Why Not Strict Alphabetical Order?

[Coppit]

A major firm offering family history services has a facility on their site for searching for names using wildcards. Long lists of names can be exhibited but
occasionally one appears that is not in strict alphabetical order.
Is this something which should not happen if the programing was accurate?

[Old_Geezer]

Probably, but maybe there is a non-visible character throwing things out ?

[CrapAtCryptics]

Maybe someone typed zero instead of O or 1 instead of L

[Jonathan-Joe]

Probably not incorrect programming, perhaps results are not retrieved in alphabetical order when the wild card is used. The programmers are either not aware of this problem or do not consider it serious enough to add code to sort results. Have you reported this to the site?

[Coppit]

Yes I did report it to Find My Past but, as is often the case, although they respond quickly and are invariably polite they usually effectively bounce awkward questions back without providing an answer.

My question to them was 'Why does Sargent appear among Se.... names?'

These are the answers sent me:-
'Having checked the search results that you have received, I see that there
is a wildcard in there that will be widening the search results you have
received and offering alternatives within the search parameters that you
have defined.
I do hope this helps explain things but if I can be of any further
assistance please do let me know'.

and

'When you use a wildcard within your search, this will widen the search and
therefore increase the number of results returned, offering alternatives
within the search parameters that you have defined'.

Maybe I'm wrong but that seems like woffle.

Examination of the full data gives no indication of hidden characters.

[ABerrant]

Is your complaint that the surname 'Sargent' appears in a group that includes the variant spelling 'Sergeant'?

[Coppit]

Yes. It should appear with the other Sargent surnames higher up the list.
This might appear to be nit-picking but as anyone who is involved in genealogy will know there are many reasons why people are not listed where they are expected to be due to misspelling of names by the illiterate, careless enumerators, bad handwriting etc etc but worst of all, the shameful state of transcriptions commissioned by the then Public Record Office which unbelievably was contracted out to people in the Indian sub-continent.

There are quite enough problems spending hours (and a lot of money) looking for ‘lost souls’ without programs making matters worse.

[woofgang]

I wonder if its to do with the number of hits with each spelling variance

[CrapAtCryptics]

Or raising things up the list if other parameters entered raise its relevance

[Hypognosis]

@Coppit

With apologies for stating the obvious but something other than the alphanumeric value of {surname} is determining the sort order. If your search parameters specified two forenames but the Sargent entry had only one, or a mismatched second forename then it is pushed down the rankings. Likewise if the "Where lived" entry is mismatched.

I can only guess that "soundex" searches depend on data which is embedded in each record, affects sorting behaviour but is not displayed to the user. A typo in there would have unpredictable results.

Transcription errors ate a bugbear but the unfortunate transcribers could only have been allowed to write what they could see in the scrawly documents. Any attempt at intelligently guessing what things said could have just introduced errors, possibly in larger quantities.

On Ancestry.com, users can submit corrections if they find any blatant howlers but these obviously don't propogate to other genealogy services.

[Coppit]

My search was only for
1911 and se*t
within the Census pages.

Discussions with FMP are continuing.

Although this is not the place to enlarge on FH matters, the weakness of the FMP system is that alternative readings are allowed are not allowed, as opposed to Ancestry where sensibly, there is no limit.
(In 1939 I’ve just looked up a name transcribed as BERLE – but the original looks a bit like BULL. Which do you choose?].

[Coppit]

Please ignore my previous muddled reply.

My search was only for
1911 and se*t
within the Census pages.

Discussions with FMP are continuing.

Although this is not the place to enlarge on FH matters, the weakness of the FMP system is that alternative readings are not allowed, as opposed to Ancestry where sensibly, there is no limit.
(In 1939 I’ve just looked up a name transcribed as BERLE – but the original looks a bit like BULL. Which do you choose?].

[Hypognosis]

@Coppit

//Which do you choose?//

The certificate trail will show things like addresses and occupations at the time of marriage; occupation of father and mother at the birth of a child. The BERLE family would know what combination on children's names goes with parents, named X and Y. Even if the handwriting is awful, all the evidence points to this being their relative.

Fishing around in census records without any supporting information is a recipe for disaster. And we know that people copy, wholesale, from other researcher's trees, to save effort. That means they don't stop to check the facts.

If it's a coin toss at 1939, think how much effort you could waste, finding 1000 ancestors for BERLE and then something emerges which tells you it really was BUL L?

(unplanned, but very handy pun)

[Coppit]

The comment about Berle and ‘which do you choose’ was misleading as it was simply a casual example of the conundrum a transcriber faces when choosing to put a surname into the FMP system when there is only the one option.

FH has been my principal pastime since 1963 when I married and my wife brought her dog along too. Its pedigree was really annoying as more was known about its ancestry than I knew about mine – something I’ve been remedying ever since.

[Hypognosis]

@Coppit

I only got as far as my 32 great-great-grandparents before stumbling at the hurdle of parish records. The IGI doesn't seem have them and I drew the conclusion that the LDS, far from microfiching the *entire* UK's parish registers, certain individuals have flown here, photographed records which support only their family's link to Britain. If you look at IGI records often enough, you will note how often they are labelled as "user submitted data". As mentioned on the Pinsent episode, LDS types are exceptionally keen to prove noble descent because that links them to ancient Royalty, which proves they're direct descendants of Jesus, without which they don't get to heaven, or some such. Keen… user submitted data… hmmm.

Anyway, as far as I'm concerned the IGI is full of holes, false leads and tweaked spellings; my relatives aren't in there. The FreeREG project wasn't progressing in the areas I needed it to so I am faced with a 400 mile drive and hotel bills to make a public records office visit. I have chronic fatigue which is an obstacle to long drives, plus I have no income to pay for it all, so I stopped further efforts to push it back (including verifying trees I've copied from). Retracing the life stories of the names found so far is the main interest, for me, now.