Standardizing Places and recording what was originally in the place field
I often find that the "Standardized" place is different from what was entered in the field. I like that you can select standardized place, but it would be nice to have a place to note what information was in the place field before standardizing so that other users can see the original details. Many of the original documents contain info not included in the standardized format that would be worth noting.
Thanks for all your doing. The program is really coming together well.
Comentários
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We do not need such a feature because it already exists and works very well. The correct place to record all place information is in the place name data field. You should never remove place information from there and you can always include all information found in an original document in the standardized format of a place name.
The meaning of standardization in Family Tree continues to be widely misunderstood and what we do need is more easily accessed and more straightforward explanations of what standardization means. It does not mean to only enter place names that are on the lists of standards. It does mean to enter the full, complete place name and link it to an appropriate standard even if that standard is less complete.
For example, this place name is not standardized:
When you click on it you can see in the Data View pop up that the place name is not linked to a standard:
Here, the place name is standardized correctly and contains all the information that might be found in an original record:
Again you can click on the data to open the Data View pop up and see the linked standardized value:
Please, never remove correct place name information that has been carefully entered by other users to give full information about a person just so the place name looks like its linked standard. Just make sure the proper although inferior standard is properly linked to the full place name.
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You can. It's one of the beauties of FS's dual-field format: the displayed value can be different from the associated standardized value.
Unfortunately, the method of achieving such a dual-value entry can be difficult, depending on the specifics: sometimes, the algorithm that populates the standardizing drop-down just refuses to offer the desired choice (even though it's there in the database), and the behavior of the whole process keeps subtly changing such that even seasoned veterans aren't always sure what the result of an action will be. However, in general, clicking the reddish text at the top of the drop-down should keep what was typed in the field, and associate it with the first standardized value below it. If that's the wrong choice, but the correct one is shown further down, then I think you should be able to change the standard by clicking the little "v" at the right of the standardized-value box. (As I said, the behavior keeps changing, and nowadays, there's very often only one standard offered.)
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Yes, adjustments are still being made. Today I noticed that they have added the place type and timespan to the place names in the drop down menu when you check a linked standard. Before those were only there when you first entered the name.
Since it is getting closer to the end of the quarter and the old pages might be vanishing, I though it was probably time to update my presentation on entering place names. Here it is:
––––––– https://youtu.be/fZT4SMgu7jY
@Julia Szent-Györgyi and @Paul W , have I missed any situations that you have had trouble with when working with place names? Or are there other examples of place name entering or editing that I overlooked? I haven't narrated it yet but hope the slides make sense all on their own. I'd appreciate comments about any that do not.
I'd be interested in seeing an example where an appropriate standard refuses to show up so I could try and see what is going on and why and to see if there is any way to get it to work or if there is flat out bug that needs to be addressed.
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To be honest, I'm probably not one of the best people to provide feedback on this issue. I mainly work with placenames in England and find the database generally covers these very well - right down to hamlets within a parish and (mostly) getting the format right for the time period and appropriate situation (town, civil registration district, etc.). Also, I admit I am not too fussy about recording detailed place names - e.g. I wouldn't ever add an address right down to the house / street name: the village / town suits my purposes. It is quite rare that I encounter any problems - usually in matching a desired display name with the appropriate standard, but after two or three attempts I seem to get there, without realising why I couldn't get it right at the first attempt!
As far as I can see, your presentation is fully comprehensive in its coverage of the issue, but - no matter how good the instructions - feel that inexperienced users will still be likely to struggle in getting this right - ending up leaving the placename as non-standardized.
Sorry I can't be more constructive, but, no - I can't see you've overlooked anything here.
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I can think of an advantage to entering a non-standardized placename: it allows one to capture what information is available, without claiming anything that's not actually provable. For example, a recent question brought up the example of a person whose birthplace is identified as "Egyhazas" on both her passenger record and her naturalization. There are over 50 candidates for what that could actually be, some in Hungary, some in Austria, Slovakia, or Romania. Leaving the birthplace blank hides this information, but randomly choosing one of the candidates (as the on-the-fly autostandardizing bot does) creates likely-false information, so I think that in this situation, a non-standardized entry of "Egyhazas" is the best option.
