Proposal: Ontario Locations Structure and Guidelines [closed]

Question

The Ontario Project Team would like to propose the following structure and guidelines for location categories in order to streamline the structure and reduce confusion with parallel timelines.  Please review the proposed structure and provide any comments or questions below.

Comments

Perhaps this is well-known to everyone else, but how does this help a researcher?  What are the benefits to the contributors to WikiTree?

Also, I'm not clear how changes over time are to be handled.

When you say "modern", what does that mean?  For example, my hometown, Lucknow, was amalgamated with the former townships of Huron and Kinloss (Bruce County) in 1999.  "Lucknow" is now a "community" within Huron-Kinloss.  This is pretty much exclusively for administrative purposes--nobody in Lucknow lists their address as Huron-Kinloss.  BTW, Lucknow is on the border between Bruce and Huron counties.  There was a fierce debate (~1860?) as to which county they would join.  How do we characterize the location before that decision was made?

Changes happen regularly.  For example, Kitchener was formerly Berlin. Toronto was formerly Fort York.  Cambridge was formerly the towns of Galt, Hespler and Preston.  Any place can change at any time.  Should we not be ready for that?

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Hi Craig

That's an excellent question.  

1.  By modern, we mean Current Name.  So, Huron-Kinloss, Ontario would be located under Counties, Ontario, with Lucknow placed in Historic Places, Ontario.  It would be linked to Huron-Kinloss with a short explanation of the name change.

2. Locations are handled by time-period, with:

    Ontario - 1867 to Present

    Canada West - 1841 to 1867 and is located under the Province of Canada structure

    Upper Canada - before 1841 and is located under the British North America structure.

This will allow future name changes to be handled quickly, and hopefully with less confusion.

The purpose of the Historic Places category is so we are prepared for future name changes.  It helps limit the number of categories that would need to be changed in the event of a province wide amalgamation process (or separation process).

I hope that addresses your concerns.

Amy

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Picking nits, but Huron-Kinloss is a township within the county of Bruce.

To my mind, WikiTree does not have a strong data model for place names.  Suppose someone is recording a 1915 event that took place in what is now Kitchener.  That event should be recorded as occurring in Berlin, Ontario as the town/city was not renamed until the following year.  I don't think WikiTree provides any support to help the researcher get it right.  Perhaps I don't understand, but I don't see how the present proposal makes it any more likely that place names will be more accurately captured.

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Thanks Craig.

You aren't picking nits.  Accuracy is the top priority.  I was going off the top of my head when answering your question, not looking at my reference material.

The important thing right now is to have an approved structure to start with.  Changes can be made down the road, once it's in place.  Right now, there is NO standard structure.

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Great job organizing a very complex set of information - hope the same type of work goes into Manitoba soon too - thanks for the work!

Answer 1

Thanks, Amy. Looks pretty clear to me, a non-Ontarian. LOL.

I laugh but that is key here: making it clear for people who do not live in Ontario. How do I categorize this place if I don't know anything about it? I use the mapping set up by competent people familiar with the place!

Comments

Thank you Natalie

That is the goal!  To have it as clear as possible.  Whoever invented amalgamation should be sent to the corner for a time out!

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You and Natalie are the best! I'm so pleased this proposal is "clearly" going forward.

Answer 2

I can see adding [[Category:Ontario, Places]]. I've noticed that a lot of jurisdictions are getting that, and even though it takes a a little getting used to, it does make places easier to find, especially when a jurisdiction category has a bunch of other, non-geographical, sub-categories under it (like cemeteries, educational institutions, notables, and so on).

However, if the goal is to streamline the categories, then it seems to me that adding separate categories for cities, counties, townships, districts, sub-divisions, historic places, regions, and towns would be adding to the clutter, rather than cleaning it up. Within [[Category:Ontario, Places]], I would say that the structure should be a lot simpler: just place all the counties, districts, and regions, plus those cities and towns which are not part of another county, district, and region into there, and then nest all of the other cities, subdivisions, towns, and townships within their respective counties, districts, and regions.

Especially with the way Queens Park keeps rearranging the furniture every few years, having to redo the categories every time some minor bureaucrat decides that his father-in-law the stationer needs more business would be too much like work.

Comments

 Within [[Category:Ontario, Places]], I would say that the structure should be a lot simpler

All Ontario locations will be under [[Category:Ontario, Places]] to keep them separate from Cemeteries, Notables, etc.  I'll pm you to make sure I understand your recommendation for sub-categories before I address it here.

 

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Some older threads for context:

• Ontario Categories
• Ontario Project Update and a Request for Categorization Help -- October 2017
• Fellow Ontario re-categorization WikiTreers to the rescue please
• Ontario Project Update January 2018

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Thanks Greg

I used those threads to pick up where you had left off in your discussions.  I then worked with the previous Liaison in order to continue her work.  I have adapted the current proposal from a similar structure in Atlantic Canada.  If you have a specific change you'd like us to consider, I'm happy to bring it back to the project for discussion.

