Hi WikiTreers,
Through the discussion here led by Laura Bozzay it became clear that many members are not entering birth, death, and marriage locations for profiles because they don't know the correct historical place names. Rather than entering a current location name as a placeholder, they're not entering anything. Some members may not even be creating profiles for this reason.
I think we need to clarify that almost any location name is better than no location. Not knowing an historically-accurate place name in a person's native language shouldn't stop you from creating a profile. And if you create a profile, I think even something as broad as "North America" in one of the location fields would help members distinguish between people with the same names and dates in searches and matches. But maybe not everyone agrees with me on this? And even if there is general agreement, we should flesh out the details and make them explicit.
Here is my first attempt: Help:Uncertain_Locations
Do you agree with this policy page? I'm posting yes and no answers to facilitate the conversation. If you're able to give this some consideration, please vote up your preference and comment below the answer. You are welcome to post your own answer if you have questions or a new perspective. Please don't comment on this top post. Comments here will be hidden after they are read once.
Thanks!
Chris
P.S. I considered discussing the following two items here, but ultimately decided against it. I think it's best to agree on the basic policy first. We could circle back to one or both of them later.
1.) {{Modern Location}} Research Note Box?
According to our style rules on Research Note Boxes: "They are for information that's deemed so important that anyone who sees the profile should see the research note .... Research Note Boxes should be reserved for highlighting estimated or speculative information, not for information that is uncertain or unproven."
Even though we have an {{Estimated Date}} Research Note Box (RNB), I don't think we need a parallel one for Estimated Location. An estimated location is a non-specific location, e.g. if you say Europe instead of England. We don't need to call attention to this. If someone sees "Europe" it's obvious that it's a placeholder, unlike with an estimated but exact date.
What about {{Modern Location}}? This might be helpful, but I'm not sure if it's "so important that anyone who sees the profile should see the research note."
An advantage of using an RNB would be that it could categorize profiles in a maintenance category for profiles that need historically-accurate location names.
2.) "Modern" status indicator for locations?
Some members in the previous discussion raised the idea of a status indicator for "modern" parallel to the indicators for uncertain, certain, and blank for privacy. If you enter a modern place name because you don't know the historical place name, you could mark it as "modern" and then we could highlight this in various places like we do when data is uncertain. This would make things clearer than the Research Note Box mentioned in #1.
One concern would be that it would give the impression that entering a modern name is a valid choice. It could muddy the waters on the style rule. Also, a location could be both modern and uncertain. But this is worth further consideration.