How specific should a category be?

Question

As part of my Cordell Name Study, I created profiles for people with records for a specific church in England at a specific time period. Should I categorize the profiles to the church or to the city the church is in?

Answer 1

I don't think there can be a cut-and-dry guideline on how specific a category should be except to say that it should be as specific as possible while still being useful. I know that's not really helpful.

In this case I think a specific church would be more useful as the lives and records of one congregation are more likely to hold clues for other profiles in the same congregation.

Comments

Thank you! :)

Answer 2

If you think there are other simular categories that could be grouped together, then consider having higher level categories.  

See this discussion for example

http://www.wikitree.com/g2g/68892/need-help-in-categorization-of-religion

Or the Global Cemeteries Project as a model of what could be done for Churches.

Organizing by the Church is fine.  There exists a Quakers Meethouses Category as well. 

If you are going to have several of these, it is possible to add them under cities as well.  The Global Cemeteries project is once again a great model for how this could work.

 

Comments

Thank you for the example. :)