Should we get rid of matchbot

Question

Just had a matchbot suggestion of a merge, ok name and DOB matched, but different parents siblings and county's.
I have never had a matchbot suggestion that is correct, just waste time having to check and reject.
Maybe the program needs to be rewritten to check places of birth ( had one with UK birth match with USA birth ), and parents names before making a suggestion

Comments

Hi Theresa,

Perhaps it would be beneficial if you haven't read it to read this intriguing question asked by Chris Whitten perhaps it would give you some insight into the benefits of Matchbot

You can see the post here

Best regards

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That post doesn’t exactly strengthen confidence in matchbot. How many people are devoting their time to monitoring a bot?

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I re-read that post and was amused by Gilly Wood's comment that if MatchBot were a person he would have been blocked for being a nuisance by now!

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Hi
Lynda

I reckon most projects have there critics, however it was just an informational into the operation with intended hope that a few might agree to participate.

Think good thoughts!

Have a great day

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So are you hoping that more people will devote their time to monitoring matchbot? My good thoughts are more in line with Theresa’s suggestions.

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Comment phrased to get a debate going. Seems to have worked

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If an automated process needs a project to manage it, it's not been programmed correctly in my opinion. The whole point of automation is to save time, not create jobs. Yes, I expect normal checks and balances involve looking over it now and then but it shouldn't be causing as much eyebrow raising every time it makes a suggestion. I had a Sarah born 1878 who matchbot tried to merge with another Sarah born 1878. Only problem was they were different LNAB, living in different counties.

Answer 1

I for one am opposed to using "bot's" for anything. Yes they can work much faster than humans, but they can create errors much faster as well. Yes there is a quality problem , unsourced problem and duplicate problem but solving these problems takes time to do it right and the bot;s do not have the intelligence to do the work yet.

Answer 2

MatchBot is running again.  Liz updated the MatchBot Project page in regards to this.  We have limited the run to 50 profiles per night.

The match parameters still need to be updated to avoid the really "bad" matches that it makes - just name and date of birth for example.  However, we felt that it was important to have it resume as it does point out valid duplicates. It also allows us to tag old profiles with an 'unsourced' tag, which hopefully someone will then work on during a Sourcing Sprint.

Until we can work with the developer to update the match criteria, you will see some that only have a match for Name and Year of birth.

We have been monitoring the matches and rejecting any that have a privacy level that allows us to review them.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience until we can update the match criteria.

If we are voting to keep or get rid of it, I vote keep but then again I'm a little bit biased.  ;-)

Thanks,
Susan 
MatchBot MP

Comments

Agreed, Susan. If anyone is tallying Yay or Nay comments - I'm in for a YAY. Bot does have some really bad days, suggesting some ridiculous matches, but does manage to find some matches, that are spelled so different. that none of us humans or Aleš' magic program could have found them. It is well worth the time it takes to reject it's bad matches.