When I run the update each day, I see about 10 or 15 messages for
entries where the death date is more than 30 days prior to the
publication date. I generally accept them without investigation,
because I know that the indexer gets a warning message when the
record is being entered, and has to consciously accept the message -
so surely the date must be correct.
However, two entries in a file today now have me wondering if there
is a fundamental problem in the indexing program which lets these
errors through un-noticed by the indexer.
This is the situation from today. There were three consecutive
notices, notice A with a death date of 22 Dec 2016; notice B with a
death date of 1 Jan 2017; notice C with a death date of 2 Jan 2017.
The data as submitted had the death date for notice A correct; notice
B was submitted as 1 Dec 2016; notice C was submitted as 2 Dec 2016.
I'm guessing that the indexer was using the date picker to enter the
date, and because the date in notice A was genuinely Dec 2016, then
the indexer didn't notice it was the incorrect month and year when
entering notice B, and again for notice C.
But in any case, the indexer would have received a warning message
that the death date was more than a month before the publication date
for both notices B and C - and that message is there specifically to
trigger alarm bells so that the indexer has to think as to whether or
not the date entered is correct. It takes a conscious action to
accept the message.
How on earth do these sorts of errors get through? Can anyone
enlighten me? Is there a method of entering the date which somehow
bypasses the warning message?
In the past, I have always accepted such dates (I also get a warning
when running the update) on the basis that an indexer couldn't
possibly make two mistakes in the entry (month and year), and then
accept the warning message, if all three were wrong. Seems I am the
one who is wrong, to assume that.
This is problematic as I see probably 10 or 15 such messages in each
day's updates. I don't have time to hunt down the notice and check
each one, I just accept them because of the warning message that I
know the indexer has accepted. But how many of them are wrong?
Can anyone explain how such results could be obtained, short of the
indexer being on auto pilot (and as these three notices were in the
first 5 for the day, that's hardly likely.)
John
