Standardized Locations Volunteer Fixes
I had written an email already concerning this problem and possible fix ideas. My goal in writing the letter was to increase volunteer participation. I was told by the person who replied to my email to copy and paste it as feedback. It is unclear how I go about providing this feedback. I am posting it in this location and maybe someone else has a better way for me to possibly provide helpful information.
"copy pasted letter"
I have been attempting to standardize places of origin as a volunteer. It is difficult and accuracy and or future research maybe debilitated because of some Standardizations. Secondly i have images to attempt to explain visually.
There is a name that was alive between the years of 1700 and 1800. The standardized place only has one option and the date of that option is 30 years after the individual died. The location is in this link. https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsEurope/GermanyHessenDarmstadt.htm
The image below was the person I was attempting to standardize.
My thoughts about this particular instance is accuracy to increase the ability to do further investigation if possible. If it doesn't matter than never mind. I just notice the dates on options by year nod this person's time of living predates the options.
This next image is another issue. Church affiliation is filled in vs a required place or location. It would be a good idea to have an option to provide church affiliation for further research into records.
Here is another different example of problem. In this image, there is no way to find out the location based on the type of work the person or William Towler Oram was doing.
First thought is that, it would make things easier is to provide a link to the document in which the issue occurs. Second is that subjects such as profession and church affiliation would be helpful for further research and to provide more personality of the individual being researched. Third is the church location of where a person was baptized if possible or church records in the case of Angela Quiroga for example to get exact location and possibly find death or other family records.
Here are 3 Other images that have example an example of what I chose to do instead of skipping name. I searched for the name and found the location according to the information provided by the document. I am hoping this information will improve volunteer participation. One other thing would be single people who have been baptized but have not done any family history and have passed away. There is no way to see records of baptism locations for individuals or the location of the ward they attended. I had found one person, Angela Quiroga KWLW-VM2 (born 1906-Died 1993) and baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on May 12, 1979. The church may have more valuable records to help with this person's family.
I hope i am not breaking any privacy rules.
I think this may be some type of Automatic fill in glitch and i do not know how to fix ^^^^
I Just wanted to add Angela Quiroga who has a death date and a birth date also has been Baptized in the The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Her temple recorded shows it is on May 12, 1979, as well as her confirmation. Her location of birth is listed as S. Francisco S. Luis Arg. (ARG. is the issue of standardizing church place record) Her LDS church record number is KWLW-VM2. It seems as though she is forgotten and I desire her to be remembered. LDS Church Baptism records should have the place in which she was baptized. Included in her information the record states she has a married name of Fernandez. It makes sense to me if she was a participating church member in 1993. Her death location could be provided through church records of attendance. The issue is there are no records to review to support the correct place that is required to standardized." S. Fansico, S. Luis, Arg." is what the clues are for her and nothing specified to where it is a place of birth or place of death. In additions these are 2 different locations when i googled names in Argentina if Arg. is the abbreviation for Argentina. It shows she is married or has a married name. Providing a name without the means to help is to me a problem. Skipping makes not sense to me if it can be avoided. I see no reason why church attendance records cannot be used to acquire specific location. I also so no reason why local members cannot add input to her family. This to me is to further the cause of Jesus Christs plan right?
I just wanted to point these things out as it is discouraging at times. There must be ways to make the program less discouraging.
Thanks for you time
Comments
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I'm just another user, but I have worked somewhat in the place standardization routine you are discussing here and I think your efforts are commendable but that you may be pushing the intent of this volunteer project a bit too far. The only goal of this project is to add standard values to user entered place names where possible so that Family Tree's hint and possible duplicate routines have something to work on and can provide research helps that the user who is actually working on the person can use next time they come to the record. Our job here is not to do other users' research for them or to clean up pages for other users. It is those other users' job to actually work on their families.
If there is not an obviously correct standard to link to a user entered place name, it is better to just skip that entry.
To comment on some of your examples:
1) The hinting and possible duplicates routines do not make use of the time span on place names. They only use the actual dates on vital information to compare people. The dates on the place name are just to help users enter the correct place name for a certain time period. It is fine to add a standard value whose date does not match the event date for that place.
2) That religious affiliation was entered incorrectly by the user or imported incorrectly via a previous system or the source linker. It should have been added as a description under that entry, not the place. It can just be left alone and the next time family is working on that record, they can fix the entry. The lack of a standard value there won't affect anything in the program. This type of entry should just be skipped in the volunteer project.
3) That employment is just like the religious affiliation. It was entered in the wrong spot. As you stated, there is no place and so no standard to add. This type of entry also should just be skipped since there is nothing for the volunteer project to add.
I think you will find the project less discouraging if you just stay within the scope of the project which is to reduce the number of easily recognizable place names that do not have a linked standard and link a standard value to them rather than to take on any responsibility for researching other people's families or doing any editing of their family's pages in Family Tree.
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I have run into standard place names issues.
In early California, the original user probably typed in the place as Alta California taken from a source. The FS software likely helped by volunteering Alta, Placer, California, United States. Now in 1805, the country was New Spain. It became Mexico in 1822. In 1849 (about) Mexico ceded territory to United States and soon Placer county was created. If the key goal is to just get a latitude/longitude to store the place in the computer, better in this case to put San Diego which existed at the time and on to today. That would get you close geographically. But unsuspecting users of data might go chasing Placer county several hundred miles away. The suggestion system seems to be Name based. It has no sense of historical changes (although Utah seems to work well--Utah Territory vs Utah, United States. I my case above I changed place name to San Diego, Alta California, New Spain (totally correct) but it was said to be non-standard. Interestingly, Alta California, Mexico is in the system as a standard but it began in 1822 when Mexico got their independence. I suspect there must be a number of places is this big world that have similar issues.
I am very active it the "improving place-name" project. I do Sweden because I am very familiar with the geography and the language. It usually goes very fast for a batch of 10. I like to think I am helping. I even ran across a relative which it flagged to me (what is the probability of that?) The choices often make sense and I almost always pick "Lutheran parish" choice because it will most likely get a researcher to good sources.
Sometimes people have entered the farm name in addition to parish, county, Country and I really hate to delete useful data. Also sometimes <of place name> has been entered (I think it is imputed by FS computer based on other place data like a spouse. But it is just a guess. I hate to mislead future researchers because it may be totally wrong. Improving Place-Name system just wants to remove the <> and accept it. I now reject these but I bet they just give them to someone else until they get accepted.
Does anyone here have direct contact with someone managing this project? PM me.
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In the "improving place-name" project you are only to link an appropriate standard where there is none. You are not to change anything the user entered and if you are sticking with just the program routine, you won't be.
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@AnderssonLynnMilton1 I've got a bit more time now, so I'll explain in more detail.
In the Improve Place Name project, you are given an entry like this:
If you go to the person's page, you will see this:
When you add a linked standard as seen here:
You are not changing the current place name, removing any additional information like a farm name, or taking away any editing notation from previous systems like the angle brackets. You are just linking a reference standard that the program needs for the possible duplicates routine, hints routine, and find routine to work properly.
After making the change seen above, going back to the person's profile you now see:
The user entered place name is still there and is unchanged but it is now standardized, that is, an appropriate standard reference value is now linked to the existing data.
The intent of this project is not go to the person's profile page and make any changes in the user entered data and you should not do that. Sticking to that guideline is what prevents deleting useful data or misleading future researchers.
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