Place talk:South Carolina, United States

South Carolina hierarchy needs to be fixed [1 September 2017]

The hierarchy for SC is in a bit of a mess. I'm afraid it has fallen victim to a lack of oversight for a number of years, during which time some well-meaning folks took it upon themselves to redesign the structure away from what was originally agreed upon. We now have many duplicate place pages for the same location which will need to be reabsorbed or reassigned in keeping with the original plan.

The agreed upon goal was to create one page per place (i.e. "spot on the globe") to the best of our ability and to title said page with the jurisdiction as it existed in 1900. Most other jurisdictions to which that place belonged can then be represented adequately by use of the "Also located in" and "See also" fields.

So, for example, as it is right now (Aug 2017), there are 3 place pages representing Abbeville:

1. Place:Abbeville (old county), South Carolina, United States for Abbeville as a County within the former Ninety-Six District (1785-1800)
2. Place:Abbeville (district), South Carolina, United States for Abbeville as a District (1800-1868)
3. Place:Abbeville, South Carolina, United States for Abbeville as a County (1868-present)

This is incorrect as it is essentially the same spot on the globe. There should only be one place page for Abbeville, and the correct page title is #3, because it represents the jurisdiction in 1900.

To characterize Abbeville as it existed in #1 and #2 above, the following can (and will be) entered onto the #3 place page above:

1. Alt names = Abbeville County|1785-1800 and 1868-present name
2. Alt names = Abbeville District|1800-1868 name
3. Also located in = Ninety-Six, South Carolina, United States|1785|1800

Note: Place:Ninety-Six, South Carolina, United States ceased to exist before 1900. It has its own page, because it was a large jurisdiction when it existed with multiple counties, and many records place people in the district, so it is desirable to allow users to enter it as a place. However, the only places which might use it as part of their page title would be those which also ceased to exist before 1900 and were located in the district. There will not be many locations which meet both requirements.

I am posting this here mostly to demonstrate how these pages were supposed to have been structured and to alert anyone who is interested of the changes that need to take place to bring them back into line. I am up to my eyeballs in other tasks right now, so I don't know if I will be able to fix all of these pages in the near future. I will begin working on them here and there and will welcome any help that others can give. --cos1776 20:57, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Maintenance log [2 September 2017]

1. Place:Chester, South Carolina, United States is fixed. 3 pages merged into 1. All links resolved. --cos1776 12:40, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
2. Place:Greenville, South Carolina, United States is fixed. Same as above. --cos1776 22:29, 2 September 2017 (UTC)