Improved Method of Gaining User Help on Standardizing Place Names
I was pleased to see that there is now a trial that allows members to help with improving standardized place names. Members are constantly faced with the problem of entering the right place name for the year of the record and often getting a permanent warning or changing to a wrong place name just to meet the existing standardized place requirement. The problem I found with the trial is that you can only pick a country, not a more specific place. Unfortunately when I volunteered to help with Canada, I was offered unknown persons with random place names of which I have no expertise or experience. My research is currently in New Brunswick in the early years after it was founded in 1784 and divided into Counties and later included Parishes. Both Counties and Parishes keep changing and you do a good job of noting this in your Research Wiki so I am quite familiar with the history of these places names.
Therefore, I suggest that you allow members to select their own places and dates to help you improve place names rather just give them random people with whom they are unfamiliar. It is surely a monumental task, but I for one would certainly help if given the chance to use my research while it is still fresh.
Comments
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It's the same chicken-and-egg problem that applies to choosing a country, only worse: if there's no standardized location associated with the entered text, then the computer doesn't know where it is. That's the whole point of the volunteer opportunity.
The computer makes a guess at the top heirarchy -- the country -- but very often gets it wrong (because people leave that part off). I think for any jurisdiction below country, the computer would get it wrong nine times out of ten.
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