US county or not

Question

So I had one person correct a bunch of my profiles by adding the word county to the location in the biography. And I had another person follow them and remove the word county. So which is it?

Is there a rule?

This kind of annoying thing seems to happen when people are trying to rack up points and not trying to really improve profiles.

Comments

We non-Americans prefer the word County to be added.  It helps us to understand where the place is - especially when town/city is far away from the county of the same name.

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Adding a county or sometimes township name can be very helpful when multiple places have the same name, here in Ontario we have the town of Simcoe and the county of Simcoe about 250 km apart.

And many other similar place names.

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Additionally - nobody should be editing profiles to remove information, unless it is clearly incorrect.  The goal is accuracy and clarity, not obfuscation.

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I always add township, if applicable. I don’t usually add county if it is a city/twp/village, county, state. I do add county it the location known is only the county and no city.

Answer 1

I have seen discussions on this before with no real conclusions. I prefer using "county" as there are a lot of same name towns and counties or multiple towns in different counties and so on. I do not, however, change what another profile manager uses on his/her profiles. And, neither should anyone else do that.

I would private message the person who did this and ask them to please not change profiles that you manage. Maybe this is a newish member and thought they were being helpful. We try to always assume good intentions.

Answer 2

Is there a rule? YES. See this WikiTree Help page about abbreviations:

• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Location_Fields#Abbreviations

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Now, aside from the above help page, the WikiTree BEE browser extension now has the option on the Surname page (in table view) to sort the birth location by "local to country" or "country to local".  What it revealed is that many people are not following the above instructions concerning abbreviations.

Comments

Tommy, I'm not sure the policy on abbreviations covers whether or not add "County" or "State" to the name of various counties and states.

For example, it says not to use "R.I." for Rhode Island, but not whether "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" is allowed. Less ridiculously, it's also silent on whether we should use "New York" or "New York State"; or "Anaheim, Orange County, California" vs "Anaheim, Orange, California".

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If in doubt use what the Family Search API tells you as WT is using this as the standard. To answer your question it is Anaheim, Orange, California, United States

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There is NO obligation to use what the FamilySearch dropdown suggests.  Those are just suggestions, and are frequently incorrect.

IF there are people (which there are) saying we would prefer that the word County is used, then surely it hurts nobody - and helps many - to actually take a few extra seconds and type those six letters.

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Now that we have the ability on a surname page to sort by location and then by date of birth, if you want all the dates for a particular County to sort correctly, there can ONLY be one way to enter the information, otherwise the date of births will not all be correctly sorted by County (the same for countries, states and local places).

Also, if you are looking for all profiles of a particular surname in a particular location, the only way all these profiles will be together is to make the locations consistent.  Right now in order for someone to find all the profiles of a particular surname in a particular local region in the US, the person has to look under each variation.

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One of many previous discussions - also including links to other previous discussions (or so one post says) -- https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1247492/is-policy-delete-the-county-location-this-causes-confusion

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I don’t know if I agree with statement that they are incorrect. I recently reviewed some 2500 Places using the API and found matches for most (could not find 12).  The ones I could not find appear to be errors in the source records. I even found Churchs and Cemeteries. You do have to be careful picking the right type when the name is used for the same area. E. G. Parish, county, borough. Just click the suggestion, no typing necessary. I did it so I could add Latitude and Longitude to my data set.

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It is not just American locations that are incorrect on FamilySearch.  I have just been working with a family where every single one of them was listed on FamilySearch as being born in England.

Every single one of them was born in Wales.  Wales is not England, and the Welsh are not English.

Directly below this question is another question discussing errors on FamilySearch regards counties.  

I do not understand why some people seem to prefer confusion over clarity.  Six letters.

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Just to clarify my previous statement. I believe that the Place listing that are being accessed by the WT API are accurate from the searches of Australia, Canada, England, Wales and USA that I checked.  I was not referring to the source records with Place names that can be accessed via FS. I agree, many errors are found in these transcribed records.

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And if all the profile says is "Los Angeles", how is one supposed to know if that's the city (which is known pretty much world-wide), ort the county (which I had never heard of before working on Wikitree)?  Clarity costs only six letters.