Sweden Project - Category Instructions
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Location categories are the categories most used on Swedish profiles. But there are also categories grouping cemeteries, migration, genealogy resource pages, maintenance categories and more. Those relevant to Sweden can be found in the top-level category Category: Sweden.
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Location Categories
Profiles should always be placed in the lowest location category possible. That usually means the parish category where the person was born, married, lived for a long time, or died. It should never be the country, province, county or hundred. You should only add a location category to a profile if you have a source that state the fact.
If you have an ancestor born in Sweden but you do not know where, please use Category: Sweden, Unknown Location and add what you know, for instance a province name, in the biography.
Sometimes even a smaller category within the parish can be used. This could be the farm, croft or village. Location category names for locations follow the same general principles as Location Fields. This means, for example, place names in native languages and using the names that people at the time used and not using a street address, building name, church, hospital, etc.
Using Parish Categories
Since the Swedish parishes are so important for genealogy in Sweden it is very helpful to categorize your profiles by parish. There are currently well over 2000 categories for parishes in Sweden - almost a full set. When you put a category like [[Category: Leksand (W)]] on one of your profiles the profile will appear on the category page together with others who were born, lived or died there. Two or three location categories on a profile is usually enough.
We strongly recommend the nifty new tool in the edit toolbar on biographies for finding and adding parish categories.
Because there are many cases where more than one Swedish parish has the same name, the parish categories are named with the parish name plus the county code in parenthesis. The county code is there instead of the name of the county to make the category name shorter.
When a parish category is getting filled up - nearing 200 categorized profiles - you may want to create subcategories for villages, hamlets or farms. These should be of the form [[Category: Altsarbyn, Rättvik (W)]], i.e. Village, Parish (County code). If it is necessary, subcategorization could proceed another level, with different farms as subcategories of a village, but the general rule is to avoid creating extra layers of navigation.
Parishes are grouped by county - Leksand and Rättvik are both Parishes in Dalarna. The county category - in this case Dalarna County - is a toplevel category that should not be put on a profile that has a parish category.
Where to find parish categories
While editing a profile, you can find categories using the category picker. It's the little button just above the edit box that almost looks like a little ladder. Start typing the name of the parish and it should be listing suggestions after a few typed letters.
Another way is to check the categories Category: Sweden, Parishes by County and Category: Parishes, Sweden which by now should contain almost all parishes in Sweden.
Unknown Swedish Location
If you have an ancestor born in Sweden but you do not know in what parish, please use Category: Sweden, Unknown Location. Any additional info about a location, a province or perhaps a village name should be added to the bio in order to help find the correct location for the profile.
Explaining Swedish Place/Location Categories
The Category: Sweden, Geographical Regions was created as an effort to hold different kinds of location categories through Swedish history.
Provinces (in Swedish: Landskap)
The provinces in Sweden are very old geographical areas, older than the counties. They no longer serve any administrative or juridical function. Profiles should not be added to the Swedish province categories.
The parent category for provinces are Category: Provinces, Sweden and the geographical region (landsdel) to which they belong.
Hundreds (in Swedish: Härad)
Hundreds are also a very old term, used even before the counties came to be. They were judicial districts (before 1866), and each hundred comprised a number of parishes. The hundred served as a military division, the court of the first instance as well as electoral constituency (1436-1866).
The hundreds should have both the province and county as parent category (the county used before the merges of counties in the 21st Century). No profiles should be added to the hundred categories.
- See Hundreds, Sweden
- Se Härader, Sverige
Counties (in Swedish: Län)
The counties began to be used in the 1600's. The number and borders of the counties have more or less been the same since 1810, but three major changes have been made since the 1960's. In 1968 the city of Stockholm and the county of Stockholm were merged into Stockholm County. In 1997 the counties of Kristianstad and Malmöhus were merged into Skåne County, and in 1998 Göteborg and Bohus County, Älvsborg County and Skaraborg County were merged into Västra Götaland County.
