Can we clarify things like "Description" and "Reason"?

Adrian Bruce1

I'm going to take the Residence event and its form as an example, but there are similar issues elsewhere. This just happens to be one that triggered me in my "weekly" change list.

The pop-up form for the Residence Event contains 4 boxes for input:

• Description of Residence
• Date of Residence
• Place of Residence
• Reason This Information is Correct

So far as I remember, my relative had this set of info in one of her Residence Events:

• Description of Residence = (empty item)
• Date of Residence = 1841
• Place of Residence = "Dean Lane, Barthomley, Cheshire, England, United Kingdom", which had a standardised value of "Barthomley, Cheshire, England, United Kingdom"
• Reason This Information is Correct = (empty item)

This was recently updated to

• Description of Residence = "Dean Lane"
• Date of Residence = 1841
• Place of Residence = "Barthomley, Cheshire, England, United Kingdom", (which is a standardised value)
• Reason This Information is Correct = (empty item)

So basically, the last updater has interpreted "Description of Residence" as the street name, whereas I usually put the street name as the first part of the place-name. I would only put something in "Description of Residence" if I wanted to qualify the type of residence, e.g. "Temporary residence before marriage" or "Army barracks", say. No doubt someone else would put "Four rooms" etc in there.

I'm not going to revert my relative because it's not worth the hassle - and besides, that's just my interpretation of the purpose of "Description".

It would help getting us all thinking in the same direction if the purpose of things like "Description of Residence" were clarified.

(For other examples: "Description of Occupation" seems "obviously" the name of the occupation since there's no other space for that. But the Immigration event has "Description of Immigration" - what does that mean? Some might put the name of the ship in there, some might put the port of emigration)

There is also, of course, the long running saga of just what we are meant to put in "Reason This Information is Correct", especially given this is a big box? Some people put the source of the information in there - which is probably not so important now we can tag sources to an event. Others use it for general notes such as "Dean Lane" (hang on - that also went in Description). Some use it for general biographical snippets.

All things work to a degree but I'm sure some people are confused and we really don't need confused researchers.

John Curran

@Adrian Bruce1

I would support the clarification you propose.

Like you, I have seen people remove details of street name or street name and house number from a "Place of Residence" field and relocate this detail to either the "Description of Residence" field or the "Reason This Information is Correct" field. Or even, on more than one occasion, delete the street name and house number detail altogether.

I work extensively in Irish family history where family names and given names repeat excessively. In these cases of multiple repeated names in the same location, it's this precise detail of residence that is of most value in distinguishing one person from the next. Removing this detail from the Residence field and relegating it to alternate fields, or deleting altogether, can render entries on a person virtually useless.

I have had a discussion with one person via the FamilySearch Chat feature, where they felt that they were performing a good service by going from person page to person page and deleting house number and street name information as they believed this level of detail was "non-standard". I did get them to cease this destructive behavior, however, the process would have been simplified if there had been examples of good practice in documenting a residence for them to refer to.

Adrian Bruce1

@John Curran - that's an excellent point, to link it to the different approaches to what should go into the Place Name. I wouldn't want to wait for a "Best Practice Guide" for the whole of the FS FT Individual's Profile, not least because people would never agree what constituted "Best Practice". But a one liner somewhere that says "Place of Residence should be standardised and may contain additional address data" would surely help. Provided it's easily accessible.

(PS - I'm not wedded to "Place of Residence should be standardised and may contain additional address data" because I've not spent long enough thinking it through.)