UK placename
United Kingdom is not an alternate/interchangeable name for Zimbabwe. Besides its former colonial influence there is no connection, these are 2 different countries. It does not appear as a choice when searching other independent countries that were former UK colonies. This appears both in familysearch placenames and when editing an indexed record for Zimbabwe
Answers
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@gary_noble Please leave information about your concerns with the "improve this place" button on the page. You may need to click on the main Zimbabwe link to see it.
https://www.familysearch.org/en/research/places/?text=zimba&focusedId=250
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@gary_noble @shecorwe - looking at the place record for Zimbabwe, it has no alternate / variant name of United Kingdom on it, so trying to "improve this place" for Zimbabwe, will not, so far as I can see, help.
I suspect that the problem is more subtle - in those 2 places, entering "Zimbabwe" will indeed trigger "United Kingdom" as one of the possibilities (it does for me) but that is not saying that "United Kingdom" is an alternate / variant for Zimbabwe. Instead, it's giving a list of similar possible names that you might want to select.
Without stepping through the logic, it's impossible to tell exactly why but there is an alternate name of "Zimbabwe Kingdom" and it may be that the presence of "Kingdom" in both places just tips the balance for displaying "United Kingdom". It's one of those cases where the system relies on someone saying "Err, just no" and ignoring it.
If the techies try to adjust the numbers for the suggestion algorithm, Murphy's Law says that something else will disappear for another placename. It's always a balancing act and the obvious daft suggestions annoy many. Me, I try to remember "To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer" and move on.
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@Adrian Bruce1 You are often able to put things in proper perspective!
If a Zimbabwe standard is linked to a “United Kingdom” node anywhere in its hierarchy or metadata, “United Kingdom” can bubble into the list. It does not mean FamilySearch thinks Zimbabwe is/was a jurisdiction inside the UK.
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