Correcting place names
Good Day
I have spent many hours correcting place names for my country specifically.
Someone at Family Search keeps changing them back to the incorrect information.
Notice this has been happening from 1 February 2021.
2 changes are made - the correct information updated by Family Search and on the same date it is changed back to the incorrect information also by Family Search.
Any idea why?☹️
Answers
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It would be helpful if you could attach screen shots of what is happening. We need to see where it happened and of course which country. Thank you reporting the problem. Please send screen shots. Thank you
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Unfortunately I did not keep a record of the names.
The country is South Africa and the place is Claremont, Cape Town, South Africa.
I made a number of corrections yesterday and put the reason for the change in the "notes" section.
Hope you can trace them from that?
Sharon
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@sharonjennings2 on the FS Family Tree website all your edits are recorded in the page header menu under My Contributions : My Changes. There you will find the PIDs.
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Hi Family Search
I am sorry, but this issue is still a problem. I share @sharonjennings2 frustration...
There are several place names that appear in drop down menus that do not conform to what place names were at the time of an event. I have a few that I would like to be corrected, because they are incorrect in the drop downs in Family Search. You must please allow these drop downs from your database to be updated to reflect the correct place names at the time. There are many southern African names that fall into this category, because the database was probably compiled by people who are not aware of the region's place names or its history. A typical example is Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, which is officially known as:
Pietermartizburg, Natal Colony, South Africa 1838-1910
Pietermaritzburg, Natal, South Africa 1910-1994 (NOT 'Maritzburg, Natal South Africa')
Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa 1994-
How can people from a local region contribute to correct any place name errors so that the accurate place names appear in drop down menus and comply with Family Search's 'standardized place names' policy?
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@JohnBennett11, all three of those jurisdictions are already in the Places database, with exactly those dates. True, the middle one only has the Pieter- prefix as an alternate name in English; if you think it should be the other way around (with Maritzburg as the alternate and Pietermaritzburg as the display name), then you can make that suggestion in the Places tool by clicking on the "Improve This Place" button (https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/?focusedId=7344505&searchTypeaheadInputText=Pietermaritzburg&text=Pietermaritzburg). But regardless of how things are labeled and grouped in the database, you can enter the placename in Family Tree exactly as you think it should be, associating it with the database entry that's the closest match (so that the computer has a rough idea of where to stick the pin on the map).
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