My ancestor, Jane Marley (LTJ8-Z89), has a DQ message along the lines of "The standard 'Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England, United Kingdom' is used for 1837 to 1974. This conflicts with the christening date of 31 August 1806".

If I look at the christening data, it is standardised on "Gloucester, …" as suggested by the DQ message. But in Standardised Places, "Gloucester…" is dated as 1801-today, not 1837-1974. This gave me the impression that the DQ message is wrong.

But there is an explanation - the 1801-today version of Gloucester applies to the city of that name, while the 1837-1974 version of Gloucester applies to the Civil Registration District of the same name. I must, therefore, have standardised on the Civil Registration District version of Gloucester.

The problem is that there is nothing visible on the Christening event or anywhere else on her profile that tells me the type of place that I have standardised on. If I restandardise, I see the type of place just before I select it but thereafter it's invisible to me, but clearly visible to the DQ routine.

So you understand the scale of the problem, the placename "Gloucester … United Kingdom" could refer to the city (1801-today), the civil registration district (1837-1974) and the Poor Law Union (1834-1930). And there will be many, many duplicated placenames with different types in the UK.

This (perfectly reasonable) DQ check is ambiguous in its messages because the type is not visible in either the DQ message nor in the profile. It is fatally easy for me to assume both message and profile refer to the city and therefore be confused.

In order to process that DQ message, we surely need to show the placename type in the DQ message and on the profile so that we can understand what version of Gloucester (or whatever) has been chosen where.