The only thing I can think of that you didn't explicitly cover is what to do when the drop-down refuses to cooperate, for example when trying to enter a farm name that's in the database for other communities than the one you need. These are the cases where you first have to enter the less-complete place, choose the standard, then edit to add the more complete information.
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Thanks for the comments.
@Paul W, nice to hear England is in such good shape. Must be because England is such a focus for so many American genealogist. My wife's Norwegian ancestors have forced me to become very familiar with how the place names work because of two problems. First, the NGS database that is a citation on almost every spot in Norway in the Places Database instead of using a farm, community, county, country format which would be equivalent to city, county, state, country in the US, used a farm, county, country format, equivalent to city, state, country. Then, at some point someone decided for an early predecessor of the current Places database that duplicate place names were not needed. This meant that although there are about fifteen different farms by the name of Tveit in Hordaland county scattered among the various communities, Tveit, Hordaland, Norway, appeared only once in the database. So in areas that still major improvement, I can hardly every use the standard version.
I do tend to add as much additional information to place names as possible when it is available. There are just too many Ole Olsen of Oslo. Adding street addresses can really help sort them out.
@Julia Szent-Györgyi Good point about non-standardized place names. I'll make some revisions. I forgot about that occasional situation where typing out farm, community, county, country does not trigger the community, county, country to show up on the drop down menu the way it should. I'll have to add that situation specifically. Today is very busy so I won't be able to get to this until tomorrow.
So anyone else looking at my video, come back in a few days and see the updated version.
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@Julia Szent-Györgyi - I have been trying to find an example of the drop down menu not showing a usable standard if the farm name is not in yet in the community you are trying to put it in but is found in other communities. Either they have fixed the routine or the place names where I usually work are in better shape now.
One I tried was Meland, Ullensvang, Hordaland, Norway. There are Melands all over Hordaland but the one in Ullensvang is not in the database yet. But if I type in the full name, Ullensvang, Hordaland, Norway is the high in the drop down list and easy to set as the standard. I do think I will change my movie to show it since it demonstrates that you sometimes have to scroll a bit to set the right standard.
Do you have an example I could use where you do have to type, for example, Ullensvang, Hordaland, Norway, to set the standard then go back and add Meland?
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I think they must have fixed something, because I can't find a farm name that fails to bring up the desired community once I finish typing it in. (I didn't used to need to type in full names like this, but that's a different question.)
I have, however, found an example of a place that I cannot enter as desired in one step. There were two different villages in Baranya county named Egerszeg. (They were, thankfully, in different districts.) At some point between 1902 and 1907, they were disambiguated as Alsó- and Felső- (Lower- and Upper-), and then in 1930, Alsóegerszeg was absorbed into Hegyszentmárton. The database apparently only has the modern/current placenames for Baranya, so typing "Egerszeg, Baranya, Hungary" or "Alsóegerszeg, Baranya, Hungary" results in only the next level up (the county) in the drop-down. To get a correct map pin location, I have to type in "Felsőegerszeg"or "Hegyszentmárton" (depending on which village I want), choose the resulting (single) choice, and then edit the place to say "Egerszeg" or "Alsóegerszeg" (depending on the desired timeframe).
I have suggested the addition of Egerszeg as an alternate name for Felsőegerszeg, and if I have time later I'll do a full "suggest a new place" for Alsóegerszeg, which should hopefully eventually result in being able to enter these places without quite so much research.
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Here's the final version, except for narration which I may or may not get around to, of my presentation on place names in Family Tree. Going through this so thoroughly, I have to say that things are working quite well on the new pages and entering and editing names are bit more straightforward. There doesn't seem to be any need for the old "click outside the box" routine. Thanks for the suggested additions and comments on things needing improvement. It will interesting to see how long it is before someone brings up map pins again and I have an excuse to post it. That may not be to long in the future if the old pages really are turned off the end of March.
--------- Entering Place Names in FamilySearch Family Tree - https://youtu.be/j9_WpcR3KhI
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