naming of ships in categories

Question

I just ran into this Category:Arpenteur (1839) while looking for an occupation category for a profile I was working on.  Land surveyors are called Arpenteur in French.  This category and others probably should have the word ship in them, as otherwise can be quite misleading.

Comments

Many ships have names that have other meanings in  different contexts.

Since the name of a profession is unlikely to be associated with a string like "(1839)," and categories like Category:Arpenteur (1839) are only supposed to hold pages about the ship and categories for specific sailings of the ship, I don't see much potential for confusion.

---

Ellen, if your comment was an answer, it would be my pick for best answer 

Answer 1

Hi Danielle. I understand the possible confusion.

When you click on Category:Arpenteur (1839) it becomes very clear that this is a ship category. The current rules use the year of launch if it is known (e.g.(1839)) or the string xxxx (ship) if the launch is not known. With a little bit of exposure this is easy to understand.

The category you have found could be renamed Arpenteur (Ship launched in 1839), but this can also be misleading. 

Any change would also involve renaming 2,500 categories. I am not enthusiastic about changing the current ship name categories.
 

Comments

hi Steve, I hear you, thankfully there aren't that many people in the particular occupation.  But I had to apply it to the profile to be able to go see what it was about.  Unfortunately, not everybody will go look at the category page itself, and those not familiar with some naming conventions in categories might add people to it that don't belong there.

---

Danielle, would it have helped if the category picker had a little icon next to each suggested category, similar to what the location pickers have? The location picker icons open a new browser tab with the FamilySearch page describing the location. For categories, the icon could instead take you straight to the category page, so you could study it before deciding whether to apply the category.

This would be much quicker than saving the profile with the new category, then having to do a new edit to remove it if it turns out not to be appropriate.

---

that sounds brilliant Jim, I'm all for it if it can be done.

---

Great, thanks Danielle! I've suggested an improvement.

Answer 2

There are nearly 2,500 categories in Ships by Name, all have either a year in brackets or "Ship" in brackets if the launch year is unknown. This has been the standard since well before the Australia Project fixed all our voyage sub-categories. Many are ships to Australia but many are to New Zealand and Nth America.

Just looking in "A", there is Asia, America, Adelaide, Argyleshire, Arizona, Auckland, Australia. On page 2 there are another dozen or more place names, as well as "Bank of England (1849)", which has no profiles incorrectly added. 

As Ellen said in her comment above, the fact the names have a year in brackets, distinguishes them from other categories.

Surely we shouldn't be in such a hurry, that we can't check a category we've added is the correct one after saving an edit. 

Comments

see the improvement Jim suggested.  (linked above)  Right now one has to add the category and save and then go see what the category is about, and remove it if inappropriate.  Which means another save.  Trying to find these categories in the category tree when one doesn't know what they are about is like chasing a needle in a haystack.  Some people never go look at the categories they added, have had to correct lots like that.

---

I agree Danielle. Jim's suggestion is worth looking at.

---

@Margaret, you didn't include some great names of ships that can create confusion e.g. 'Wild Irish Girl' and 'Don Juan'.

I agree with your comment that everyone should check the category they have added. I like the ideal but don't always check myself. I hope Jim's G2G question improves the selection of categories.

---

@Steve, endless possibilities 

I don't check the vast majority of categories I add, as I know they are the one I intended, but if i wasn't sure I would check the category after saving, it would be a rare occurrence.

Jim's suggestion, if able to be implemented, would be great, and would be helpful for various reasons, whether it would be well utilised is another question. There certainly won't be mass renaming of these categories.

I'm not convinced on the confusion with ship names, as they include a year in brackets, looking at the Navigate view of Ships by Name, and scrolling down the "Profiles" column, there are very few with any profiles.

---

@Margaret. Danielle has asked a great question for an interesting discussion.

I agree with you that the simple string "(1839)" is fair warning. Any transgressors will be re-educated. The best answer has been given by Ellen.

