Place Standardization: Dismal, Winston, Alabama
There is no place there to give feedback on a particular location. I was presented with "Dismal, Winston, Alabama". In checking on the internet, there are several locations for Dismal Creek and Dismal Canyon which are in two different counties. But there was or is a post office in Dismal, Winston, Alabama. I think that the entry is correct. But I don't get that option to accept it as written. Also, a county may have covered larger geographical area earlier in US history than today, but the area covered by the earlier county is the correct identity. The same could be true for Dismal, Winston, Alabama. There are not enough options for someone to correctly help establish a standardized place.
N W Ritter
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Feedback and requests for improvement in place names is done in the Places database where you can also find more information about the place name.
The entry for Dismal in that database is here: https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/?focusedId=3720074
It is listed as an alternate name for Arley. It has been in three different counties in Alabama. The Wikipedia article attached to the database record mentions when it was called Dismal.
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RitterNW wrote, "a county may have covered larger geographical area earlier in US history than today, but the area covered by the earlier county is the correct identity."
That is why some locations have multiple entries in the location authority box, such as these two:
--Allegheny City, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, United States (City, 1788-1907)
--Allegheny City, Pittsburgh, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, United States (Neighborhood or suburb, 1907-Present)
and you select the one appropriate to the date of the source information; e.g. the 1900 census gets Allegheny City, but the 1910 census gets the Pittsburgh suburb.
The location authority database is far from perfect in some cases, I've found. Personally, in your shoes, I would rather enter what I know to be correct for the relevant source information and live with the red flag, than to enter something that isn't quite correct for the time period just in order to get the "Standardized Place" pin. 😉
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Place standardization continues to be a source of confusion and misunderstanding. Several key points have to be understood:
1) You never have to have a red "non-standardized" flag.
2) You are never forced to enter an incorrect place name.
3) You can always enter the correct, historically accurate place name and link it to an appropriate standard.
4) The map pin location icon is never needed and does not indicate correct standardization or whether a place is standardized or not. It only means that the place name happens to match a standard and that when one looks at the timeline map, the place entered has the same latitude and longitude as the pin found there.
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Gordon,
I have the same problem in Russia. However, The standardized places generally do not exist in Russia. Most of what we see is names given to towns during or after World War II. The proper place names prior to World II and prior to the Soviet Union appear to have never been established for the Family Tree. Is there any way standardized names which are time specific can be established in Russia? It would really be great to be able to to have and use geographically and time correct standard names in Russia. I have used the https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/?focusedId=3720074 link noted above but so far there has been no response and the needed standard names have not been added to the database.
Brent W Hale
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I know that the people behind the database really are trying to get in the places that people need and that they do want to have people use the Suggest A New Place and Improve This Place links found on each page of the database. When you do that, it enters a provisional place that someone at FamilySearch has to confirm, improve, and add citations to before it becomes available in Family Tree. Looking in the database (which you can do by searching for Russia, clicking the Places-Within icon next to the result you want, clicking add filter, and choosing provisional places) I see that 852 place names have been requested. This makes me think that they may not currently have anyone to work on Russian place names and get those places completed.
Unfortunately the world in a huge place and the Places database is far complete for much of the world.
In the meantime, do go ahead and add the historically correct place names the way you want to see them. Then link them to the best place possible for the standard, even if that is just "Russia." It is fine to use the current place name for the linked standard.
If you are not familiar with this correct and proper use of Family Tree, I did put together a presentation about this a couple of years ago. It's a little bit dated but the information is still correct:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jl6M8efrGj6Xe3MP6oyYdfFMXPSPCoJuyrS5xXj7KN8/edit?usp=sharing
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Gordon,
Thanks for your May 18 response to my questions. When an appropriate standard does not exist, what should we link to? Your note says "It is fine to use the current place name for the linked standard." Are you saying that it is fine to use "United States of America" for British colonies in the 1600's? In Russia, the current place names frequently have no relationship to the historical place names. Using them will be really confusing and will have to be fixed when standards are approved. I and I am sure others would be excited if it were possible to help establish historically correct standards. Is that possible?
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When we link a standard place name, what we are linking is the latitude and longitude of that place. So, yes, if the closest geocode's textual representation is terribly incorrect from a historical point of view but is the only thing available it can be appropriate to use that geocode. Then at least you have the possibility of having hints and possible duplicates appear and the place will appear correctly on the timeline map.
It is also worth putting on the closest available geocode so that there is not a non-standardized red error icon on the place name which will tempt others to replace your carefully constructed correct place name with a terribly incorrect standard just to get rid of the error flag. That is worth the work of needing to go back some day, one can hope, and change the standard when the geocode has more appropriate text applied to it.
An example of how this linking works would be this correctly entered historically correct name:
Note: You never need to have a map pin! It is not a requirement!
It is only when opening the editing box (which no one will ever need to do if the information is correct) that one can see that (playing pretend here) the only available "standardized version" aka geocode has different text than I want to use:
Unfortunately, there is a flaw with this in that a few places on the website only the standardized version shows, not the actual displayed place name. One of these spots, I believe, the is Discovery pages and I think people have complained about that.
As I mentioned, I go through all this in my presentation I put the link to in my last post here.
You might post a note in the Places group ( https://community.familysearch.org/en/group/68-familysearch-places ) regarding your willingness to work on Russian places and see if anyone contacts you. Or you could e-mail them directly at the address in the Help Center article about how to request place names: placefeedback@familysearch.org (see: https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-request-a-new-place-in-the-database-of-standardized-places )
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Actually since you are working in Russia, you might find a presentation I put together for a group of Norwegians regarding entering Norwegian place names in Family Tree more to the point. That is another country that has only a tiny percentage of place names completely added to the Places database so that for the vast majority of the place names, there is no standard to use. My English version of the presentation is located here: https://youtu.be/veP6UcEkHaA
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