Improving Suggested Places - consider the jurisdiction
I'm frequently finding myself "correcting" suggested places because I know they're wrong - generally ones where the original record, and so the indexed value, omitted some of the enclosing geographic areas where they are within the same area as the event described in the record. Eg. the birthplace on marriage records is often just a village or township when it's within the same county as where the marriage is taking place. The clerks typically only provide a state/province and country when it's different than that.
Here's a case in point. I've found a death record issued in Ontario, Canada. Place of birth is given as "March", an historic township in Carleton County, Ontario. Township names are unique as a matter of policy in Ontario, so there is no higher level place eg county or province given.
When Family Search brings up the dialog to attach to the profile I'm working on, though, it fills in the Standardized Place as Marche, Italy. Huh? It's actually a bad match to start with (March, Carleton, Ontario, Canada, a known place, is an exact match of the spelling whereas Marche, Italy is not).
These standardized place matches could be made much more useful, though, if they would be constrained to the jurisdiction of the record they're part of (in the absence of conflicting information from the record). So, if the indexed placename doesn't include a Country, then assume it's the same as the country where the record was issued. Similarly if there's no state or province (where they exist), it' can generally be assumed to be the same as that where the record was issued.
This kind of intelligence seems straightforward to implement, and would avoid a lot of place name errors in profiles, Usually these can be caught when reviewing a source being attached but more troubling are place names that seem to go through this "standardization" process with no review, something I've seen in a few places.
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Yes I have notice this. It's a bit startling to find that an ancestor who you know was born, lived and died in a certain place or area has suddenly been transported to a town of the same name in another country because a source has been added and the wrong 'standardisation' has been clicked. Often the person who has input the information has not noticed that the town is not the one they need in the drop down box. I had a question about a person being born in Wallasey however, when it came to the country it was shown as Zimbabwe and not England. Until then I did not know until then that there was a Wallasey in Zimbabwe. We live and learn.
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Just ran into a few more examples, thought I'd throw them in.
First, here's a source record https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JKWN-443?from=lynx1UIV8&treeref=GX2T-6JP . The birthplace is given as Saint Marys. The source linker is convinced, apparently, that this is Saint Marys, Cornwall, England because it sets it up that way on the page (I was not given an opportunity to change it, and had to do that manually later). There are many Saint Marys' around the world, including one in the same province, Perth County, Ontario, Canada.
I've noticed that the locations list includes Saint Marys, St. Marys, Perth, Ontario, Canada but not for some reason Saint Marys, Perth, Ontario, Canada. So, this might boil down to whether Saint is abbreviated or not, though a smart search wouldn't care.
Another case I came across. Sorry, don't have the specific record but it was a USA census record, showing Place of Birth as Canada. The Standardized Name was Canadá, Pando, Bolivia. It's possible someone picked that, I suppose (I didn't actually set up that record) but if it was in fact Bolivia then the census record would just say Bolivia - they never get more specific if it's out of the USA.
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