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[add comment] [edit] Details of place page titles moved to the existing policy page [19 April 2009]The section on creating new place pages contained a nicely formatted detailed discussion about how to name place pages. Unfortunately, it was completely at odds with the policy stated over on WeRelate:Place page titles and actually being used in the wiki. I changed the examples here to be consistent with the current policy, and moved the details over to the WeRelate:Place page titles page, with a reference to that page here. --TomChatt 01:49, 30 December 2006 (MST)
[add comment] [edit] Map coordinates input defaulting to E [24 May 2009]I have been trying to add maps to places linked from my tree but after a few successful entries the coordinates input has begun default to E instead of W. Even after being edited, the result always is somewhere in Asia rather than in the Western hemisphere. --gewurztraminer 12:55, 19 May 2009 (EDT) I think it defaulted to E all along; I've changed it to default to W.--Dallan 18:07, 20 May 2009 (EDT)
[add comment] [edit] Adding Cemetery Pages [26 November 2009]Can I add new cemetery pages? I looked on the index and there were only a few listed for Texas. Is there a tutorial? Thanks.--Suzyq 23:39, 25 November 2009 (EST)
[add comment] [edit] How do I obtain a list of all Place pages on WeRelate? [23 January 2010]I know I have a lot of badly worded Place pages within my trees and I want to fix them. How do I obtain a list of all places on WeRelate or better yet, a list of all places in one or more of my trees? The Search page results list does not display the Place field. Thanks. Jillaine 10:30, 18 January 2010 (EST) The problem here, Jillaine, is that these places you are speaking of have not been created yet. Since there is an error in the place name, it's red-linked. You could see a list of Special:Wantedpages, but I don't know how to limit that by your username.--Jennifer (JBS66) 10:39, 18 January 2010 (EST)
[add comment] [edit] United Kingdom [1 September 2010]It appears that the guidelines for places names and all places in the United Kingdom conflict. It it very explicit in the guidelines that all of the levels of jurisdiction be included in a place name and yet England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are all top-level place names. That is particularly ridiculous with Northern Ireland and Wales as they have never been independent, coherent political entities in that form. Even for England and Scotland it is dubious since they have not been sovereign nations in and of themselves for over 300 years. The argument that it would produce long, unwieldy place names to have four levels also cannot be sustained as four levels are in place for virtually all US place names. I suggest that the four component parts of the United Kingdom need putting in that sovereign nation in the WeRelate places namespace. David Newton 18:25, 30 August 2010 (EDT)
[add comment] [edit] Rivers [17 April 2011]I haven't seen it being done yet, and might be tricky to implement, but I'd like to see Rivers and/or bodies of water be included as places. They link inhabited places and are primary if not THE primary factors in migration and settlement. They could nest like places: Deep Run, Tohickon Creek, Delaware River, Atlantic Ocean. Admittedly they present multiple levels which may present difficulty, eg St Joseph River, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Detroit River, Lake St Clair, (river?), Lake Erie, Niagara River, Lake Ontario, St Lawrence River, Atlantic. For now, I'll just link to wiki articles on them, but I think they could become a great tool for tracking pre-railroad family/group migration. If this doesn't generate interest, fine, I'll just say, if you don't know where your family came from, look downstream. BTW, does anyone know a mapsite that does a better job than Google maps at labeling rivers?--Brear47 10:10, 16 April 2011 (EDT)
I'd just seen OSM for the first time and I agree. An example for a river pages utility relates to my 3g grandfather. His residences were all on connected waterways, Piqua, OH on the Greater Miami, ditto Hamilton, OH and then Abington IN up the Whitewater. If I only knew his wife's maiden name I could check for in towns or counties linked to those rivers. it turns out her family was living in Dearborn Co IN, the first county up the Whitewater, just before the marriage. Of course I don't know where on the river they met, or whose movement along it occasioned the connection (though possibly his, he was an ME circuit rider.) As it was I had better info, but true brick walls need special tools to knock them down!--Brear47 01:20, 18 April 2011 (EDT)!Brear47 00:52, 18 April 2011 (EDT) [add comment] [edit] Contained Places [1 July 2012]What are the categories for Contained Places on the place pages? Are these the categories as used by typical topographic gazetteers? Also, is there a list of what constitutes a place "Type" when entering a new place page. It's a free form box, so people could put anything in there. — Parsa 15:13, 24 April 2011 (EDT)
