This should be unacceptable to a community of worldwide researchers ...

Question

Having just found the birthplace of my great-grandmother who was born in Wetumpka, Elmore County, Alabama, United States, I headed over to the GANTT surname page to see what other profiles had a birthplace as hers.

What I found was Alabama profiles scattered throughout the table list, as opposed to being grouped together.  This is what I found:

• Alabama
• Alabama, of Elmore Co. (I initially missed this one.)
• United States of America, Alabama
• United States, Alabama
• United States, Alabama, Elmore
• United States, Alabama, Elmore County
• United States, Alabama, Elmore County, Wetumpka (my newly found birth location)
• USA, Alabama
• USA, Alabama, Elmore

For other State locations, it is much worse than these listed above.

I propose that we start standardizing these locations.

Comments

I agree with you, Tommy. I would imagine those on the categorization committee would also. I would also imagine it is hard for them to maintain only "standardized categories" when any WikiTreer is free to make categories of any kind, standardized or not. One of the perils of a wiki, I guess.

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This is about the locations, which Wikitree doesn't organize. This should be directed at FamilySearch.org.

See here:

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1610252/drop-down-placename-menu-request

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The locations in WikiTree are entered by the WikiTree users.

There is only a proposal from FamilySearch, which can be ignored.

So responsible for the locations are a million WikiTree user. Thats a bit complex.

Location categories are also manged by the users but maybe a bit more controlled by projects.

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I would guess that only two (maybe three) from that list came from the location dropdowns.

• Alabama 
  Maybe
• United States of America, Alabama
  No. the dropdown lists don't use "United States of America"
• United States, Alabama  
  Yes
• United States, Alabama, Elmore
  Yes
• United States, Alabama, Elmore County
  No. The dropdowns don't use County. 
• United States, Alabama, Elmore County, Wetumpka (my newly found birth location)
  No!
• USA, Alabama
  No. (See above)
• USA, Alabama, Elmore
  No. (See above)

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Sorry. I assumed, since Tommy was posting on a WikiTree message board, he was talking about the standardization of location names and location categories here on WikiTree. Now I see there is no Gantt surname page here, so I don't know where he was seeing all these different location names. Even on FamilySearch, many individuals do not use the standardized and suggested location names. There IS standardization, people just ignore it.

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Nelda, I think you are talking about Categories.  That's a whole other issue.

Here is the Gantt surname page that I am referring to:

https://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/gantt (table view option)

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Okay. Same situation, though, and same reason for it to be haphazard. There is standardization on WikiTree, which is derived from FamilySearch, but people ignore it/choose not to use it. Here on WikiTree there is actually a message which appears at profile creation which says they are allowed to ignore it. Data Doctors work on location suggestions all the time, but I imagine it is a never-ending task to correct them all since more profiles with non-standardized locations are created every day.

Edit: Below, Gaile supplied another good reason for the inconsistency of location names you see--changes in WikiTree "standardization" over the years.

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We just had conversation about this last week:

1. WikiTree provides the dropdown list as a convenience, not a required standardization
2. People don't use the names from the dropdown list because they are unclear or they are wrong.

As for the categories, it is rather haphazard. People ask for whatever categories they want to be made. But someone (maybe whoever actually does the making on the back end) should check for some basic level of standardization (USA vs. United States vs....) and not make duplicates.

Answer 1

Hello Tommy, I agree that it is unacceptable. But the location in history is a hard topic … 

There are different opinions, which rules are correct.

But if rules are installed, it would be good to use it.

For example: In my remembrance is USA forbidden.

But I worked in a team of five database programmers. We created rules for programming … And in our team of five the rules were not every time followed thoroughly! 

And now imagine one million coworkers aged between 16 and 120 years, man and woman, spreaded all over the world … 

Don't missunderstand me: I recommend guidlines. And I recommend following guidelines. But I learned you need a bit humor when you find rule-breakings … 

Comments

USA is not forbidden.  Abbreviations in general are 'not recommended', *except for* USA and UK.  (At least, the Help page used to say that.  Now it is more vague/encompassing.)

"Abbreviations for country names may be acceptable when it is the general standard and most recognizable."
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Location_Fields#Abbreviations

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Thanks!

Than I remembered wrong …

But

• USA
• United States
• United States of America

Sigh! 

