Let me start with another apology -- and an excuse. It been awhile since the last update. The COVID monster almost got me. I went to the hospital on New Years Eve and was diagnosed with COVID. I suppose that in hindsight mine was not nearly as bed as some; but at the time, I sometimes wondered if I was going to make it. It has been nearly 6 months, and the effects still linger, but at least I feel well enough to work on the site. This edition of News summarizes the new features of STP. For more details, see the summary of changes.
First of all, let me introduce you to a new feature designed to make STP easier to use. The STP now uses what I call “normalized names.” A normalized name should be thought of as a 21st century, localized representation of a name and has the objective of presenting names to you, the user, in a standardized format that facilitates search. The name Richard Williamson, for example, may appear in records as Richard, Rich, Rich'd., R, Williamson, Williams'n, W'ms'n, and so forth. For these reasons and because name spellings change over time, it's often useful to search for someone using variations of their name. Normalized names are transformation of indexed names to a representation that is in everyday use today in Southampton County. Thus, the indexed name "Rich'd. L, Wm'son" and most variations of the indexed name are presented to a STP user as "Richard L Williamson.” A user need only to search for the name "Richard L Williamson” to find all the common variants of that name. See normalized names for more info.
Next, STP has expanded search to include additional options including 1) Literal, 2) Soundex, 3) Metaphone, and 4) MetaSoundex. Soundex, Metaphone, and MetaSoundex are phonetic algorithms and enable the indexing and search of entities by sound, as they are pronounced in English. The goal is for homophones to be encoded to the same representation so that they can be matched despite minor differences in spelling. These options are still experimental and more study is needed to determine the optimal approach for name retrieval. For example, an open issue is an approach for handling names with initials. A search for Richard L Williamson and R L Williamson should return similar results. See Search Options for STP Users for more info.
Third, search results are now presented with the nearest matches listed first. STP uses a Levenshtein distance measure to rank search results. Those results that require the fewest edits to match the search term are listed first.
Finally, STP has added an experimental Chat feature. You can always use the contact link to get help, but sometimes help is needed immediately. Try the Chat feature. STP has a staff of one, so I may not be online when you need me, but you can pose questions and they will be logged. If you provide a email address, I'll try to respond. Please note that the STP chat log can be seen by all STP users, so don't post sensitive info.
Note: If you have bookmarked the search page, the old page will be redirected to the new search page.