestry had spelt the name of a large town in England incorrectly, it took years for them to put right so till then we all had to remember to use the incorrect spelling or no records came up.

Answer 5

Christian, I was recently working on the profiles of several people from St-Jean-de-Matha and discovered this error. I thought the Sourcer app was making the error until I realized that it had been labelled incorrectly by Ancestry. Annoying for sure.

Answer 6

Family Search Location errors - You can try using this site to get location changes made.  They do want 'proof' from some sources that you are correct in the change that you want. I have been successful in getting some changes made, which does affect our location drop down.

https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-correct-or-edit-a-place-in-familysearch-places