I like Jim's suggestion to make it easier to follow the rules.

---

Margaret, I stopped looking when I found an example, but that was as soon as under "B" in the alphabetically ordered list you linked: namely, Category: Ballarat (1852) contains an [orphaned] profile which clearly should be in Category: Ballarat, Victoria. So confusion actually has occurred.

---

@Steve, I should have added, there are very few with any profiles, and those that do, the profiles are more than likely to be legitimate, like this one. 

---

Our comments must have overlapped, Margaret. However, there's already another example at Barossa, which I won't cite more specifically since it has a project manager. I'm still in the "B"s :-)

Just to emphasise my new feature suggestion, it's at this link.

---

Margaret, I knew there were something funky when I saw the year attached in the category name, which is why I went looking further.  Not everybody is familiar with categorization, and I do remember the discussions in categorization project on the renaming of ships some time back.

---

@Jim, like I said to Steve, I think your suggestion would be excellent if it could be implemented, I'm no expert on the tech side, but again, people have to look at it, and it's easier said than done, getting some people to look and recheck things.

The Ballarat one, I typed in "Ballarat" to the category picker, Ballarat, Victoria comes up as a choice, before any of the Ballarat ships with years in brackets, (there are 4), so it's interesting, why that one was chosen, over the correct location. It's possible the person who added it isn't Australian, and not familiar with the locations, but if I was adding a location in America, and confronted with various possibilities, I'd be checking the category I'd added was the correct one.

I don't think getting the wrong category is limited to ship categories, other categories with different location names for different time periods would have more problems I would think. The Data Doctor errors for "Died before category time frame" and "Born after category time frame" total 3,815, so that's 3,815 profiles in the wrong category, not to mention the 4,753 profiles that are in a top level category, and top level categories don't come up in the category picker tool on a profile.

Hopefully, Jim, your excellent suggestion, might alleviate some of the confusion with those location categories.

The more I think about the ships, especially the ones the same as Australian locations, would be to make them "top level", this could have several advantages;

• Remove them from the category picker tool on profiles, but retains them in the tool for category edits.
• Identify the profiles on them, which could either be corrected or have their voyage category created.

This could be done much faster than re-naming, starting with the ones most likely to cause confusion, I'm only talking about the ones with Australian sub-categories, like Ballarat (1852)

---

Thanks Margaret. I think the confusion over the Ballarat categories may partly have arisen because the ship had an arrival in 1852 (November), and the person in the profile migrated to the town in 1852—actually in August, but quite close. The Barossa example is less easily understood.

I hope my suggestion would help. I also think your idea of moving some of the ship categories so they don't appear in the picker would be very effective. The arrival-level categories would presumably still appear, but since they have a full date not just "Ship" or a build year, they are even less likely to be chosen by mistake.

---

I've gone through A, B, and C so far, and changed any possible ones likely to be confused with locations, as well as Arpenteur (1839), to "Top level", so they won't appear in the category picker on profiles. So far, haven't found any more incorrectly placed profiles, but sure to be some more, which will be corrected when found.

Our intention, with the Australian shipping structure, when approved several years ago, was for the category Ship name (launch year) to be a parent of the voyage categories, which are the landing level categories. The parent ship category was not meant to contain profiles, so adding top level is in line with this objective.

Note well, I'm only adding top level to ships containing Australian voyage (landing level categories). 

---

Hi Margaret. Danielle has picked an example from the Australian immigrant ship categories. The examples I gave arrived at Port Adelaide on 28th July 1851. But this ain't all about ships.

A simple system is good. I think we can agree that there is not a good case for changing the existing ship categories.

I still watch with interest how people respond to Jim's G2G question.

---

@Steve, Australian immigrant ships are a miniscule problem for profiles in the wrong category. As I mentioned earlier, on the data doctors error report, there are 8,568 profiles in the wrong category, nothing to do with ships. So far, we've found 2 profiles in the wrong category in the ship categories.

Anything that can help reduce those aforementioned errors would be good.