Mentors-Tips What about Categories?

Question

Hello all you wonderful WikiPeeps!

I have had a lot of help requests lately regarding Categories.

A category is a group of profiles or pages on WikiTree.

By grouping profiles of people that share something in common, categories can:

• help members organize ongoing research,
• help members with common interests find each other,
• help members with a special interest find profiles they may want to investigate or collaborate on, and
• help historians or genealogists researching a particular topic or location.

If you want to learn more about Categories and why/how to use them, check out the Category FAQ page.

Mags, WikiPeeps Mentor

Comments

I would say add context to a profile

See video Genealogy to family history: the value of adding context

Answer 1

As long as you're handy, I have been working on a place; Monroe, Licking, Ohio, USA.  I've been marking all my profiles where the person was associated with Monroe Township and have over 100 so far.  But how do I search for  Monroe, Licking in profiles I'm not the PM for?  I don't care if I have to do a number of partial searches as long as I don't have to search all 11 million profiles on WikiTree one by one.

Comments

That is a crazy good question - one that I think deserves to "be" a question. Unless the profile manager adds the Category, you can't find them. But, lets post this as it's own question and see what kind of ideas/feedback we can drum up.

Mags

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Posted here. Mags

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site:wikitree.com/wiki Monroe, Licking, Ohio, USA

site:wikitree.com/wiki Monroe, Licking, Ohio, USA -categories

site:wikitree.com/wiki "Monroe, Licking, Ohio"​

10-tips-for-using-google-search-article

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You also can link to Family Search they have a lot of good genealogy information see

• Licking_County,_Ohio_Genealogy
• Ohio_Genealogy
• Ohio Online records
• Maps

Clickable maps

 

Navigational templates for Ohio

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Those are the ones I've put the category on.  What I'd like to find are (open) profiles which may be of people who lived in Monroe Twp., Licking County, Ohio.  of course, if anyone knows of such profiles and would like to help me out, you can go to one of those profiles and copy the category into their profiles of people associated with Monroe, Licking, Ohio.

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Again, I'm trying to find WikiTree profiles which don't have the Monroe, Licking category on them yet, but do have a connection there.  I suppose I can narrow things down somewhat by starting with looking at surnames which are common there like Butt or Ashbrook, to see if I can find some to work with.  Unfortunately the ones I'm most interested in are ones like Miller, Evans, Clark and French which are very common and I'd still have to look through thousands though not millions.

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But the Google search above did find profiles with Monroe Licking County. I added categories on 

• Butt-72
• Clouse-19

"Monroe, Licking, Ohio"​ ==> you search for entries with Monroe, Licking, Ohio together

site:www.wikitree.com/wiki ==> you search just at
Wikitree.com/wiki

-category ==> don't return a profile that has a category

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Search found

• Parks-2834
• Miller-33517
• Evans-13691
• Butt-123
• Evans-13709

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On profiles dated before 1808 the county name would be Fairfield because Licking County was created in 1908 see: Wikipedia contributors, "Licking County, Ohio," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Licking_County,_Ohio&oldid=712421648 (accessed April 25, 2016).

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On the Family Tree Ohio_Genealogy page you have a link to  http://www.mapofus.org/ohio/

that animates Ohio boundaries see video

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Mangus there are webpages for the Ohio counties with their dates of creation that are much less complicated that your suggestions. The problem is that most do not know that the county borders are not the same today as they were in the 1800's and use the current name instead of the historical name. The other problem is Monroe, Licking County was once Monroe, Fairfield County and if we use the WikiTree standard of their names not ours then some profiles would not show up on a category search or a Google search as Dave wants to do.

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I created a template hatnote that could be used on a category telling that the county name has changed over time

syntax:

{{hatnote|The county was formed on January 30, 1808 from portions of Fairfield County }}

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Re Dale

<>> Mangus there are webpages for the Ohio counties with their dates of creation that are much less complicated that your suggestions

Hm are you sure.....

Hope you understand how cool the above page is. You can click on a Census year below the map and get what Counties can be found in that census.... I would like to see a better page than this for doing genealogy. My lesson learned is that genealogy isn't easy...

I have been working a lot the last month with Administrative boundaries of Swedish Parishes and it's a nightmare to understand and visualize the boundaries and how they have changed.... (video, template ) 

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Yes I am sure Mangus. not everyone on WikiTree is using a regular computer, a lot of us use tablets, and opening a video and then going back to try and remember that information and change it correctly takes more time and effort than just looking up the information in the first place. I have also lived in Ohio for 65 years and do not appreciate you thinking you know more about Ohio than I do. With that I am not going to respond to your complex answers anymore, they just are not worth my time.

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You are welcome. My only Ohio experience is delivering a SGML project to OCLC in Dublin Ohio.

Genealogy is complex and administrative enormous complex. This was the first time I realised you in the States have the same challenge as Europe has with "moving" borders....

Not discussing things doesn't move forward but that is your choice....

Regards from Stockholm this post was written on Iphone from a meeting about linked open data an area I feel will be used a lot in future genealogy...

Answer 2

In looking at some profiles that are in the category Dave mentions in his answer and double checking my Ohio history I have found that some of the profiles in the category he mentions do not belong there. This is because they list a county that did not exist for the dates listed. Someone else mentioned this for another Ohio county, Mahoning, in an earlier G2G post so what is the way those profiles should be handled?

Comments

Hi Dale, If you know that the county named on a profile for a specific date is incorrect, I recommend that you change it to the correct county. I try to enter the correct county name when I'm working on a profile, but if someone else knows more about the correct county name, I'm pleased to see that they've corrected it for me.

Answer 3

Mags,

I have found that sometimes the easiest way to understand how categories can be used is to look at some examples- 

There is a set of them here:

Categorization

Comments

Examples are always a good thing Phillip! Thanks - Mags