Why has the "None of the Above" Selection Been Removed from the Standard Places Selection Pulldown?

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: The "None of the Above" selection on the standard places selection pulldown is missing. I hope this is a bug that can be fixed because it is a very useful feature.

Frequently I will copy a location over from a source that only has the city and state (e.g., Huntsville, Ohio). Since I don't know yet which Huntsville is being referred to (there are 3 of them in Ohio, each in Butler, Pickaway, and Logan counties), I would just enter the location that I had and PREVENT a standard place from being assigned to it by using the "None of the above" selection for the standard. That will put a data problem mark on the location and still let me use the location name I had as the display name. the data problem mark will act as a flag so that I am reminded to see if I can determine which city it is in that state.

With that selection no longer there, the system is (incorrectly) assuming that a person knows which standard it should be--assuming that an appropriate standard is even IN the standards database! I now must either:

• enter some standard value that is most likely incorrect, or

• not even enter the partial information that I have which I know is correct from sources

Furthermore, if a suitable standard is not even in the database, I have to not enter anything and then report to places the issue and wait for a resolution. In any event I cannot just enter the information that I already have and add the additional details later. We used to be able to do this.

This needs to be corrected. The tool is far less flexible with this missing and dealing with both inexactness of the historical records, and the partial completeness of the standard places database.

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: Assuming this is a bug they will fix and is not an evolving feature, while waiting for that, there are two easy work around.

1) After entering the place name, do not click anywhere in the drop down menu. Instead click anywhere else on the page.





2) After entering the place name, click on the first, grey bar in the drop down menu. This will place the first standard in the list which is the second value in the menu, as the standard. Then, click on that standard to open that drop down menu and choose none of the above.

LegacyUser

Pioneer42 said: Because none of the above shouldn't even be there in the first place. You can make any place a standard, it just wont have the population symbol if its not in the books (system reference).

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: "None of the Above" can still be entered and is a valuable tool.

The only appropriate standard in the above illustration prior to further research would be "Ohio, United States." This is not offered as a choice. So this cannot be set as a standard.

Picking one of the three possible options at random prior to further research is inappropriate. The only thing worse than no standard is an incorrect standard.

It can be very useful to use the red data error to mean "more research needed" so that others that come to the record can help determine the actual place out of the three choices.

LegacyUser

Pioneer42 said: Well my only comment to that is, yes I wish you could say none of the above and then be able to put in a standard place, and it would be forwarded to a arbitration team, but unfortunately you would just have no place and it would be blank. that's even worse.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The none of the above often was useful in that it would select the correct place if it was not on the list that was presented. I just changed the information for my brother and his wife using Gordon's selected text and the location did not bring up the place because I used the term "in" with the statement, "Ashes scattered by the family in Pierce County, Washington."

I had to remove the "in" so that the correct place would appear as a standard.

This has more to do with Gordon and his excellent suggestion. I'm not sure what would have happened if I had opted for "None of the above" had it been present. In the meantime, the workaround that Gordon illustrated is not intuitive for those of us used to the previous display.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: It also did not like me using the term County.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I just sent an email to the team, referring them to this discussion. Hopefully, they'll let us know if this will continue to require the workaround as well as address my problems with using "in" and "county" in the user entered place field.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Thanks Gordon,

That's great! It seems that the selection has only been removed when entering new data or editing existing and trying to get to it from the normal pull downs list.

I do think it should be replaced in the original list, but if there is some benefit being attempted here, I would sure like to know why it was removed.

I have frequently entered incorrect standard place value by quickly typing in the location and hitting "Enter" (which of course attaches the standard at the top of the list)

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Actually, It is probably more accurate to say something like "You can Standardize any Display name, by coupling a Standard Place Name from the standards database with it. If that Standard Place Name that you couple to the Display name doesn't match the Display name exactly, you will not get a Map Pin Icon on it"

Any display name can be "standardized", but in order to make it a standard you must get the family search places group to enter it into the standards database.

The terminology used around those web pages can be confusing.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I find that you need to massage the display name a bit to keep the suggested list happy. It likes to find the right hand side of the location a close match between the standard and Display values. That's why I typically use a comma to separate components of the location that I know are well represented in the standard from the extra details added in the Display location:



However, you can get some surprises when you use the exact spelling in the standard such as the follows:



In this case, by NOT spelling out the word "county", it makes an attempt to treat it like a town or other location rather than the county. But entering in the full description as you did before, you actually got a correct standard place suggested, it just wasn't as close as other standard place names in the database.

(ignore the Christening field. I just grabbed it to do the test in)

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Yeah, that’s what I had to do to get the correct standard to show up. Then I had to save the results and then go back and enter the full sentence and click off the options to get everything as I wanted it.

If I previously saved a standard I did not want, the standard would revert to the previously saved standard. It’s a little tricky, so it could use some work.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: That's interesting. One of the things I've always worried about in digging down several levels of standards to find the right one and assign it, a ways back, anyone that touched the location could accidentally cause it to revert to the (wrong) one at the top of the list. Memory of the last saved standard would mitigate that problem (and maybe even my worry a bit)