A list of some common or suggested "types" for the field in the help page for places (this Help topic), or in a Portal would be sufficient. Then if someone runs into an unusual situation, they still have the option of entering a unique type. My question arose from the fact that I see "inhabited place", "populated place", in addition to town, village, city, etc. for types. There have been some commonly agreed upon definitions for some populated places in the past. For example, a "village" was usually a place that had a church or chapel, but a "hamlet" only had some houses with no church. I'm sure that's why the U.S. gazetteers stuck with "populated place" to avoid the pitfalls of defining things too exactly. I would assume that geographers in other countries have defined place types for their maps and gazetteers as well. — Parsa 10:44, 26 April 2011 (EDT) Here's a list of types that currently appear on 3 or more places: Inhabited place 201512 Unknown 142988 City 16342 Town 15273 Village 9164 Township 4563 Census-designated place 4266 Freguesia 3799 Municipality 3734 County 3473 Deserted settlement 2942 City or town 2821 District 2739 Community 2484 Parish 1954 Commune 1944 Cemetery 1825 Province 1290 Borough 1253 Region 565 General region 511 Town or village 398 Townland 367 Dorp 347 Canton 327 Concelho 299 Raion 288 Voormalige gemeente 277 State 267 Inhabited Place 264 Department 232 Hundred 208 National district 196 Gemeente 162 Island 157 Independent City 141 Prefecture 137 Arrondissement 136 Rione 134 Governorate 134 Nation 133 Former county 128 Kreis 102 Département 98 City or Town 96 Buurtschap 87 Regional County Municipality 86 Inhabited place, parish 83 Country 83 Former Municipality 80 Suburb 78 Former County 72 Former province 68 Rayon 67 Historical County 66 Former District 62 Barangays 59 Rural Municipality 57 Historic Region 57 Historical region 56 Buurtschap 55 Former Province 50 Urban area 49 prefecture 48 Parish, urban area 48 Parish (political) 47 Oblast 47 District Municipality 46 Comarca 46 Church 44 kerület (district) 43 Hamlet 40 Census division 40 town 38 inhabited place 36 Historical District 36 Former National district 36 Modern Voivodship 34 Traditional county 33 Circuit Court District 33 Administrative Region 33 township 31 Kanton 31 Historic county, Administrative county, Modern county 31 village 30 Historical Province 29 National division 28 Historical Province, Oblast 28 Regierungsbezirk 27 Former community 27 Zone 26 Third level subdivision 26 Gerichtsbezirk 25 Diocese 25 Dependent state 25 cemetery 24 Constituency 24 Commonwealth Voivodship 24 Unitary authority 22 Région 22 Republic 22 Former borough 22 Former State 22 Regional district 21 Inhabited place, Canton 21 Ortsteil (locality) 20 Former nation/state/empire 20 Ghost town 19 Territory 18 Historical District, District 17 Autonomous community 17 Place 16 Historical Town, Town 16 Subprefecture 15 Statutarstadt 15 Locality 15 Civil Parish 15 Stift 14 Principal area 14 County town 14 Marke 13 Hospital 13 Q.S. Parish 12 Provincie 12 Periphery 12 Modern county 12 Modern State 12 County, Former county 12 City Municipality 12 Borough (Bezirk) 12 Autonomous region 12 Area 12 Administrative county 12 parish 11 hospital 11 church 11 Regency 11 Populated Place 11 Abandoned complex 11 city 10 Okres 10 Historical Kreis 10 Historical City, City 10 Historic county 10 Former Region 10 County municipality 10 Census area 10 Ancient Parish 10 Registration District 9 Partido 9 Grafschaft 9 Administrative region 9 Sahar 8 Presbytery 8 People's Republic Voivodship, Modern Voivodship 8 National District 8 Land District 8 Historical District, City 8 Former Regierungsbezirk 8 Dependency 8 County, Modern county 8 City Quarter 8 Castle 8 Autonomous district 8 nursing home 7 Village (former) 7 Union territory 7 State, Former province 7 Sestiere part of Venezia 7 Powiat 7 Modern province 7 Historic County 7 Former District/ Town 7 Federal District 7 Emirate 7 Disputed territory 7 Defunct city 7 Catholic mission 7 Bezirk 7 Amtsgericht 7 county 6 UnknownInhabited place 6 Town and Constituency 6 Religious Structure 6 Regional county municipality 6 Preserved county 6 Perfecture 6 Orthodox Church 6 Metropolitan county 6 Lieutenancy area 6 Landkreis (District) 6 Historical Province/Region 6 Historical Inhabited Place 6 Historical District/Town 6 Historic county, Principal area 6 General Region 6 Former parish, inhabited place 6 Former parish 6 Former administrative division 6 District, City or town 6 Ancient City 6 Township 