France - standard of city location changed to new department names, for some and ..
Hi, France familysearch.org database, I have noticed new names of region have been added in family search in the standards (i.e. La Chapelle-aux-Bois, Vosges, Lorraine, France and La Chapelle-aux-Bois, Vosges, Grand Est, France) However, it is not the case for all the cities: Le Clerjus has the choice for Vosges, Grand Est, France only. True, there are two choices too but for the new region: Municipality 2016 to present or Municipality unknown to present. What is the rule? I found it a little complicated, especially when families have immigrated to another country and do not know the country of their ancestors well. In addition, there are many people that do not have the patience to add the proper data in the tree already (i.e. they put the year of the birth of their ancestors with no other detail: no month, no day, no location). I wonder if the people that are looking for their ancestors from Lorraine are going to understand that Lorraine is now Grand Est? What about the algorithm, is it going to look for Grand Est as well when the people are indicating Lorraine? I personally prefer to have the choice because my family database was started by my parents with the older names of the region. I remember how much my mom was so proud of her Lorraine heritage. She made "Quiche Lorraine" for us (a regional tart recipe). I have a whole database of people with the older location name. The Lorraine has been a very important part of the history of this region (Joan of Arch was from this Lorraine region). There is also this standard question: why change certain cities to the new region names only and other cities with the alternative? Thank you.
Answers
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This is why I subscribe to the "use the name at the time of the event" school of thought. It doesn't change.
On FamilySearch, you generally have several choices for what name and jurisdiction to label the coordinates with, but what really matters is the coordinates. As long as those are correct, the rest is just gravy.
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Same thinking here but the standard have changed the name to the new name and have eliminated the name "at time of the event" for certaine cities. Why is it the new region name for certain cities and other cities with the two choices (which I prefer)?
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I just tested out Le Clerjus on a random profile (don't worry, I won't save), and I see what you mean: it's in there twice, identically. I think there must've been a typo or similar error, and the two different time periods instead ended up as both exactly the same.
If you have a good link to cite for how it should be, you can go to the Research Places page (https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/?pagenum=1&pagesize=20), find the entry, and click the "Improve This Place" button to submit a correction.
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It's always good with these kinds of issue to go to the Places database itself and investigate what is going on. Place name changes over time are complicated and can be confusing. The database is improved by someone at FamilySearch sitting at a keyboard making one change at a time. Mistakes are easy to make. A few months ago I ran across a place whose pin on the map was way off. Checking in the database, I saw that the latitude was missing a minus sign and let them know. It got fixed promptly.
Investigating the example you gave, and knowing absolutely nothing about French place names other than being able to find Paris on a map, it really looks like someone just made a simple mistake.
Check out:
and
For the second link, it really looks like someone just slipped up and put on the wrong parent place for the pre-2016 place. I'm not sure you even need a good link or source to report this. Just report it. A place dated Unknown - 2016 should never have a parent dated 2016 - Today:
(You get information about the parent place by clicking on its name).
Looks like someone just blinked at the wrong second or was rushing to fast because he had so many places to correct.
There are two time periods for Vosges, for pre-2016 and post-2016: https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/?searchTypeaheadInputText=vosges,%20france&text=vosges%2C%20france
All places in it pre-2016 should have the pre-2016 version. Looking at all the children of Vosges post-2016, which you can see by clicking on the Places Within icon:
it looks like about half got the wrong parent. Checking under the pre-2016 Vosges, although there are a lot that have Unknown to 2016 with Vosges, Lorraine, the majority are Unknown to Today. So it looks like this is a work in progress in which someone is working to get the post-2016 time periods in for all of Vosges and either the editing program is hiccuping and putting in the wrong Vosgnes or someone is being a bit careless.
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