G2G: Recent England and Wales registration districts. Don't change!

Question

I have recently had a spate of people changing the (usually) death locations on my profiles to something less helpful. E.g. the subject of one of my profiles died in registration district South East Hampshire which I duly recorded as place of death but another wikitree-er came along and deleted the South East, leaving the place of death as just Hampshire. Current Registration Districts in England & Wales aren't always centred on one large town but give a broad geographic location which is more specific than just the county. Is there any reason why the registration district should not be used to pinpoint an event location?

Secondly, some current registration districts use an ampersand in their title e.g. Hastings & Rother and this is the way they style themselves. Unfortunately if you copy-paste, the system gets upset about the '&' and flags up an error. I had one such case changed by another wiki-treer and when I queried why she had done it, her response was 'the system doesn't like it. Daft isn't it?'. Looks like this is a case for the system to be changed rather than expecting everyone to replace the '&' with an 'and'. Or is it me being daft?

Answer 1

Provided the biography contains the registration district in the death citation there is no need to add the part of the county to the location. Whichever part of the county an event occured it should be an actual place rather than an area in the county in the location. The only certainty might be the county, but some registration districts cross county borders (e.g. New Forest), which is probably why Family Search, which is where the dropdown list comes from, use some registration districts.

WikiTree does not currently recognise those newer registration districts so it will throw up errors in the system.

I am the England Project team leader for Hampshire and will discuss with the Project what we should do with these as these districts no longer exist.

Answer 2

Re the first part of the question. Why change from registration district?

The England standards page includes the following

Where the most precise location for an event is a Registration District (for post-1837 events), which may contain several towns and/or villages, the Registration District may be included in the location. The biography should make it clear that the location refers to the Registration District, rather than a village or town (which may have the same name). https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:England_Project_Profile_Standards

This doesn't actually say don't  state  registration district in the location field but could be interpreted as not to do this.

 Like you, I had a location edited recently. It was a marriage, changed from ' Rugby Registration district' to 'Rugby Warwickshire.' This registration district,  from 1837,  included  parishes in Warwickshire, a couple in Leicestershire (-1895)  and several in  Northamptonshire (-1932). Although I don't know exactly where the couple married, the least likely alternative is a parish in  Warwickshire . It's very unlikely to have taken place in  the town of Rugby. I originally put 'registration district' in the location box after a question on G2G many years ago. Policy obviously seems to have changed.  In this case, I've removed the marriage  location entirely because I feel Rugby, Warwickshire is inaccurate and misleading.

Comments

My response would have been to reinstate the original entry. By following the guidelines to the letter we have diminished (albeit infinitesimally) the accuracy of the project. Rugby Registration District is accurate and helpful, the wrong county or a blank space is not.

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I had someone change "Ashby de la Zouch Registration District, Leicestershire" to Ashby de la Zouch, Leicestershire recently, on a profile I manage. I changed it back.

Answer 3

It seems to me that the use of the FamilySearch dropdown list may be the problem, generally.  All those "United Kingdom" placenames that so many people spend so much trouble to expunge are the product of this. First, "the system" produces the error, then it bugs people to get rid of it.  Eliminating it altogether might make things easier.

Comments

Absolutely Lois! This is obviously a complete nonsense. We are wasting a great deal of time deleting things and replacing them with something which is less accurate. As far as technology is concerned I'm at the banging two bits of flint together stage but it must surely be possible to override the system and if the system doesn't work then get rid of it altogether. One of the few things I learnt about technology is that it should be the servant and not the master. Surely we should only be amending stuff that is complete gobbledygook. If it makes sense, leave it alone and let us get on with the main task of recording our ancestors rather than wasting time trying to make every entry follow an identical style.

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Getting rid of it might make things easier in parts of the UK. It would create work in countries like Australia where the FamilySearch location list is on the whole reliable, saves time in typing, and promotes consistency.

Answer 4

To give some context to any amendments that you and other members may be seeing, there is currently an initiative within the England project to improve the quality of the data entered in the location fields of England profiles. 

We are following the England Profile Standards  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:England_Project_Profile_Standards  which have been developed from Wikitree’s overall guidelines on locations. 

Following these guidelines (eg changing Wilts. to Wiltshire) allows profiles to be picked up by Wikitree’s mapping systems.  It also means that profiles are identified at a county level so that our local teams can work on profile improvements such as adding sources to unsourced profiles and addressing suggestions as prompted by Wikitree. 