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Not only did the location names change over time, but WikiTree policies on them also changed over time.  Back in the stone age when I was a new member here and didn't know anything, I was told to always include the name of the country, so I started using US, which I know to be the standard 2 letter abbreviation for the country I live in.  Then they said don't abbreviate, so I changed it to United States in all the profiles I had made up to that time.  Fast forward a few years and they said that's wrong - it has to be United States of America, but they allow 2 country abbreviations and USA is one of them.  By then, I had a much more formidable number of profiles and choose to spend my time here working on developing new sources and information for more people, rather than changing stuff long since done to bring it in line with the most recent policy changes.

So ... I now apply WikiTree's "as they called things then" philosophy to location names - when used in profiles I have written, they are in the form that WikiTree deemed acceptable when they were entered in the profile.

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Good points, Gaile.

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USA Union of South Africa

Answer 2

Yep, welcome to Alabama!  Your post just put me to work for hours.  I used the CC7 tables and found that there were all sorts of versions for my Alabama connections.  At least, I was able to "standardize" the ones that I use.  I don't know about Elmore County, but working in Lawrence County can drive you crazy.  The suggestions from the Family Search pop-up have caused so many errors.  I always ADD the county to Lawrence County, to make it clear that I am not connecting to one of the FOUR towns named Lawrence, in other counties.  We just had a long discussion in my local genealogical group about using County, rather than trying to explain to newbies what the "dangling off the front" extra comma means.  Almost none of the people in Lawrence County ever lived in a town, until after the 1940s. So, I vote for standardizing the use of County, when there is no town.

Comments

I would like to see the use of "county" (and "parish" for Louisiana) be part of the standard name of the location, as well.

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I would like that as well.  I do a lot of work with people who lived in Georgia and sometimes the area was very rural and in the census records, they just went by the county.  Another problem with Georgia is that there are a lot of cities/towns that are not a part of the county with the same name.  For example the city of Washington is in Wilkes County, but there is also a Washington County.  I always use the word county after it if I am only referring to a county. People need to be more careful about this because it can make a big difference whether you are referring to a city/town or the county.  I have seen the word county deleted on Wikitree profiles just so it can match the Family Search standardization. This bothers me a lot when I work on Family Search and I add the word county when I can.

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I agree completely! As I have noted elsewhere, I consider the reality which needs to be captured in a "standardized" set of rules to be extremely complex - much too complex to reasonably expect lots of people to use consistantly. I see promise in working toward a standardized (and automated) mapping of a given combination of geo-location and date to a standardized (and project-protected) set of easy-to-read texts.

Anyone interested in 16th and 17th century European profiles may also want to consider the fact that church boundaries could be VERY different from secular boundaries - even when there was a single official state religion.

In Hapsburg Netherlands, for example, the provincial borders had very little to do with the organisation of the Catholic church into Bishoprics and Arch-bishoprics, which might be of interest to genealogists hunting down church records.

This "religious dimension" is fascinating and it would be great to be able to identify which locations were (predominantly, officially) associated with one or the other religion at various times. The geodata/date combination could be used to develop this aspect, as well.

One additional aspect crosses my mind: the use of geodata would also allow a project team to identify locations connected by certain transportation networks at particular times - like the major trails, canals and railroads. I would find that very interesting in my attempts to recreate and understand the migration my various ancestors made from the East Coast to California in the 1850s - 70s

Answer 3

Hello Tommy,

as a "newbie" I hesitate to try to "answer" a question posed by an "astronaut" - but I've been struggling with various aspects of this issue for a long time in other contexts, and would like to offer my help if anyone actually decides to take on the issue of "standardizing locations across time".

Please also have a look at a question I posted recently on possibly using geo-data in profiles. If WikiTree genealogists were given the opportunity to enter geo-data and let "the system" assign the standardized location tag the WikiTree leadership decided was "correct" for the given date, it might reduce the difficulty encountered when asking millions of users to adhere to a necessarily complex description of how to determine and enter "standard" texts.

It should be pretty easy to communicate how to find and enter geo-data. Most users have access to the internet, and either what3words or latitude/longitude information is readily available online nowadays. Entering the geodata for the center of town, or the state, regional or federal capital would suffice (together with "uncertain" status) would suffice.

Geo-data for modern New Castle, with the appropriate date, could "automatically" result in the correct standardized category within New Netherlands, New Sweden, New York, or the state of Delaware. Perhaps even more importantly, using geodata would let genealogists recognize whether different locations (particularly counties) recorded in census records were the result of an actual change of residence or merely of the official administrative hierarchy.