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What I'm suggesting is that we move all the current places into the new "Ontario, Places" category pretty much the way they are now (or at least, the way they were the last time I worked on them). The structure should look something like this:

Ontario, Places
     Brockville, Ontario
     Carleton County, Ontario
          Ottawa, Ontario*
     Frontenac County, Ontario
          Kingston, Ontario*
     Kingston, Ontario*
     Lanark County, Ontario
          Almonte, Ontario
          Carleton Place, Ontario
         Mississippi Mills, Ontario
     Ottawa, Ontario*
     Perth County, Ontario
     Smiths Falls, Ontario†
     Toronto, Ontario*
     York County, Ontario
          Toronto, Ontario*

* Cities that are now independent, but have been part of counties, districts, or regions some time between July 1, 1867 and now will need to be listed twice: once "loose" in [[Category:Ontario, Places]], and then again in the county, district, or region they used to be part of.

† As near as I can tell from Wikipedia, Smiths Falls hasn't been part of Lanark County since 1867, so it would only be listed "loose", and not listed within Lanark County.

So the "Cities, Ontario", "Towns, Ontario", and "Counties, Ontario" categories would not be created. (Neither would categories for Districts, Regions, or Townships.) In my opinion, dividing out categories by the type of municipality adds a whole extra layer of complication that people don't need: they're just trying to add categories to their ancestors' profiles, not figure out Ontario politics (as if that were even possible!)

Similarly, Historic Places, Ontario isn't necessary. Any place that has existed in Ontario since July 1, 1867 (down to the township level, anyway) rightly belongs within the Ontario, Places category. For places that used to exist, but only before 1867, they belong in the Canada West category (or possibly the Upper Canada category), rather than a "Historic Places, Ontario" category.

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On a more general note, back when I was still part of the Categorization Project, there was a proposal to standardise the category names for subcategories of places into a format like [[Category:Place, Subject]]. I don't know how that proposal fared within that project, because the discussion got moved to Google Groups to keep the rest of us riff-raff from knowing what's going on. But if it ever does get approved and implemented, then category names like [[Category:Cities, Ontario]] would have to be changed to [[Category:Ontario, Cities]]. So if you decide to create separate categories for cities and so on, it would probably lead to less wasted effort if you did them up as [[Category:Ontario, Cities]] and so on.

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Thank you Greg.  That's pretty much exactly the way it's been set up.  The difference is the Historic Places, which only applies to locations in Ontario that have changed names since Ontario came into existence and for that reason, it is essential.  This applies to name changes during the same time period.  

For example:  Almonte, Ontario is now called Mississippi Mills, Ontario.  Both names are currently used by people on a regular basis.  Almonte would be placed in the Historic Places, with a link to Mississippi Miss and a short explanation

I hope that helps clear up the mud.

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Actually, it's making mud unnecessarily. There's no reason not to list Almonte in Lanark County, right alongside "current" place names. For our purposes, it doesn't actually matter that Almonte got merged into Mississippi Mills. We're mostly working on profiles for deceased people, so it doesn't matter what a place it called now. What matters is what it was called at the time somebody was born, lived, got married, or died there. So no a place name which was current 30, 50, or 100 years ago is every bit as relevant to us as the "current" place name. (Actually, the older place names are probably even more relevant to us than the current place names.)

To me, introducing categories like "Historic Places", "Cities", "Towns", etc. just makes it harder for people to find the category they need. Is Melonville a village, or a township, or a town, or a city, or a regional municipality, or what? (And what about places which have been several kinds of municipalities in succession? List them in every category that applies? Then what's the point of having a whole bunch of categories with duplicate entries?) Just divide places up by county, district, or regional municipality, and leave at that.

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  We're working on profiles of deceased people.

Yes we are, and Cemeteries use current names, which means they need a location category to go with the Cemetery category.

introducing categories like "Historic Places", "Cities", "Towns", etc. just makes it harder for people to find the category they need. 

Most people who are going to be adding categories will be using the drop down menu in a profile.  When they type Almonte, Ontario.... they have no idea what the parent category is.  They just want their person to go in the category for Almonte, Ontario... not Ramsay Township or Mississippi Mills.  The same applies for Lanark Highlands.  My mother was born in Lanark Township and died in Lanark Highlands.  It's the same place, during the same period of time.  Both locations are necessary.

No one said sorting out Ontario categories would be easy.  But I was asked to help with this, and here I am.  I don't make the decisions.  It's a proposal.

 

Answer 3

Thanks for doing this.

I see that there are a number of working papers and documents addressing Canadian Location categories, each with a different presentation style. I am wondering if it all can be streamlined using a standard template document.

Comments

I can certainly bring that up with Project leadership.  Thank you for that.