British Colonial America VS. United States
Question I have always wonder why is. . . Why is the date field not looked at for location availability?
Example: I enter the birthdate of June 1980. Location of Maryland, United States. Why would "Maryland, British Colonial America" even be one of the place options to choose?
Same question in reverse. If I enter birth of 1700n location Maryland. Why would United States be an option? There was no United States before 1776?
The system displays dates for locations. Why give users the options to choose the wrong location?
Same thing for England. United Kingdom did not exist before 1802. But if I put a date of 1700 England. The option for United Kingdom is still present.
Answers
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I suppose the answer is that the Family Tree place names gazetteer is still very much a work in progress?
Also, in cataloging projects generally it is better for rules to be too relaxed rather than too rigid.
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Also, I saw today that the dates given for 'British Colonial America' end in 1981--assuming that an entity with that name might be legitimate--and I'm aware of LegacyUser's 2020 assertion that it's not--how can it possibly run through 1981?
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Integrating location standardization and dates would be a technical nightmare, especially if you're expecting something like the location field to update dynamically based on the current date entered.
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I work with a lot of historical records in Canada, and I use British Colonial America for dates before 1867, other standard place names for dates after. Usually. The gazetteer is not complete, and has some gaps in Canada, so sometimes I need to make a choice between no standard and a slightly incorrect standard.
The end date 1981 on the standard place name British Colonial America reflects the British Nationality Act, explained here:
FamilySearch Places gazetteer does not explain this, so a request on the gazetteer to add an explanation (or link to this Wikipedia page) may be in order. The gazetteer page for British Colonial America is here:
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