ERROR REPORT: Placename Standardization?
It appears the placename standardization algorithm has now been applied to the locality search pages. If it starts with New, it must be the same place.
See - for example - this screen snip from the New York USA search page, with links to New Zealand, New England, and New Spain. Not to mention the link to "See All {CLEANEDPLACE}..."
Similarly, for New Jersey USA:
New Mexico USA
North Dakota conflated with Northern Ireland?
I'm glad my home state of Georgia is not conflated with the country of the same name, but it seems to be sadly neglected:
You get the idea. There's a real problem with the current layout of the locality search pages.
@N Tychonievich please and thanks.
Answers
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That's ....impressively bad. I hope they can revert it quickly, before the sarcastic blogs start getting written.
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South Carolina gets a double whammy:
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And clicking that "{CleanedPlace}" link, from the SC page, takes one to a strange list that includes South Africa, South Dakota, and the South Seas. https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/learning-center-search/?q=South%20Carolina
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Thank you for bringing this to our attention. It has been escalated and I will report back when I have some answers. Thanks!
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Thanks, @Stephanie V.
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Any news, please? It's been over a month since my first report. Thank you.
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I'm so very sad to see that this problem has not moved a millimeter since I reported it in May 2023. https://www.familysearch.org/search/location/united-states-of-america/north-dakota
https://www.familysearch.org/search/location/united-states-of-america/north-carolina
Is there any hope these might ever be fixed? Thank you.
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile I'm not sure why this issue hasn't been addressed. Let me look into it. Sam 🙂
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile I heard back from engineering. This issue got dropped somewhere along the lines so thank you for bringing it up again. They have created a ticket in their system and will work on fixing it. I'm not sure where it hits their priority list but I am watching the ticket so I can see it progress. I'm so sorry this didn't get created sooner. We dropped the ball 🙄
Sam
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Thanks @Sam Sulser.
There is an issue in that we are not supposed to bump our threads for attention, but things get lost if we don't become the squeaky wheel. It's difficult to know just how long we should wait before asking again without running the risk of violating the community guidelines.
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I wouldn't say asking for an update is thread bumping. It would be thread bumping if we had provided an update and someone just wanted to keep going on about the issue that provided no useful information about it. If you haven't seen any reply in a week or so, I would ask for an update. In notice your @mentions as well, so those can help. Keeps us on our toes. We are working really hard to get responses and actual resolution as fast as we can.
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If you scroll back, you'll see I did ask after a month, with no reaction/action. Guess I need to squeak louder. Thanks.
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Should I just give up on this annoying issue? I see that New Zealand is still suggested for New York State research. I thought this was going to be corrected? https://www.familysearch.org/search/location/22?region=New%20York
Thank you.
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@Áine Ní Donnghaile I couldn't agree more.
If you click on the list of available 'courses' in the learning center on that page it is flooded with "New England" information - and, as you indicate, has New Zealand there as well!I mean, c'mon now, I laughed out loud when I saw this on the list for New York Learning:
New South Wales Early Church Records 1788-1856
Pretty crazy since New York is Mid-Atlantic and NOT New England as FS is so fond of reminding us.
That's a pretty messy list.2 -
The locality search issue has been resolved. It is giving better results. Let us know if you see this again.
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@Ashlee C. Thank you.
It would, however, appear we are not quite there yet when New England Military Records are suggested for New Jersey https://www.familysearch.org/search/location/42?region=New%20Jersey and New York https://www.familysearch.org/search/location/22?region=New%20York and Pennsylvania https://www.familysearch.org/search/location/united-states-of-america/pennsylvania.
Could we please ask the Engineers to check that construct again?
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I'm glad it seems better. I am asking about New England and Mid Atlantic States courses being pulled together. I'll let you know what I find out. 🙂 Sam
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Here's is what I learned. Courses are tagged by the course instructor. The tags include locations covered in the course. The search is a pretty simple search and it would include a search of the tags. In the New England and Mid Atlantic states situation, those courses were tagged with both areas. The library staff reviewed the tags for those courses and made some corrections. I'm not getting those results now. If you see other courses that come up oddly, please let us know!
Sam 😊
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@Sam Sulser There are still glitches, to be kind.
A search in the Learning Center for South Carolina brings up South Africa, South Dakota, and the South Seas, on the first page, with New South Wales (that's AUSTRALIA) on the second page.
https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/learning-center-search/?q=South+Carolina&p=1
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Thank you for being kind! The example you shared has to do with how you search. Since you are searching the whole Learning Center, you'll get broad results. For example, when searching for South Carolina, the search is looking for anything with South or Carolina, so it considers them separately and that gets you lots of stuff with South in it and will include more Carolinas than you wanted. To get a more directed search, adding quote marks around the terms you want grouped, like "South Carolina" will cut the search results and give less results that don't make sense for what you were looking for.
This is what the place search does. If you run a search from places, you will see that it has added the quote marks and the search comes out much better. Sam 😊
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@Sam Sulser Yes, I use quotation marks around a term when I search, but that list came from following a link on the South Carolina page.
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Interesting. When I clicked the link from the location page, it added the quote marks in the search of the Learning Center. Not sure why it was different. Does it still do that? It gives me this link: https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/learning-center-search/?q=%22South%20Carolina%22 with the %22 meaning quote marks. Send me some screenshots if you are getting a different URL so I can share it with engineering because that's just weird.
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