Soundex on WikiTree?

Question

I just added a distant family member (wife of a first cousin, twice removed) named Mable Shaw.  When I checked for duplicates, I also tried "Mabel" which I believe is the much more common spelling.  There were three results for Mabel, none for Mable.

I kind of doubt anyone with a Mabel in their ancestry would think to try spelling it Mable and wondered if the good folks at WikiTree had considered adding a Soundex search.

Answer 1

Hi Fred,

This was on the to-do list, but actually there's a better alternative now. At least i think it is. Dallan Quass of WeRelate developed an open source alternative name finder in conjunction with Ancestry.com. I'm thinking we should attempt to integrate that.

Chris

Comments

I noticed a recent question on this subject and that led me to this one.  Has the thinking changed on this?

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Hi Michael. No, we should still do this. I'll raise the priority and maybe it will finally get done. :-)

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Great!

Answer 2

Soundex is based on English pronunciation and creating lots of problems for non-English names. If it is seriously considered please make it an option, or alternatively, also include Daitch–Mokotoff Soundex and Double Metaphone.