volunteer opportunities

LegacyUser

Martha Dyer said: Under volunteer opportunities on FamilySearch I am having trouble because there are not sufficient directions or instructions. It sounds like we are suppose to choose something from the drop down list but on some of the pages I have been working the drop down list gives choices that are way off base and no where near what is appropriate. For instance when a place has Island in the name it does not bring up anything close to the actual name of the place. More instructions of how to get the place correct and standardized would be helpful.

LegacyUser

A van Helsdingen said: I don't follow what you are saying. On my (non-Latter Day Saint) account, I have access to this page https://www.familysearch.org/help/vol... which lists a number of volunteering opportunities: indexing, missionary work, monetary donations, Wiki editing. I'm sure FHC volunteering used to be mentioned and I'm surprised this is no longer the case- maybe due to the pandemic. I don't see any drop-down lists.

A screenshot of what you are having trouble with would help us to resolve your problem.

If what you talking about is an LDS-only feature or relates to the LDS Church rather than FS, you will need to wait for a Latter Day Saint to respond on this forum.

LegacyUser

Robert Wren said: About 8 min into this presentation, this project is discussed

https://youtu.be/plaRINxWwOE?t=1084

Mentioned in this topic:
https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: As you mention, the basic instructions are pretty straight forward. Pick a standardized value from the drop down menu for the user entered place name if you can. If you can't, click Skip.

Keep in mind that in the following, you are not changing the displayed place name and do not need to worry that you are removing important additional place information that needs to remain in the place name but is not part of the standardized value. You are only adding the standardized value to the existing place name.

Here are your further instructions!

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In the new Help Improve Place Names volunteer project, you will generally run into four situations.

1) It is obvious what the standardized value should be:



It will usually be among the first couple of choices. Pick that one and move on.

2) The presented name is so ambiguous that you can't tell what the correct place name should be without consulting the other life events on the record:



In this example, all the other events occurred in Puerto Rico, including a 1940 residence in San Juan, Puerto Rico, so one can pick that with a high level of confidence.

3) The displayed place is so far out of your knowledge of geography or is entered in such an ambiguous way that you have no idea what the correct standard value should be. It is important that you just skip these and let someone else familiar with the area add the standard instead:



There have been some batches of ten in which I have only felt comfortable adding three or fewer standard values. The places you have seen which include Island probably fall here.

4) The displayed place name is entered in such a way that the program cannot display any type of standard that fits but you can tell from the other place name information or just from general knowledge what it should be:



In this situation, click in the text entry box to erase the offered suggestion:



Then enter a suitable standard value:



This is another way you might be able to work on the places with Island in the name that you mentioned

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The most important thing to remember with th… [truncated]

LegacyUser

Martha Dyer said: Thank you Gordon Collett