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Pending Help Projects

Discussion of ideas of how to improve help.

Place Names

I have seen only one 'Place', which looks like a wonderful basis for the historical home of a family diaspora. Is 'geographic community (neighborhoods) building' also a purpose of the Place function of WeRelate? If so, perhaps a "Create Place" tutorial (video or not) would be useful to other contributors, much like: http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Help:Contents#Video_tutorials

• Creating a person page (4:27) - demonstration
• Creating a family page (4:45) - demonstration

The above tours are close enough that I found Add > Place. Still, since there is already both tutorials for Person & Family, then the same for Place, or other items in [Add] might be worth making.
--Wikid 11:35, 15 July 2010 (EDT)

Good point. I'll write one up sometime.--Dallan 17:48, 31 July 2010 (EDT)

The rest is detail questions I might need to ask elsewhere:

There are several 'Located in' field places named "Fairfax", the guidance for 'Place' says, put the disambiguation "type" in parentheses, but the existing list of applicable "Fairfaxes" has another format, "Fairfax, Virginia, United States County" instead of my expectation, "Fairfax (county), Virginia, United States". Should I use what is there but awkward, or try to correct it?
--Wikid 09:04, 31 July 2010 (EDT)

The disambiguation type should be after the place name, so "Fairfax (county), Virginia, United States" is the correct form.

In this case though, Place:Fairfax, Virginia, United States seems to be what you're looking for. We've had a policy that independent cities be titled within the surrounding county. That policy was necessary early-on, but is no longer necessary. You're welcome to rename Place:Fairfax, Fairfax, Virginia, United States to Place:Fairfax (independent city), Virginia, United States, but would you mind also renaming the other independent cities in Virginia? --Dallan 17:48, 31 July 2010 (EDT)

Although "Place:Fairfax, Virginia, United States" links to the county page, it is visually ambiguous, without the disambiguator. Since there are separate government headquarters in each jurisdiction, I don't know that Fairfax City is subordinate to Fairfax County, (which would suggest a city reference as "Fairfax(city), Fairfax(county), Virginia, United States"), any more than the other three contiguous but incorporated cities; Clifton, Vienna, & Falls Church, Virginia. In this case I think my choices are

"Fairfax (city), Virginia, United States" and

"Fairfax (county), Virginia, United States" (chosen), since there seems no reason to presume either. Does your first line imply that the system hides the disambiguator?

I suppose that there are hundreds of incorporated towns in all of Virginia. Too much for me to deal with. Thank you for your help.

--Wikid 22:00, 31 July 2010 (EDT)

I'd prefer that the county remain Place:Fairfax, Virginia, United States under the assumption that without a disambiguator, places under states in the US are generally counties, and rename the city to Place:Fairfax (independent city), Virginia, United States. There are about three dozen independent cities in Virginia. They're all listed as contained places in Place:Virginia, United States.

--Dallan 16:40, 4 August 2010 (EDT)

That presumption might be good for you, but a new visitor would have no obvious reason to make that assumption, nor even suspect that there is an ambiguity. If you always disambiguate, you educate & resolve in one stroke. I would encourage the type be a link, either to a disambiguation page, or to the only alternative.

That still begs the question of what that first jurisdiction type is, even if there is no ambiguity, but that has been unanswered for hundreds of years.

--Wikid 18:00, 4 August 2010 (EDT)

I agree that disambiguation pages and "X (county)" pages for the counties would be a nice improvement. The challenge is that place pages for child places include the title of the parent place, so if we titled the Fairfax county place page as "Fairfax (county), Virginia, United States" and created a "Fairfax, Virginia, United States" disambiguation page, then technically the place pages for cities in Fairfax county would need to be renamed as as "City name, Fairfax (county), Virginia, United States". Renaming all of those city pages is a much bigger job; not something I'd want to take on right now.

A simpler (but less correct) alternative would be to allow the cities in Fairfax county to continue to be named "City name, Fairfax, Virginia, United States", in which case the "located in" links on these city place pages would link to the disambiguation page for Fairfax, not to the newly-created "Fairfax (county), Virginia, United States" page. Maybe that's not so bad.--Dallan 20:38, 4 August 2010 (EDT)

I presume the critical confusion only occurs rarely (only once?), where there is an incorporated town with the same name as a county. In this case

Fairfax (city), virginia, USA

Fairfax (county), virginia, USA

All others (99%?) would be unambiguous, but not always specific as to type:

Annandale, Fairfax, Virginia, USA

Loudon, Virginia, USA

Clifton, Virginia, USA

In the first two the (type) disambiguates (and also specifies the type), and the third is obviously a town, because it is specified as in a particular county. I've noticed a couple of duplicate town names, but not in the same county. The last two are unique, but neither indicates the type of jurisdiction.

Do these three formats address all of the issues we've raised, and keep it easy to implement?

If so, I'll look at the various formats for community, subdivision, or neighborhood names? These often provide the form of government closest to households, and which sometimes have none or just a civil contract (HOA, etc.) as a basis. Some have private security force, or other staff, but are not usually recognized by higher levels of government, unless they take on some of the responsibility for infrastructure (streets, parking, etc.)
--Wikid 17:42, 5 August 2010 (EDT)

There are six independent cities in Virginia with the same name as a county: Bedford, Fairfax, Franklin, Norfolk, Richmond, and Roanoke, one in Missouri: St Louis, and one in Maryland: Baltimore. In these cases I've renamed the Place page to "Name (independent city), State, United States" and the county to "Name (county), State, United States". (Using (independent city) instead of (city) follows the general policy of using the type field in parentheses to disambiguate.) I've also renamed the two-dozen-or-so remaining independent cities in Virginia to remove the surrounding/adjacent county, so they are now "Name, State, United States". I think/hope we're now in pretty good shape with respect to independent cities.

Regarding neighborhoods, HOA's, etc., we don't want to encourage creating Place pages for these places unless they have genealogical significance -- that is, genealogical records were created by those jurisdictions. A good general rule of thumb is, if Getty has it, it's ok. We're trying to avoid cluttering up the place database with places of little value.--Dallan 16:42, 19 August 2010 (EDT)

I'd prefer if you renamed the cities to "Name (independent city), State, United States". --Dallan 16:42, 19 August 2010 (EDT)

WWI draft registration cards

From WeRelate talk:Source renaming project:

Hi Jillaine, there is one already setup; correct or not I am not sure with all of the nuances of source page titles. Here is the name. Source:United States. World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918--Beth 09:35, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

The above source page has a lot of information on it; so I would correct this one first and then title the others to link to this page. I removed the place name from the title, but I see you have a different title so I guess we need a consensus on the title, etc. Doesn't matter to me. --Beth 09:40, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

I didn't realize this broader page (with all the info) existed; I'm glad to know it's here. And since the draft registration was carried out to a close national standard, we probably need only this one page. State and county info would be "citation detail." And I would leave the author/title as it is for this one, even though it might not be technically correct, because "World War I Draft Registration" is what absolutely everyone calls it. --Mike (mksmith) 10:34, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

I think we're going to want to include this on the Help page for creating sources, to discourage people from creating local draft registration pages in the future. Maybe on the Source Portal page, too. --Mike (mksmith) 13:47, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

I agree (at least on Help:Source page titles).--Dallan 13:59, 21 August 2009 (EDT)