Reason your relative might not be getting any Research Help suggestions.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Thought I'd just share this thought, immediately after encountering some unexpected hidden detail when checking what seemed a perfectly reasonable display name for a relative's place of birth.

Whilst places that need to be standardized are always flagged, what is far less clear is when a place has been standardized with a place from the Standards list - but one that does not relate to the intended location. In other words, the display name will not indicate that it might have been standardized as a place possibly thousands of miles away.

Obviously, most of us would not have enough hours in a day to check whether the (hidden) standard place names match the display ones, but if there is any suspicion of "unexpected behaviour" - like never receiving any hints on the Person page - it is well worth checking out whether the display name matches the place to which it has been standardized.

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: Don't forget that the quickest way to check for correct standard values, taking about 2 seconds maximum, is to use the Timeline map.

Here things look fine:



Here it's obvious there is a problem:



(I forced the standard to be Bergen, Queensland, Australia, instead of Bergen, Hordaland, Norway.)

This does show the only good use for the map pins on the display page. They remind you what is being mapped: the standard value not the correct displayed data.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Thanks for the tip, Gordon. Not using the Time Line feature very often, I had not thought of using it to check the standardized place names were set correctly. My main point was in advising users just to check, as obviously the programming used to produce record hints should be prioritising on hints (in this example) for sources related to Norway, rather than Australia. Next time I get a hint for a source (or possible duplicate) relating to someone who lived in the USA, rather than England, I better not criticise the current "loose" algorithm before checking this out first!