Change USA to United States by BOT?

Question

Will someone please program the bot to change references in Birth location and Death location fields on all profiles from ", USA " to ", United States"?  Also United States of America to United States. This will make matching much easier.                                                          

Comments

Sorry Judy but my understanding is that EditBot can change biography text, but it cannot change data fields, at least not location fields—at any rate, it couldn't do so three years ago. This is based on a comment by Aleš Trtnik on 8 February 2021:

EditBOT will not change any location fields, since it can't.

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Right, EditBot is not supposed to change the data fields, just specific things in the biography.

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OK, so the one program we have cannot do it. Does that prevent writing another program that can carefully work to standardize the data fields?

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All bots have to be approved, and no bot would be approved to edit the data fields.

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There was a discussion earlier in the year on whether it was correct to use US or USA and whether abbreviations should be used . https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1695357/what-is-the-correct-way-to-indicate-usa-united-states-or

 There was no consensus. I would have thought that  before any  automatic changes were made there would need to  be some agreement and a guideline. 

 

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There is a consensus among the members who are serious about doing searching, sorting, mapping and reporting. The consensus is to fix the problem.

Helen, according to the link you provided, the problem is with the members who are stuck on preference versus the members who want functionality and consistency.

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The way this could be tested would be for someone to make a policy proposal mandating that only one form of the name of the country in question be allowed in location fields. However, given the lack of consensus referred to by Helen, it is quite likely that such a proposal would fail.

Answer 1

I second that. Not only would it make matching much easier, it would also make sorting by "country, state" consistent.

Comments

I would also like to see , WV changed to , West Virginia and if it doesn't have a comma after it, add , United States

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The abbreviated states are ones that have to be changed individually.  There is a report that comes out each week with them listed.  I work on it for Georgia and Tennessee a lot.

You may fix that on any profile that is open for editing.

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The bigger problem in United States profiles is that there are thousands of profiles that don't have 'any' country on the profile and have the 2 letter state abbreviation, or any other abbreviation, on them.  Suggestions are not shown for the majority of those profiles.

Using wikitree+ with a query for any state abbreviation, and then check suggestions for the results, you can see the problem.

open birthlocation=<enter 2 letter state> birthcountry=unknowncountry not birthlocation="United States"

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I think the suggestions are only for profiles without a PM and unless they can be connected to a location in the tables, the suggestions may not be seen by people interested in the location. I agree with Linda about using wikitree+ to cleanup these locations. The commas are very important, as is spelling places out.

Answer 2

Standardizing locations is a good thing, but doing millions of edit to change everything to United States is pointless. Software should recognize those variations as the same. WT+ makes no difference between United States, USA or United States of America. All 3 forms were accepted by the community and you can use your preferred form. No-one should edit the profile just to change one form to another.

WT+ uses the https://plus.wikitree.com/function/WTShowTable/Table.htm?table=Countries&filter=United%20States table to compensate for different spellings and a search for "United States" finds all variations (even the German one).

Comments

I disagree, I think the database should be updated to contain one standard format.

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Unfortunately, when it comes to matching profiles, Ales, they aren't treated the same.

Answer 3

I believe there are other places that have in the past or currently have 'United States' as part of the country name.

The current United States of America is not the only place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_that_include_United_States_in_their_name

How would you differentiate between the places?

Comments

Usually, when a database is created, a user's manual accompanies the database that spells out what the accepted values are.  So, that is how you know.

So, in the case of places, a page would be created that lists what the accepted values are. Obviously, two or more places would not have the same name. So, the differentiation of places would be decided on first BEFORE the use of the value in the database.