5 Special city 5 Seat 5 Principality 5 Populated place 5 Land 5 Island, parish 5 Independent city 5 Gehucht 5 District Council 5 City and Constituency 5 Autonomous Region 5 Administrative county, Modern county 5 Uyezd 4 Urban district (kreisfreie Stadt) 4 Urban district 4 Urban area, parish 4 Traditional Province 4 Rural District 4 Ruined Church 4 Registration district 4 Occupied territory 4 Mining Hamlet 4 Military base 4 Metropolitan area 4 Local council 4 Island group 4 Island Region 4 Inhabited region 4 Inhabited place, former parish 4 Historical District, Town 4 Historical District & City, District 4 Hameau 4 Former State, Modern State 4 F 4 External territory 4 Duchy 4 Congress Governorate, Modern Voivodship 4 City District 4 Canton Ouest 4 unknown 3 Village, Civil Parish 3 Uninhabited Hamlet 3 Unincorporated area 3 Town/District Seat 3 Town or Village 3 Territory/Fiefdom 3 Synod 3 Settlement 3 Second Republic Voivodship 3 School 3 Religious structure 3 Region/Province 3 Place of Worship 3 Peninsula 3 Parish, Municipality 3 Neighborhood 3 Municipal district 3 Mansion, former iron works 3 Kingdom 3 Islands 3 Inhabited place, former iron works 3 Inhabited Location 3 Indian Reserve 3 Historical Region, Region 3 Historical Region 3 Historical Province, Province 3 Historical Province, Krai 3 Historical District, City or town 3 Historical City 3 Historic county, Administrative county 3 Gemeente, Stad (City) 3 Former parish, urban area 3 Former District/ District 3 External Territory 3 Disputed Region 3 County, Province 3 Colony 3 City municipality 3 Cemeteries 3 Capital District 3 Capital 3 Bantustan 3 Autonomous republic 3 Amt (county) 3 Gerichtsbezirk 3 There are some types in this list that are mistakes, which a drop-down list would avoid. But there are currently too many in this list to put into a drop-down list, so we'd need to remove a bunch. The drop-down list for event type currently has 60-70 items in it, which seems like a lot, so I think we'd want the drop-down list for places to have no more than 100. If we can trim this list down to 100 place types then I'll put it in. However, I imagine it will be difficult to reach a consensus on which 100 we should include. It may be just as well to leave it as a text field.--Dallan 10:31, 28 April 2011 (EDT)
Would it be possible to add a link to The list of place types at MediaWiki:Place types mentioned by Dallan 19:36, 27 June 2011 (EDT)? The type of place, (e.g. "town"), can have a number of descriptive words in front of it and I cannot always be sure the descriptive one I want is in the list. The descriptive word may be hiding under a synonym ("historical" versus "former"). Thanks --goldenoldie 05:47, 29 June 2012 (EDT)
[add comment] [edit] Tagging duplicate places for removal [19 March 2012]The instructions under Help:Place pages#Tagging duplicate places for removal are not valid, there is no longer a Category:Remove. We could direct them to speedy delete, but the purpose of remove was that they required specialized attention (merging). How do we want to handle pages that users feel are duplicates and who are not comfortable with merging themselves? --Jennifer (JBS66) 06:14, 25 April 2011 (EDT)
Was this put into practice? --goldenoldie 03:42, 19 March 2012 (EDT) I think it slipped through the cracks? I am redoing the help pages and will address this issue. The procedure is to manually copy any info from the the page with the wrong title unto the page with the properly named page. Then delete everything in the text box of the wrong-named page and redirect it to the right-named page by typing #redirect Place:Proper name on the first line of the text box on the wrong-named page. We are always looking for volunteers. Is there some area of WeRelate you would like help with. We people to help new users, oversee namespaces, etc. Thanks, --sq 11:14, 19 March 2012 (EDT) [add comment] [edit] Townships [3 May 2011]I noted that the examples for place order now have "Township (township)" when the name is the same as a city or town in the county. Before I believe it had the example as "(Township)", that is capitalized, and I was following that example. The capitalization matters as "Independence (township)" is not the same place as "Independence (Township)." Is the lower case the accepted standard in a title? I've noted in searches that both are used, which could mean that duplicates will be created. I've also noticed that a lot of rural cemeteries are listed under the county, not under an existing township. In many instances I had to create the township place first in order to create the cemetery contained in it. By the way, a good place to find township and cemetery coordinates is on the Histopolis place pages. Just put in the place at the top. It even shows the borders of the township or cemetery if they've been entered.
