Let's leave the 'Townland' that is put in as the place name ALONE.
Many a time I have typed in a townland for some place in Ireland, as the place of 'interest' only to have it rejected as the standard place. The program will usually opt for the county vis Kilkenny, but it is essential to my research (and everyone else's) that the place be narrowed down as much as possible. Any savvy researcher will understand why. I usually over ride the system and force it to accept the complete entry, including townland. But hey... wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles... Family Search came up with a terrific idea. Get unwitting volunteers to go in to anyone's records and remove those pesky 'townlands' from the records and just reduce it to the county. Wonderful how your hard work can be undone by some pencil-neck. But WAIT you say, you should have been able to tell them about the townland, that it was a REAL place. I TRIED many times and got lost in the maze of gobbledygook that was called 'help'. Now don't get me started on what I think about the 'now ended' help system. So let's leave the 'Townland' that is put in as the place name ALONE, and make it much easier to register place names in the system. tls52
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When a placename I want to include is not accepted because it is not in the database, I put the exact location in the description. It might be the townland or the parish or even the Registrar's District. That way the information is available to others.
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My research is in the western US and Norway and I know little about Irish geography and place descriptions, so please ignore my ignorance. If I understand what you have said and what Wikipedia has to say, then Townlands are subdivisions of counties, kind of like townships in the US. It is perfectly appropriate to include this additional level of place name and absolutely no reason for anyone to take it out.
There is no reason for FamilySearch to take it out and I am certainly not aware of any volunteer program that would do so. The only volunteer program that is working on place names that I know of is the one that is linking standardized versions where these are missing. This, however, would not change what you have entered at all. Could you post the ID number of a person where the Townland was removed so I could see what is really going on?
On to another point in your post. In Family Tree you never have to override or force the system to accept a complete place name. The system is designed to allow as much detail in a place name as the user wants to include for accuracy. It is a very simple and elegant solution that for some reason a huge number of people have a terrible time understanding.
I won't embarrass myself by trying to come up with an Irish example, so I'll take a Norwegian one. Farms in western Norway are described in the Places database as Farm, Municipality, County, Country. That is as far as the description is ever going to go because finer detail is not needed for any functions of Family Tree. Most farms are divided into several smaller, independently owned parcels which arose through history as large farms were divided between sons. Most municipalities are divided into between two to six parishes. So for best accuracy, I should describe a location as Sub-Parcel, Farm, Parish, Municipality, County, Country like this:
First type out the entire place name and click on the top line of the drop down menu to set the display place name:
This shows the correct place but the wrong standard. So I just click on the standard to open that menu and correct it to the proper one:
This gives a precise place name and the proper standard. This is not forcing the system to do anything or overriding it at all. This using the system as it was designed to be used.
Again, please post an example of what you are seeing so I can see who really does not understand the program and is wrecking your place names.
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The closest equivalent in US parlance to the Irish townland would the be the street.
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In FamilySearch Places database, the SEARCH will bring up any place name that has been listed in the Variant Names fields. For example: If Aghaboy is listed as a Variant name & Display name only, then the only way to have the computer bring up Aghaboy is to type Aghaboy in the SEARCH field. But if the variant names of Achadh Bo, Aghaboy Townland, and/or Townland of Aghaboy are recorded in as Variant names, the SEARCH feature will find them and bring them up when you type Aghaboy Townland. The solution then, is to request someone on our team to add those variant names so the SEARCH can find them. Unfortunately, our SEARCH feature does not work like GOOGLE, so it cannot try to anticipate what you are trying to find.
Ironically, I am associated with the volunteers who are currently working on an Ireland Townlands project. I will remind them to remember to add those variant names. Talk about luck of the Irish - your complaint/suggestion was picked up by the right person. 😊
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