Talk:Sussex Census

Link to Hollington, Sussex is broken produces Lullington, Sussex results Ps1964 A large number of entries on this page are affected and produce Lullington, Sussex entries in the Family History Library Catalogue.

Paul, the whole template is unreliable and has not been fixed. I am working to correct the Sussex census links in parishes worked by the Sussex team this week all of which produce incorrect Family History Library Catalogue searches. The creator of the original template entries has introduced dozens of entries linked to a single place. With limited time the scale of the problem is beyond me, if the team add future lnks they need to create their own entry for the Catalogue which defeats the purpose of this page. Could the page be fixed to help contributors please? Ginnel Chichester parishes are being fixed all were broken

Repaired 25 links erroneously linked to "Bexhill" in order to correct link on a single page. Henry995 Letter A parishes need testing but appear to work now

Repaired all erroneous links to Hardham, Sussex which covers A-C, Crawley is incorrectly linked and so on. Please test links before use in pages Henry995

Repaired links for parishes E-K all linked to single parish Lullington, Sussex Sopsteele

With one or two confused links the page now seems to have lost the extensive links to 4-5 parishes; I have to work on a couple ( the Eastbourne links were incomplete). Please test all links if you are inserting the template into a parish; not quite how we intended to work this weekend!! I note an earlier request for the page to be fixed in the history went unheeded. Ginnel

CONFUSION IN FAMILY HISTORY LIBRARY CATALOGUE AND WIKI

Due to the way in which the Family History Library Catalogue handles the following there is considerable confusion. The wiki pages are now clearly identified for:

East Dean, St Simon and St Jude, East Sussex

East Dean All Saints, West Sussex

West Dean All Saints, East Sussex

West Dean St Andrew, West Sussex

I have on behalf of the East and West Sussex contributors raised a case with support @amilysearch.org about the catalogue handling of records for the parishes. In terms of this wiki page, link to the catalogue is not useful at this stage due to the confusion and again the question of mixtures of all record types for parishes when the page purports to link to "Sussex Census" only arises. As contributors we find the handling of Catalogue entry is frequently problematic in the county. Crescunt 10:25, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

The response offered belatedly to the case raised by contributors fails to address this issue and the diversion in suggesting that feedback is offered to the Standard Finder appears particularly evasive. I feel that the fundamental here is a confusion about Sussex geography and muddled thinking about  setttlements, villages and civil and ecclesiastical parishes with similar names in the same county. Since the support response is clearly not going to act to take up the question of reorganisation of any catalogue entry revision  the catalogue will remain confused. As a contributor to this project I find it unacceptable that FamilySearch are prepared to ignore local contributors views in this way and am seriously questioning withdrawing as a result. On the one hand local contributions are being requested on the other a group of local people identify a problem (a series of problems) raise them and are told to go elsewhere. If this is the level of response on offer I do not wish to be associated with this project in future Chichgirl 04:46, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I have offered a response reflecting the group consensus as volunteer contributors and to question why we are being asked to offer information in 4 distinct FamilySearch product areas using 4 "feedback" systems. It does appear that FamilySearch does not "own" problems they have willingly and as you say Helen it does raise the question of whether to continue to contribute time, effort and knowledge to an organisation which is so frustrating to work with. The repeated experience of so many component divisions within an organisation who do not take up a problem is almost Kafkaesque at times. As several expressed perhaps a long holiday from FamilySearch really is needed! Crescunt 08:38, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

We are grateful to Vona Williams for her response to these concerns which includes:

"Thank you for pointing out the problem with East and West Dean in Sussex. We are so grateful for help in finding the problems we have created.

We apologize for the frustration we have caused you. We always appreciate being made aware of problems in our programs. We always want to rectify the problems but we ask that you forgive our growing pains. We have had many changes over the past few years that makes it difficult sometimes to know who would be the best person to solve the problem. We appreciate your patience with us.

I have asked the catalogers to make changes in the catalog for East Dean and West Dean. The frustration you expressed about the census was caused because the reference materials on the census we received from England put East Dean(East Sussex) under Eastdean and West Dean (East Sussex) under Westdean. Our people who put the census in the catalog did not realize this and consequently, the microfilm numbers were not added to the catalog. We are getting it changed in the catalog now.

The other problem that exists with our present catalog in FamilySearch is that there are no links between places when they could be known by more than one name. In the older catalog there was a link so if you look for Dean (near Chichester)(West) in the new catalog and it was linked to West Dean in the old catalog it will come back and say that there are no records for that place. The engineers working on the catalog are trying to fix this problem and so it shouldn’t be long before the problem will no longer exist."

Accordingly with one or two exceptions contributors to Sussex pages will add no further content until this work is undertaken. This also impacts those who wish to contribute to Kent and Surrey parishes as we have identified similar issues in those counties. Crescunt 14:16, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Contributors for Kent Census microfilm listings available in both versions of the FamilySearch site have found many errors and omissions. There is no searchable census return for the town of Broadstairs for example which links to the current search for filming; other counties in England are also affected.As Vona Williams pointed out engineering work is to be undertaken but at present it is questionable whether the reference to microfilm holding is of value to researchers unless they are located in the Family History Library where the film stock can be consulted. The 1901 and 1911 census are not available other than online and I would question the value of trying to incorporate entries which may be inaccurate and certainly are incomplete. In Kent we have adopted the approach of including such microfilm descriptions that are available; several have contradictory film numbers for the locality, several are omitted but we have felt it vital to offer information about the provision of searchable image collections at fee payable sites. Whether microfilm links are of value is debatable; certainly the links in pages like this have been found to be inaccurate and presentation like Herefordshire Census is unacceptable as so user unfriendly. It would be helpful if FamilySearch could offer some response in discussion pages where these issues are raised by contributors; lacking so far in each of the counties or should that be ALL of the counties? Hostelry 11:18, 17 January 2012 (UTC)