Correcting/merging/updating locations?
Hi,
while it seems a bit hidden from common view, I did find the "Places" editor of FamilySearch.org.
However, I cannot find an option to even suggest or ask for a merge of two (or more?) places that are actually the same.
As an example, searching for Sîndominic yields two, slightly different place markers, pointing to the same village, having separate IDs, even though it's quit obviously the same village:
I understand and can accept the need to manage location updates, not just let anyone willy-nilly change things, but I feel the process is much too difficult to quickly update multiple facts of a place, if I strive for a cleaner database.
Answers
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You have missed a very important point. The goal in the Places database is not to have a "clean" database, but rather an accurate and complete database. History is always a bit of a mess.
When complete, the Places database will not have one name for every place on earth, but rather every name every place has ever had during history. The names Szent-Domokos, Csík, Hungary, and Sîndominic, Harghita, Romania, should never be merged if (and I know nothing about the history of this area) this village has belonged to Hungary and to Romania at different times in its history and had a different name depending on who currently had control of it.
Many places in Europe will have far more than just two entries due to the complexities of geopolitical history. Here is on with five: https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/?searchTypeaheadInputText=10914489&text=10914489&focusedId=10914489
When you do find some places that actually do need a correction, you can request it here: https://community.familysearch.org/en/group/68-familysearch-places
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Gordon, I see your point, and was certainly not expecting to have one name. On the contrary, I'd like to see ideally all historical name (and language) variants linked to the same one geographical place. Your attempt at explaining complexities of geopolitical history is kind of you, however I'm living right in the middle of it, so trust me, I understand. Places have more then one name - even during the same time periods, and both dominant and official denominations change over time.
Your example is indeed a correct approach to this, all five variants are linked. In the case of Sîndominic (used as an example, but I'm running in exactly the same issue for probably most of the places I'm working with) these are not linked at all, as far as I can tell. They are two, separate place-markers within the same village, with little to no indication, that they are referring actually to the same place.
The database, in theory, does offer options for alternate names in different languages and/or during different periods for place names and what I'd like to see is these correctly linked together, with as much detail and accuracy as we know of.
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Sorry for the misunderstanding. Terminology can cause problems at times. It is possible to have two places merged, which deletes one of them and I thought that was what you were referring to. If I now understand correctly, you would like to have these two place descriptions placed under the same place resource (see: https://www.familysearch.org/developers/docs/guides/places ), that is, the same folder instead of two different ones so that all the names for the place show on the historical timeline as in my example.
It's probably a bit more complicated to fix that type of problem than a simple merge. But you should go ahead and post your request in the Places group. If the people in charge of the database agree that is a better way to handle these places that have been in both Hungary and Romania, they may fix this. It could take months to years, however. This Places database is a gigantic endeavor.
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This problem is shared by basically all places in the successor states of the Kingdom of Hungary (i.e., all of the places in the 2/3 of the country that are no longer in Hungary): the different jurisdictions are in the database, but they're completely separate. They're only linked by alternate names and proximity. I have a spreadsheet where I started trying to document the Hungarian versus current names/jurisdictions of places in Vas county. There are 200 such pairings/associations needed in Burgenland, and over 100 in Slovenia -- and that's just that one county. I don't know if there's a database-backdoor approach that could easily achieve the linking (i.e., making the separate jurisdictions into tabs/time periods for the same entry), and if so, what data they would need for it; perhaps I will finish my spreadsheet and ask in the Places group.
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The Family Search Places group is probably the best place to have this coversation. The folks who are actually working on that database are watching that and working through the requests submitted there.
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