Are we becoming ruled by the software?

+6 votes
694 views
This is a real bugbear of mine. I have probably said this before; technology is a great servant but a lousy master. To give an example, the circumstances of my 4 x great grandfather's birth indicate that all we know is that he was born somewhere in the British Isles. I can say no more than that, may have been England, may have been Scotland. No one can say. You would think that the obvious answer would be to just put 'British Isles' wouldn't you? Wrong. The system won't accept it. The alternatives are to leave blank or just plain guess. Neither in my book is satisfactory.

Another case, Devon v. Devonshire . From an English perspective both are correct but not according to Wikitree's system. The former would seem to work whereas the latter throws up an error.

Can't we just trust the members a bit more and, within reason, accept that they know what they're doing without nit-picking every entry to ensure that it complies with some nefarious code?

I know the data cleansers on here do a good job but please. can the system use a bit of common sense.
in The Tree House by Derek Allen G2G6 Mach 2 (24.1k points)
If all you know is somewhere in the British Isles, wouldn't Great Britain (1707 to 1801) work?  Or United Kingdom (post 1801)?  Before 1707 you'd need to leave it blank, or guess -- or you can request "British Isles" be recognised as a valid location.
I agree, but not just on WikiTree are we ruled by software, it is everywhere in our lives (cars, washing machines, coffee makers, phones)

I would like more latitude in place names, also.
You raise good points. The data needs to drive the software, not the other way around.

3 Answers

+4 votes
 
Best answer

Derek,

Maybe I'm missing something, but you can just enter "British Isles" and move on to the next field (Regardless of whether "British Isles" is correct or not.)

The auto-filled suggestions are just that - suggestions. You don't have to pick any of them, and in fact you can turn them off in your settings.

See here: Location Field Style Note

by Joe Murray G2G6 Pilot (118k points)
selected by Jonathan Crawford
But then it will go into the error list and is prone to being removed at a later date without your knowledge. I have found that it is imperative to keep an eye on your Family Activity Feed as strange things can happen when you are not looking.
Is it not then reasonable to mark the resulting suggestion false with a suitably worded explanation?
+7 votes
Good call Kristina,  but the software is only imposing the (limited) thinking of its specifier, or the often even narrower interpretation by its implementor(s).   Wikitree accepts an extraordinary range of data  but some element of control is necessary to facilitate searches and data compaction, testing and security.  Its acceptance of (useful) suggestions like Melanie's offers an option not found in most commercial software where so many regulations and regulators need to be "obeyed".
by Phil Phillips G2G6 Mach 2 (22.4k points)
I'm not sure that this really answers the question Phil. I can't see that variations in location boxes has any bearing on testing and security and in most cases, searches can be done to take into account a range of probable answers. I have only one example of Devonshire being amended (and incidentally, the same applies to Dorset and Somerset)  but if a search was being undertaken surely it would throw up all those listed with 'shire' on the end wouldn't it?

A couple more examples. Historically in England and Wales if the county name was simply the county town with 'shire' on the end it was not necessary to write e.g. Northampton, Northamptonshire, England in fact Northampton, England would be sufficient but again I have been told this causes problems with searches. But why not just search for 'Northampton'?

Finally before I finish my little rant, one more which made me think. My 3x G grandmother was born in Stockland, then an exclave of Dorset (I dare not say Dorsetshire...)within Devon barely more than a mile square. These anomalies were largely swept away by the Counties (Detached Parts) Act of 1844. To be helpful I listed it as Dorset (now Devon) but of course this also fell foul of the rules, although just listing one county could involve genealogists in unnecessary research if they weren't aware of the situation.

The stock answer is to put it in the bio but in a full bio this could very easily be missed.

Anyway, that's me done. I love Wikitree really, I just wish...
Hi, Derek,   I fully agree that old parish / county / country etc names can be diverse in many ways , often unknown to an implimentor at the time of creating a piece of software, my own bugbear is the Hants, Worcs, Glos, and Glam short forms for 4 English/Welsh counties I have most interest in at present - because the short form does not represent the spelling of their full names -with/without the shire part.  The acceptance of free format and spelling of any data (in WT and most genealogical software it's often names, dates, places and occupations that can be highly variable yet refer to the same thing) can be accommodated as Melanie suggested but that requires a moderation process and incurs a processing penalty too.

WRT the security aspect free format input is a means of testing for certain forms of implementation error in hardware and software, but that's for another time.