If there are subordinate places, I can't rename the place page title to the lower case standard. Only an admin can. — Parsa 20:50, 3 May 2011 (EDT)
[add comment] [edit] Making exception to hospital rule for mental hospitals who have longtime residents [18 July 2011]In researching my family history I discovered that I have a great grand aunt who is listed in the 1900, 1910, and 1920 census in Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. There is a page on Wikipedia for Bryce Hospital although it is not listed as a place or categorized as such. Just wondering if we should allow hospitals to have place pages that housed residents for many years. Bryce Hospital is a state hospital for citizens with mental problems. --Beth 21:17, 4 May 2011 (EDT)
This conversation seems to imply that hospitals as places are discouraged. Is this true? The reason I ask is that death locations are sometimes specifically indicated as being in Hosptial X. My interpretation of current consensus would be to indicate the place as the most specific administrative unit then provide the Hospital name in the description. Is this the current best practice? Thanks. --ceyockey 07:06, 18 July 2011 (EDT)
[add comment] [edit] Parish as a Place Name [7 February 2012]I just ran across a place page for a London parish Place:St. Helen Bishopsgate, London, England. In this instance, a parish is a physical subdivision of a city, ecclesiastical instead of political. In the FAQ we are requested to not create place pages for churches and in an instance like this, it seems to me that this is like creating a separate place page for, as an example, the Fifth Ward of Albany. New York. I personally would prefer identifying the parish/church in the Description field but am looking for some admin guidance on this. Thanks.--jaques1724 14:08, 16 June 2011 (EDT)
In England as well as in Scotland, parishes are municipalities. I notice you now have "Parish political" as one of the Place Descriptions. In London many Registration Districts for Births, Marriages and Deaths, adopted in 1837, appear to be the name of a church. However, they are really "political parishes". "St George's, Hanover Square" is an example which comes to mind. /cheers--goldenoldie 02:58, 7 February 2012 (EST) (who lives in a sub-parish of a political parish outside of London) [add comment] [edit] Places & their historic names [19 January 2012]Have searched help for a discussion about historic place names and can't seem to find what I need. How are historic place names used. There are 1000s of these. I understand that the standard is to use place names as they appear in 1900, which is not always easy to ascertain (but that is a side issue). Currently, I am working on a family that was in the area that would become Sharon, Mass. At the time of their lives, it was the 2nd District (1740) of Stoughton, Mass. and later Stoughtonham District (1765), next it is town of Stoughtonham (1775), and finally (?) Sharon, Mass (1783). This family is referred to being of Stoughton and Stoughtonham in published works. Family members appear in both Stoughton and Sharon Vital Records. It is so common to read "in that part of __ which became __" or their were native place names that can be reasonable assigned to a specific geo-entity. Are these historic names used? If so, how best to represent them here?--Kpb2011 07:47, 17 January 2012 (EST)
[add comment] [edit] Appleton le Street, North Riding of Yorkshire [7 February 2012]There is a typo in "Yorkshire" in the description under "Hanna Or Mary Peterkin" which I can't seem to get rid of. When I go to the edit screen the spelling is correct. I would also like to adjust her name to Hanna Peterkin and explain where Mary is found in Notes. Once again, I can't see how to make the correction. Thanks--goldenoldie 02:48, 7 February 2012 (EST)
[add comment] [edit] RENAME A PLACE PAGE TITLE [11 March 2012]HOW DO I RENAME A PLACE PAGE TITLE ?? Somehow a village ended up in a different village , then county, country.
