New Poland, Galicia, Austria, and Czech categories - wonderful work, but now more work is needed

Question

I have noticed many category changes being applied to my family profiles.  There was a wave of them back when Skye Sonczalla started her incredible work a year or two ago, and it looks like there is another wave now happening with Polish categories.  I think this is the result of an incredible effort and a very wonderful thing, but ...

These profiles have places named in the data section and biography that should be changed in many cases because of this amazing new work.  Although members are doing a great job of changing categories from old to new on the profiles and I wholeheartedly applaud their efforts, I'd like to request that they also look at the data and biography when they're doing it and make any needed changes there, as well.

Geography is a very weak topic for me and I struggled with place names originally and may not have done them correctly then.  Now with the category changes, the task of trying to go into each one that's getting changed and figure out whether data and biography need changing (and what to change them to) is way beyond my capability.

(edited to correct typo)

Answer 1

Hello Gaile! 

I agree that in time profiles need to be corrected, but you have to understand that there are only TWO of us working on categorization (myself and Tina ... she's a rockstar!) and that is where our priority lies at this moment.  The Poland Project has been sitting dormant for 2 years until it was revived only a few months ago by myself.  With only 2 active participants, we can only work on categorization as our free time allows.

Cleaning up place names/biographies will happen, but it is a slow process.  The nice thing about genealogy is it is always there ... waiting. haha

I hope we are able to gain more active coordinators who can take on certain roles such as corrections, sourcing and also categorizing ... but that will take time.  I would love to have you on board if you are interested! 

If you have any questions on how a place name should appear in profiles with which you work, please do not hesitate to send me a message.  On the Poland Project page I have made a timeline of Poland, which will help you to break down how to call a location at which ever specific time.  Poland Project Page

I wish there were 20 of me and 20 of Tina to do everything that needs to be done, but that is not the case.  At the same time, it is not our total and complete responsibility to do everything ... responsibility falls on the entire community of Wikitree and most importantly on the profile manager of those profiles.  I believe this will change in time and you will see improvement when more people express an interest to want to do more to help this project.

As we continue to build "Poland" and make it an awesome place to preserve ancestry from this region, I believe it will attract more new members to Wikitree ... including members from Europe.  No one else see it, but I receive messages a few times a month from people who want to know more about Wikitree and the work we're doing.

We'll get there. :)

Comments

Skye, thank you so much for this answer, as well as for all the effort you have poured into structuring the categorization for this area.  I am in total awe of the results.

I am supremely unqualified to take on any active role in categorizing, correcting, or sourcing profiles from this region, as well as already overextended in committments, so I regretfully decline your offer to join this effort.

I wonder if it would help for you to post a request for volunteers to perform specific tasks (i.e., use a category to find profiles that may need place names changed in the data and/or biography and make those changes).  Maybe you could arrange for it to be a data doctor task of the week to do this, although that might not be a good idea because of the specialized knowledge required to do this correctly - the reason I asked this question is that I don't know enough to do it for my own relatives.

PS  Many THANX to Tina, as well - she's the one who made the category changes to my family profiles that got me started thinking about all the additional work these profiles need.

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My education on Poland has stemmed from "doing" aka self-education.  It's a long process of fine-tuning with new information, but it is not difficult.  The timeline I had posted really does outline all the different names historical "Poland" has taken on since since the Polish-Lithuanian Republic.

The time frames most difficult to label for location would be those after the inception of the Second Polish Republic in 1918.  Each time there was a major boundary change, there was typically a change in the Powiat/County and there is not always information out there about the proper powiat, which is why the Poland Project focuses on 1900 and today only.

We will seek out more volunteers for various positions once we feel we have tackled this first task of categorization.  Not everyone is educated on boundary changes, and also ... not all profiles need to be changed.  Some profiles ONLY indicate a village name ... but if you look at the categories for that profile, there could several categories in different areas with the same name because the profile manager didn't know which location.