Could we have the option to sort our Watch List by Location?

+18 votes
211 views
It would be a tremendous help finding and using source material if all the people from one place can be sorted out in the watch list - they might not even be related families but frequently references will cover all families in a location, for example, in Colonial New England, source books are written for Deerfield, Mass., for Springfield, Mass, for Hartford CT, etc.

It would save a lot of time to be able to check the source from a list of people from that area. A sub-sort by their birthdate would be a wonderful addition too.
in WikiTree Tech by April Dauenhauer G2G6 Pilot (125k points)
retagged by Keith Hathaway
I know this is information after the fact, but if you start adding categories of specific locations to your profiles as you work them, this would provide you a starting point, and as others also start to do this, it will start to provide all with a resource for finding relations from the same area.  I recently "figured" this out (it had been something I was avoiding) and here is what I learned.  If you have say, a little "burg" or villiage within a township within a county, parrish or province, within a country, start with the burg...."[[Category:Burg]]...if it hasn't been created yet, it will show as a red link once you save and go back to the Profile view.  Click on the red link, and it will take you to the new category page.  Scroll down to the big text box and add the next category of the township or locality [[Category:Township or locality]] and so on until you hook into an existing category for say the province or state.  Then when you select the category link on the profile, it will show all the other profiles in that area.  This can also be used for professions, military service, etc.
Hi Nae, You know I appreciate the tips for how WikiTree can work better. I've been using categories more and will see if I can make the localities categories a priority.

I have tried using Map My Family Tree from Progeny, which does a great job of mapping my own tree, but when I'm woking on merges on affiliated people not yet in my tree it isn't a help.

I also have used Animap 3.0.2 from goldbug.com. It does a great job of showing the dates and changes of counties and it has a way to overlay modern maps which I can't seem to find a way to locate cities with.

So we really need that location update Chris mentioned. Looking up counties and towns in The Handybook or on online books is s-l-o-w.... but usually works.

1 Answer

+12 votes
 
Best answer
Hi April,

Location fields aren't currently "normalized." That is, we don't force location names into any standardized format. They're just strings of text as far as the database is concerned.

At some point we will normalize them. We can do this on existing locations, you shouldn't need to reenter them (although you may need to confirm some). Once that's done, a lot more database actions using location fields will be feasible.

Chris
by Chris Whitten G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)
selected by April Dauenhauer


Great! I'd like to see location in the orphan profiles list, too. 

Thank you for the explanation Chris.

Will the normalized locations include checking a database of locations against the date of the event?

For instance, I read that the standard is to enter the place name as it was at the time of the person's life.  Could we have a database check that, and have the option of inserting a note in the text box stating what the modern name of the location would be?

Even after just a couple of months here I can see that WikiTree is steadily evolving - the very definition of a viable community.
Thanks, Nan and April.

April, yes, my vision is to have a database of locations with all historical names correlated to present locations, with geographic coordinates. Since there are so many possible historical place names and variations, the database needs to be something that community members could add to.

There are good people who are working on this, outside of WikiTree, so I'm hoping what they're doing settles down and we can plug into it.
This is a great question!  Thanks for asking it April.

Kind of loving Chris' answer and comments - can hardly wait!

Keith
I wish I had this on my vacation this week. I went to Sevierville, TN and know I have some roots there... but had no idea how to find them :(

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