[add comment] [edit] "Village and Civil Parish" [13 August 2013]I've recently run into a lot of these (at least according to their wikipedia pages) while working on families which originated in co. Suffolk. Would it be possible to get that description added to the "Type" dropdown on the Place Page edits?--jaques1724 16:11, 18 March 2012 (EDT) I'm not sure I understand your request. If the village has been mistakenly put into another village, what would you like in the dropdown?--sq 21:16, 18 March 2012 (EDT)
Hi, the type field can multiple types. So enter village, followed by a comma, followed by civil parish. Hope this helps. --sq 23:10, 18 March 2012 (EDT)
--- I hope someone will see this addendum to an 17-month-old query. When we use "village, civil parish" to describe a community, the county page lists the place under the two headings "inhabited place" and "civil parish". This makes an extremely long county page, and more often than not brings up the WARNING: "This page is 36 kilobytes long; some browsers may have problems editing pages approaching or longer than 32kb. Please consider breaking the page into smaller sections." (BTW, not all villages are civil parishes, and some civil parishes are combinations of two or more villages.) The only way I can see to reduce the length of the page is to introduce the types "village and civil parish" and "town and civil parish". Or is the length of county pages really not an issue? Any other suggestions? --Goldenoldie 14:49, 13 August 2013 (EDT) [add comment] [edit] Incomplete import from wikipedia [5 March 2013]The first part of the wikipedia article on Place:Hatfield Broad Oak, Essex, England was imported into the werelate page via the normal procedure 13 Jan 2013. However, part of the first sentence of the second paragraph was omitted. Any ideas as to how this happened?--jaques1724 15:21, 13 January 2013 (EST)
Can I make a suggestion on sorting out Wikipedia's "convert" template? A great many of these omissions are simple conversions from miles to kilometres and make for most peculiar sentences when the distance or area has been omitted in the transition to WeRelate. If the quote from WP is only a couple of sentences, it would be easiest to rewrite the description in our own words including the omitted section, adding the {{moreinfo wikipedia}} template to the end of our contribution (hopefully, WP will have enough to say to justify the use of the template!). In the case of longer articles, there is nothing wrong with any of us joining Wikipedia and making these small adjustments there. Example: replace "5 miles (8km)" with "5 miles or 8km". It is the parentheses which flags the known issue problem in WR. --goldenoldie 10:15, 5 March 2013 (EST)
Place:Danville, Contra Costa, California, United States Place:Rowland Heights, Los Angeles, California, United States Place:Lincoln, Oregon, United States Place:Hedley, British Columbia, Canada Place:Thornby, Northamptonshire, England Template:Wp-Danville, California Template:Wp-Danville, California-History Template:Wp-Rowland Heights, California-History Template:Wp-Lincoln County, Oregon-History Template:Wp-Hedley, British Columbia Template:Wp-Thornby, Northamptonshire Place:Mark Twain Lake, Missouri, United States
[add comment] [edit] FAQ re-arrangement [5 March 2013]Could we re-order the FAQ questions so that the three questions about quoting from Wikipedia come together? That's 1.7, 1.12 and 1.12.1. It would be helpful if the directions for using the {{moreinfo wikipedia}} template were close by as well. Speaking personally, the FAQ is useful to print out and keep beside the computer and these precise directions are the ones I use most. --goldenoldie 10:27, 5 March 2013 (EST) [add comment] [edit] Churches as places [29 September 2015]A few days ago, Jennifer (JBS66) advised me that I should not add churches as a place. I find that a little weird, because some of my ancesors were buried inside churches, and the practice continues for some local royals too. In those cases, churches are like cemeteries, which can be added as a place. Many of these churches have a page on wikipedia too, which sort of categorizes them as 'relevant'. Another reason for adding churches as places or special objects could be that many churches are recognized as authors of a lot of source documents in the LDS catalog. --Enno 20:59, 7 October 2013 (UTC) Has there been any further discussion about adding Church as a Location category? What is the correct usage of a Church as the location of a marriage, for instance?--RWMeyer 00:22, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
