Friday, November 16, 2012

Follow-Up Friday - Helpful and Interesting Reader Comments

It's Friday, and I try to post reader comments to my blog posts that are helpful and interesting.  Here is this week's list:

1)  OFixing My Folks in FamilySearch Family Tree - the Plan (posted 12 November 2012):

*   Lineagekeeper noted:  "You are undertaking big and extremely valuable project Randy. Like you, I've been working on my own ancestral info in FamilySearch Tree and for a while. 

"It is good having sources attached to the records to finally silence some of folks who have historically argued over something they copied from in Internet that had no sources and they assumed was the gold standard for accuracy.  I too am using the Source Box along with creating sources for the source images and records not on FamilySearch. 

"I use Legacy as the interface between my data and the FS data, which also works very well. 

"We all have a lot of work ahead of us insuring the sourcing on FamilySearch Tree is right but once it is cleaned up, we'll all have a wonderful resource that will always be securely backed up."


*  Magda said: "I will definitely be following this series about you PLAN for Family Search Tree . Finally figured out out how to delete a father who somehow became the husband of all his daughter-in-laws !! This is using Roots Magic as my interface liaison to Family Tree. Sometimes it makes me cry how bizarre it is ( yet it looks like it could work like a charm ). "

*  Jilline noted:  "The way I add scanned records is by adding my images to Flickr and then copy and paste the URL for each image into the source info."

My comments:  Jilline has a great idea for adding images URLs to the Source info.

Kudos to Lee and Magda for trying to clean up their little part of the Family Tree.  If we all do our part well, then the Family Tree will be useful to everyone.  


*  Jackie Corrigan noted:  "Glad to see you mention this collection Randy. When I found the Catholic church records last spring I was able to discover a whole new hidden line for my husband. The only clue we had to his grandmother's parents were the names William and Mary Carpenter. By browsing (yes, it took a long time) I found his grandmother's baptism record, an actual photo of the records, not an index, and thus found her mother's maiden name, Davidson. Which of course led to finding her parents and siblings, etc."

My comment:  Well done, Jackie.  The key to using the browse-only collections is to think of it as digital microfilm - where you have to turn the crank and look at each page for the genealogy nugget you are looking for.  You quickly learn to find and use the index, and if you find something of interest there, to find the image with the page number from the index.  It's a bit hit-and-miss sometimes, but it's faster and cheaper than going to the FHC to read an ordered microfilm.  


*  Gerry analyzed:  "I will bet you know someone who is expert at dating photos from the dress and accessories of the subjects, which I am most definitely not, but I purely love solving photo puzzles. I will draw a few details to your attention. 

"The unnamed man is holding two ladies' hats - presumably the ones belonging to our subjects. There is a tweed coat hung over the bench that probably belongs to either the man or the photographer.  The man seems to be wearing a high starched collar with his bow tie. Surely the pegged pants are a clue - but I don't know to what. And is that a pen in his pocket next to what I presume is a handkerchief (but might be a piece of paper)?

"It's possible the lap coverings are blankets, but I think they drape like lighter fabric. The plaid one on Emily continues right on up under the sweater, and I'm thinking it might be a plaid dress. It also seems to me that the lace collar is on whatever Emily is wearing under the sweater. 

"I think the man was standing back where he thought he would be out of the photo. Someone, either the man or the photographer, wanted the photo of Dorothy and Emily together. Dorothy looks happy and relaxed. Emily looks a wee bit irritated (Oh for heaven's sake let me eat in peace!) - which suggests the photographer was her husband . . .

"I'm wondering if this was early in the courtship, and Marshall was working hard to make a good impression on his beloved's parents. 

"Have fun solving your puzzle. I hope you do and that you'll tell us how you did it."


My comment:  Thank you, Gerry, for seeing more details in the photograph than I did.  Emily always looks a bit irritated in pictures...you're probably right about her husband being the photographer!  I've wondered if this was taken on Dorothy's wedding day - perhaps after the marriage and during a break before a wedding reception.  Dorothy's long white dress could be a wedding gown, and she had a coat to put on because it was cool in November on the beach.  I need to look for the wedding announcement in the San Diego newspaper to see if it sheds any light on the setting of this photo.

4)  On Mocavo Announces Free Scanning Service (posted 15 November 2012):

*  Ryan Hunter, CEO of Mocavo, said:  "Thanks for your review. I wanted to address the concern that you raise about copyrights. We try to make clear on the mocavo.com/freescanning web page that copyright protected materials should not be submitted. To clarify further, once we receive materials from our community members we will review them to determine their copyright status. If copyright protection is in place, the material will not be included on our site. You can find additional information about our copyright policies in our Terms of Service."

My comment:  Thank you, Ryan, for the quick response to my concern about copyright protection of materials submitted to Mocavo for copying.  

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*  cheap jerseys said:  "Hope you can take a few days to recover from Grandpa Camp. Those little ones can wear a person out."

My comments:  Thank you, cheap jerseys, for your concern about my energy level.  There are 95 comments on this particular blog post that got through the Captcha trap (and I've deleted a bunch more over the years) - why have they singled this post out for these spam comments?   Is there a list of popular blog posts that get passed around to these folks?  In general, the comments are poorly written and sometimes incomprehensible, and therefore funny (to me) - and totally useless except to pad my Visitor stats.  

6)  Thank you to all of my readers and commenters for their effort to beat the Captcha trap and say something helpful and interesting on Genea-Musings.  


Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

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