The counties all have the parent category Category: Counties, Sweden. They could also have a parent category for the province they are located in. No profiles should be added to the county categories.
- See Counties, Sweden for more info on Counties.
- Se Län, Sverige för mer information om län.
Parish Categories
Parish categories consist of parish names and the country letter within parenthesis. Example: Category:Kila (D) This is where profiles can be added.
These categories should have a parish county category as parent category, example Category: Parishes, Södermanland as well as Category:Parishes, Sweden which lists all Swedish parishes A-Ö.
Other examples of parent categories for the parishes can be the hundreds they belonged to as well as the municipalities they have been part of.
Farms, crofts and villages
Name of farm, croft or village + name of parish + county letter within parenthesis. Example: Gårdstenstorp, Kila (D)
These categories have the parish category as the parent category. If the parish category is very full, there would be a reason for creating subcategories for this kind of locations.
Emigration Categories
Just as any other category, the migration categories can be found with the category picker in edit mode. The smallest "entity" or location used for emigration/immigration would be the Swedish counties.
Not all emigration categories are set up yet, if you need one created let the Nordic Category Team know (see below).
How to categorise a Swedish emigrant
Step 1
- Do you know from which Swedish county they emigrated?
- Yes. Proceed to step 2.
- No. If you do not know from which county someone emigrated, please use the Category: Unknown Swedish County, Emigrants as "leaving entity" and proceed to step 2.
Step 2
- Do you know to which "arriving entity" (state/province/county/district) in the new country the profile immigrated to?
- Yes. Then the category to choose is "Migrant from "leaving entity" to "arriving entity" and you are done. Example: Category: Migrants from Blekinge County to Alabama
- No. Go to step 3
Step 3
- Do you know to which country the profile emigrated?
- Yes. The the category to choose is "Leaving entity, Emigrants to Country". Example: Category: Blekinge County, Emigrants to United States
- No. Bummer. The only place left to add the profile is to "Leaving entity", Emigrants". Example: Category: Blekinge County, Emigrants
A little tip using Category picker for these long category names... you only need to write/search for Blekinge and start writing Alabama in order for it to find "Migrants from Blekinge County to Alabama".
Maintenance Categories
Profiles that need work can be sorted into different maintenance categories, like "needs biography", "needs birth record" or "unsourced". A maintenance category can also be created for a specific Team to work on.
This is where you find Category: Sweden, Maintenance Categories
Do you want/need a Swedish category created?
If you want help creating a Swedish related category, you can send a message to the Nordic Project Google Group if you are a Nordic Project Member or you can contact the members of the Nordic Category Team Nordic Project Categories Team
Category Instructions
If you already know how to create a category, please also consider if it is a needed category before adding it. Preferably also communicate with someone in the Nordic Project Categories Team. Otherwise, you may find that unapproved category structures could be deleted and your hard work wasted.
Useful links - help pages for Help:Category_Creation_and_Removal and Help:Personal_Categories
Also, these are some "ground rules" for categories (at least since 2020) that you must consider.
- No categories should use ref tags (<ref> </ref> or <references/>)
- No categories should use headings of any level (== Level 1 Heading == or === Level 2 Heading === etc.)
- No categories should have a divider/horisontal line at the beginning or end of text.
- All categories should have a brief description and/or state the purpose of the category so the user can be sure it would be the correct category to add to a profile. This text should be at least 50 characters long.
- However, please do not add to much info! If there is much info about the topic of the category, create a free-space profile with the information and add a link to the free-space profile in the category text.
All of the points above will generate an error for the Categorisation Project.
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- Private Messages: Contact the Profile Managers privately: Sweden Project WikiTree and Maggie Andersson. (Best when privacy is an issue.)
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- Public Q&A: These will appear above and in the Genealogist-to-Genealogist (G2G) Forum. (Best for anything directed to the wider genealogy community.)