Over time we have discussed this on WR, and there have always been opposing views. I do a lot of updating of Place pages, particularly in England, and I would avoid using a church as a place in all but the largest towns and cities. Why? The number of places in England we have in our database is vast and the purpose of having a database is so that one person's submissions can be compared to those of another person. To add churches would increase the size of the database and make it more difficult to identify a family who spent part of their lives at least living near to another family (even if in a different century). After all, the name of the website is WeRelate. Adjacent to every "place box" there is a "description box". It is a lot more expandible than it looks on an "edit page". If the town or village is small enough to have only one or two churches, the best place to note the name of a church for a baptism, a marriage or a burial is the description box. However, larger towns and cities were made up of several ecclesiastical parishes, each of which has kept its own parish records for centuries. Large ecclesiastical parishes were often civil parishes as well until the end of the 19th century. For these many sources name the parishes starting with the name of the town: e.g. Bristol All Saints, Gloucester Holy Trinity, Worcester St. Clement. In this way the town is quickly identified and I have been trying to adopt this into WeRelate. It allows the name of the specific church to be found in the county list, usually under the type Parish (ancient). Slightly off-topic, at the moment, type "Ancient parish" exists in our database as well as Parish (ancient)--we must get that fixed. Large town parishes have been very difficult to research from a geographical point of view. Over time there are lots of mergers of parishes which historians may or may not mention in their writings and the name of the newly-organized parish may not include both parishes from which it was formed. Discovering where a church was actually located can also be difficult if it no longer exists as a building or if the researcher does not know the layout of the town involved. Just one person's thoughts on the matter. --Goldenoldie 11:00, 29 September 2015 (UTC) [add comment] [edit] Adding a historic country? [5 February 2014]How do I add "Austria-Hungary" as a historic country? The wikipedia article is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria-Hungary Many immigration records for the empire do not offer differentiation to a recognizable modern sub-country. Attributing incorrectly because the existing list forces a choice between Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, etc., can also lead to major research redirection. I just spent 10 years assuming I was dealing with Slovakia when the real trail was across the border in the Czech Republic. There is also an awesome online gazetteer which would enable getting 19th c representative placenames up so that researchers know the full list of possibilities for the time (in the case where I went astray, it turns out there were 10 possible settlements with fundamentally the same name spread throughout the empire).--Artefacts 19:09, 5 February 2014 (UTC) [add comment] [edit] Extra place page-types [17 May 2014]Could we add to choices of types of place for use in the UK, please:
and, for Scottish places
There is a difference between the three types of borough. The first two are used officially between 1889 and 1974. A municipal borough was usually smaller and the local government was still under the county. A county borough had a minimum size (50,000 population) and was independent of the county (like an incorporated town or city in North America). Metropolitan boroughs were created in 1974 when some new counties were devised that were almost completely urban in character and had to be divided into separate sections (Greater Manchester has 10 metropolitan boroughs; Merseyside and West Yorkshire have 5 each, etc). "Parish" is in the current list, but I am never comfortable about using it without better definition. Ancient parishes were formal divisions of "hundreds". They are the geographical divisions that go with parish register entries for births, marriages and deaths. Civil parishes (or political parishes) were brought in in 1866 and were designed for property tax collection, etc. All these terms have a precise meaning here and may help to indicate where to search for further information about ancestors who lived in the UK in some era or other. Village, town and city are much more subjective. The terms are quite well defined in Wikipedia--something I never would have known before joining WeRelate! --Goldenoldie 13:37, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. Someday I'll get around to writing something in the place portal or in the England Research page (is that what it's called?) about this. I was very surprised how well WP went into these definitions. --Goldenoldie 06:38, 17 May 2014 (UTC) [add comment] [edit] I put a place name with a typo - i only want to edit the spelling of the town [8 March 2015]--Ohleslie 06:15, 8 March 2015 (UTC) All corrections of titles are done by using "Rename" whether they are large or small. I quite often have to take out a hyphen that was used in building databases in the early days of the internet, but which would not be used by natives of the community today. Regards, --Goldenoldie 08:00, 8 March 2015 (UTC) |