As a Devonian (geologically and geographically according to those close to me. . .) capturing the past is a cornerstone of WT so wish you well in your endeavours.
+3 votes

Devonshire is correct up until I think the 1970s. And WikiTree's own guidelines say use Devonshire as it is what people used at the time:

"Our guiding principle for location names is the same as the one for Name Fields: "use their conventions instead of ours." Applied to locations, this means using place names in native languages and using the names that people at the time used, even if they now no longer exist."  from the WikiTree official Style Guide entry for Location FIelds.

Perhaps the person who edited your managed profile would like to inform the Duke of Devonshire that the WikiTree Team do not recognise his title.  

by Joe Farler G2G6 Pilot (158k points)

The title Duke of Devonshire (not at all related to the ancient title of Earl of Devon) has little to do with Devon, as the seat is in Derbyshire.   cheeky 
(The Stanley family of the Earls and Dukes of Derbyshire gained their title from William I, and are collateral relatives of mine -- my only claim to being related in any way to "the nobility".)

Devon is first recorded being used in 823, 28 years before the first known use of Devonshire. The two have been used interchangeably ever since. Domesday Book used Devonshire in 1086. The title Earl of Devon was created in 1141, and again in 1469, 1485, 1511 and 1553, but Earl of Devonshire was created in 1618..

There was no fixed convention as to which was used, nor even fixed spelling, but in order to make Wikitree a searchable database we need to standardise.
Very few members of the nobility live in a place connected with their title; the Duke of Norfolk's family seat is Arundel Castle, West Sussex, the Earl of Pembroke's is Wilton House, Wiltshire. Even further from his home in Hampshire was the title of Lord Mountbatten - of Burma.
Andrew, the search algorithm merely needs to return results for both Devon and Devonshire, when either are searched for. No need to standardise at all, and anyway, that is plainly against WikiTree guidelines.
Agree 100% Joe. In many cases we appear to be standardising things for the sake of  standardising them.

I agree with Joe and Derek. If people at a certain time thought of themselves as living in Devonshire and mentioned this in documents, then according to the WikiTree rule "use their conventions not ours" which Joe quotes, Devonshire is what should appear in location fields. The higher-level WikiTree rule should not be overridden by the project.

WikiTree Plus suggestion search has an OR operator. It isn't directly documented that I can see, but I think it works for text search as well. If so, search for "Devon OR Devonshire" is possible.

But whose conventions are they, when the only mentions of (example) Devonshire are in a census record, or a transcription in an index?
If I were to take an Australian location on Find a Grave as an indication of "their conventions", it might be technically correct, but would not necessarily resemble anything close to what the people themselves actually used.
Same can be said about many of the records we use - they were transcribed by someone in recent years, many of which transcribers don't always have any knowledge of the areas - or were transcribed from a record written by someone putting their spin on the location, and not necessarily reflective of the person's own statements.

In saying "If people at a certain time...mentioned this in documents", I was referring to primary sources. (This would include accurate transcriptions of original records. I wouldn't call what Melanie describes as "putting their spin" a transcription at all, let alone an accurate one.)

But to what extent does it actually matter? If what is entered can be understood and makes reasonable sense then why not leave it be? There are of course limits but perhaps the bar should be set a little lower. As I see it, there is a risk that Wikitree could begin to appear like a rigid bureaucracy which would discourage both new and existing members.
Because the search and matching features of the website can use those locations, as well as the apps. If some are just random, non-standard places, then they are less likely to be found by genealogists, mapping and grouping does not take place as accurately,  etc.

Jonathan, the question was "Are we becoming ruled by the software?" Please correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be answering "yes". I disagree. There's nothing random about "Devonshire". The software should serve us, not the other way round. 

Surely the Honor Code point 2 requirement for accuracy, which is at the base of "use their conventions", is more important.

Jonathan,

I am not suggesting random places. In fact, a lot that is very helpful is going out with the bathwater. For example as a Londoner myself, I know the muddle that it is easy to get into with the Middlesex/London thing. Without knowing the history of the counties that made up what is now London it would be easy to get lost. In fact the records themselves can be muddled by whether the county is London or Middlesex or Surrey or Essex or Kent. The most helpful way to record it would be e.g. Middlesex/London (which is what Find My Past do) but again that would fall foul of our guidelines. Surely however such an entry would get picked up by a search for both Middlesex and London and I can't see how that would upset the applecart.

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