Burial information comes from different sources, and each of them can be wrong in its own way. Accuracy is not the absence of mistakes, but the ability to show where information came from, how certain it is and how to correct it.
Three different sources: inscription, book, family account
The inscription on the monument is what can be seen on the stone. It may be partly destroyed, contain a stonemason's mistakes or be in another language.
The entry in a burial book is what an employee wrote down on the day of the burial. It may differ from the inscription in dates or in the spelling of a name.
A family's account is what relatives remember and know. It is valuable, but it may rest on retelling.
These sources are best compared rather than mixed. On a memorial page you can already mark which name actually appears on the monument, keep name variants, the epitaph as text, notes and links to sources. A dedicated field showing, for each fact, whether it comes from the inscription, a book or the family is a possible direction for the future.
Keep the provenance
Add a link to the source to the record: a digitized book, an archival file, an external catalog.
Briefly explain in a note where a correction came from.
Do not replace an old value with a new one without explaining why the new one is more accurate.
The contribution history on a memorial page shows who changed the record and when.
Mark uncertainty
It is better to mark a doubtful reading as doubtful than to present a confident guess. For dates you can state that they are approximate, "before" or "after" a certain year, a range, or keep the date only as text, exactly as it is in the source. An unclear part of an inscription should stay marked rather than be filled in by guesswork.
How transcription review works
Transcriptions of inscriptions from photos are done by volunteers and an AI assistant.
Every transcription is checked by other participants. In the usual process it is added to the record after two consecutive approvals by different participants. A correction of a name, a date or the number of people starts the check again, and a correction of other details needs one more approval. The author of a transcription cannot review their own work.
If a reviewer corrects a transcription, the review starts again with the corrected version.
If a transcription is rejected, a new task is created and is done by a different person.
The AI assistant can confirm someone else's transcription, but it does not correct or reject it.
The person who added the memorial, or a moderator, can apply the result directly.
The double check greatly reduces the number of mistakes, but does not remove them entirely. That is why a clear way to correct them matters too.
How to correct a mistake
If you added the memorial, you can edit it yourself.
If someone else added the record, press "Flag" on the memorial page and describe what is wrong. Any registered user can report; the selected material becomes non-public until the review is finished.
The review procedure, possible decisions, target times and appeals are described, in Ukrainian, in How to correct, hide or delete information. This article does not change them; it only explains them.
Being able to suggest a correction to someone else's record without reporting a mistake is a possible direction for the future.
Write to us
Write to us to organize the collection of materials, join the transcription work or support it — the address is support@