The aim of what we are doing is to improve accuracy and consistency rather than diminish it; and I agree that we can be clearer in our Profile Standards as to how Registration Districts should be entered into location fields.  I have briefly discussed this with some of the project leaders.  It has been agreed that we will review this and the guidance will be updated shortly.

Comments

I can buy accuracy but as far as consistency is concerned, it can end up a bit like the government department that returns your application form because you've completed it in the wrong colour ink. There are often several ways of expressing a location and frankly as long as it makes sense, has the country and some indication of the location within that country that can be readily understood then that surely is all we need isn't it? Incidentally, I take your point of not using abbreviations as they can be opaque to people from other countries.

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Thank you Steve. I realise that the initiative should, if participants take care, *  improve accuracy. I welcome a review of what to use in the location field when the only source  for a BMD is from  the GRO registration index.

(*rather than working at speed to get rid of a county list.)

Answer 5

This is why I concentrate on improving orphaned profiles. I wouldn't like my efforts to be changed just like that when there are so many profiles with no manager that need a little TLC.

Comments

@Susan, Then how do data doctors know about them if they aren't on suggestion lists? Further back you suggested the data doctors were coming to the profiles from an error list?

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Possibly because another error is flagged and the location fields get amended in passing.

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it is my understanding that only some kinds of “errors” appear on a profile managers “suggestion list” . We can expand our list but there will still be some that only appear on special reports.

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I think you'll find that all actual data doctor suggestions appear on a members managed profiles list of suggestions. 

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Hi Margaret, I’ll send you some examples privately. Maybe next week as I am busy trying to fix some categorization issues atm.  I recall seeing a comment on g2g from a relevant person explaining the reason for this  but do not think I’ve kept a copy so may not be able to find it again. We could just ask ales directly.

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As Steve Whitfield mentioned elsewhere in this post, there is an organized effort to improve locations in England. This means commas (not full stops) between elements, the correct non-abbreviated county name (and only one county in a location field - if there are multiple options, it should be marked uncertain and discussed in the bio), and the country (with United Kingdom as completely optional post 1801). It is simplest to make changes with the pulldown list from FD and mistakes do happen. These are not DD suggestions but come from a a wikitree+ search. For example, for you @Derek, you may wish to look at https://wikitree.sdms.si/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=Gunn-471+BirthCountry%3DEngland+BirthRegion%3DUnknownRegion&MaxProfiles=500&Format=&SortOrder=BiLoc&PageSize=-1 and modify locations to meet England project standards. This way no one will make incorrect modifications to them. Note that the search will also include the completely correct England without a county to make it more specific.

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Thanks for this link. A search of my profiles returned 7 for BirthRegion=UnknownRegion. NONE appear on my Suggestions list as Errors, Suggestions or even Hints. I have fixed one. I had "Somersetshire, England, United Kingdom". I took "Somersetshire" from a primary source but I now realise the EP's location guidelines say the official spelling is "Somerset" so I've now changed it. Someone else has already changed "Bedford, England" to Bedfordshire, England". For the remaining five, I don't know the County so they can't be "fixed".

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Thanks for looking at them. Similar searches can be done for death and marriage location. These are not suggestions that Data Doctors review. Using a consistent county helps keep profiles collected by county to confirm things are sourced, connected, and have no suggestions. We are trying to reduce the unknown region part of England as much as possible. Removing well managed profiles from the collection of unknown regions is a big help.

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Thanks for that W. Robertson. I have actually now gone through and 'improved' about 100 of my locations. Some of it goes against the grain although I can see the point of doing it. For example, I was always taught that where the county is just the county town with 'shire' on the end e.g. Gloucester, Lincoln, Leicester it was not necessary to include the county but I guess computers don't understand this.

A particular oddity is where I've put simply 'England' as I don't know anything more specific than that, the system flags that up too although I don't think it would if I left it blank. This seems odd to me and counter to the clarity we are trying to achieve.

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England by itself is fine (and far better than blank). I wish it didn't appear in the results. Apparently an "unknown region" is the same as no region at all to a computer. Thanks for making the modifications.

Answer 6

Sounds very much like you've been visited by one of the point scorers. As Wikitree has this rediculous point scoring system, so you get an extra star for every time you "contribute", there is unfortunately a lot of people who spend their time trawling around on other people's work making all sorts of corrections, some which are not always very useful. You can off course lock the profiles so no one can edit but your self, and if someone really have a useful contribution to make, they can always write it as a suggestion in the comments field and ask you to consider the change.

Comments

I think the changes were made as part of an organized effort to improve England locations. Please see Steve Whitfield's comment above.