Fix Place names- New Volunteer opportunity- 2 quirks

deborahniven1

Issue #1 I have noticed when I do the "fix place names" volunteer opportunity and choose "Italy" for the country it brings up lots of places that are denoted I.T. which means Indian Territory, this is pretty obvious from the names of the people such as these examples- Rosie Bigfeather, Won-to-wee, etc. and other such Native American names that are not even remotely Italian in origin. It would be a big mistake if someone fixed a place name like that into a place in Italy. Can the search parameters be corrected so this mistake is not made?

Issue #2 Another place name that kept popping up today when I did not put any specific country in the search bar for fixing place names was: Hull, Myton. The people that had Hull, Myton, as a place name had other vital statistics in England, but there was NOT a choice for England in the list of places. Only places in South Africa and other parts of the world that are not located in England. I had to skip all of those entries because there is nothing indicating the place should be changed from England to South Africa. A quick google search told me that Myton and Hull was part of a parish in Kingston-Upon-Hull in Yorkshire England, but there was no choice for this place in England in the places to choose from.

To those at Family Search...Here are two quirks that might need some reviewing.

Gordon Collett

1) Yes, it would be a big mistake to put a standard in Italy when the displayed name is clearly not in Italy because then all the hints and possible duplicates for the person would be based on Italy. But I doubt the filter can be fixed unless they can build in some specific exclusions.

2) If you can clearly determine what the standard should be but it is not in the drop down menu, you do not need to skip adding the standard but can still go ahead and enter it correctly. Just completely erase what is in the editing box and start over:

(This was just for illustration. I did not, of course, save this.) FamilySearch employees have stated previously that they want to get some kind of standard on these places so the hint and search routines will work for these people. That means that if you have a place in England and the only standard you can come up with is England, at least put that in.

deborahniven1

Thank you Gordon, I did not know the box could be completely erased. I will try that next time I encounter a similar problem.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Chicken-and-egg: how is the computer supposed to figure out where a place is before a volunteer tells it where a place is?