Allow accurate standard geographical designations
Currently Family Search does not allow me to apply accurate geographical designations, if they are not already accepted by the Family Search website.
For example, when I attempt to place "British Colonial America" in place of incorrect "United States," I am not allowed to save it. This is unacceptable, but no "feedback" is allowed, and there is no easy way to present this problem to those who administer Family Search.
Family Search also needs to be aware of the frequent historical name changes, and jurisdictional changes in Europe over the last 200 or more years. This makes finding correct standard geographical designations nearly impossible. Family Search needs to be more lenient with users who are following family traditions in such designations.
Thank you,
Robert F. Smith
Comments
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Um, what part of FS are you talking about?
The only place on FS that I know of where placename entry is confined to the current contents of the Places database is the old index-correction function. Everywhere else, you have much more control. In Family Tree, for example, every placename conclusion has two labels: the display and the background (called "standardized") value. The latter is chosen from the aforementioned database, which includes a map point (latitude and longitude) for every entry, and an associated time period for many entries, along with links to other time periods corresponding to any changes in jurisdiction.
In other words, everything you've asked for already exists, modulo errors or omissions in the database -- but even that is user-influencable: the Places tool has both "suggest new" and "suggest edit" functions.
As a randomly-chosen example, the city of New Haven in Connecticut is currently in the database with three labels: "Quinnipiac, New Haven Colony, British Colonial America" (1637-1640); "Newhaven Towne, New Haven, Connecticut Colony, British Colonial America" (1640-1774); and "New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut, United States" (1776-today). You could choose any of these three labels to tell the computer that you mean the city of New Haven -- but you are not limited to the text of any of them for what's displayed on a profile's Details page. For example, you're free to enter it as "New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut"; the computer will offer both the "Newhaven Towne" and the modern label to choose from as the background value.
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If you are not familiar with the great flexibility in Family Tree which gives you the ability to enter exactly the place name you want to enter, this presentation I put together covers the subject quite thoroughly:
---- https://youtu.be/qLa5PC4RPPk
FamilySearch is very aware of the incompleteness of the Places database which is why they have developed such a great system for linking the place name you want to enter to the nearest available latitude and longitude.
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