Is it okay to create a category called Kentucky, Unknown County?

Question

I have several family lines that I can trace back to Kentucky but do not know which county yet.  The families were there very early say 1790s.

There has been some category clean up work done and the Kentucky category has been removed from many profiles.

Virginia has a category called Virginia, Unknown County.  Can I create a similar one for Kentucky and restore those profiles with the new category?

It would have been nice to have a note from the Wikitree that made the changes prior to removing the category.  I have received notes before on other categories undergoing high level category clean up.

I have seen this happen with other categories -- might be good to create a ___ Unknown County for most states.

Answer 1

When removing high level cats, I usually leave a note in the edit box to inform the PM. It's a courtesy.

Now about your question. I don't see why you can't add that. State categories were set up eons ago, and the "Unknown County" or "Unknown Place" categories are a newer idea. Although it might be nice to add to every state, it will probably happen on an "as needed" basis.

Answer 2

I have created Unknown County Categories for Iowa, Kansas, and Kentucky and placed the recently edited profiles in the appropriate categories.

Comments

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Unknown_County%2C_Kentucky

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Shouldn't it be Unknown County, State? With all other counties, the name of the county comes first, then state. Why reverse it? Also, these "unknown county" categories need to go under the state's maintenance category so that people might eventually work on them to find an appropriate place.

EDITED to add the bit about maintenance categories.

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I created them based on what I had seen with Virginia.

If there is a better way to do it, I am open to ideas and to make changes.

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It's easier to find things without a sort if you do it by "Unknown County, State" first. If you look at Kentucky's state category, it's fairly large. The alpha sorting helps divide things more evenly and makes it easier to find what you're looking for. Look at how many categories begin with "Kentucky."

What we probably need to discuss is if the name should be "Unknown County" vs "Unknown Place." Do more PM's simply add the state name because they don't know the specific place or because they don't know the specific county? (Perhaps I'm being too much the categorization person right now. Hah)

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I see now that Virginia was set up as Unknown County, Virginia but I could swear it was originally Virginia, Unknown County when I started placing profiles there.  I also see that there is an update to not put profiles in this category.  It is waiting on Bot.  So it seems that I will have work on those Virginia profiles too.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Unknown_county%2C_Virginia

So I think whatever is decided about a state category being used where the place or county is not known, I can help to correct my profiles to whatever is decided.

However, I think it would be wise to NOT have other Wikitree folks just remove the high level state categories without some notice and without a plan in place as to where to move them.

I have received requests in the past to adjust profiles because the category was high level and I have.  However, where there is not notice it leads to Wikitrees creating new categories that cause new work (ahem... me in this case   )

I like the idea of creating a category  State_Unknown Place in the appropriate State - and then adding that category to the State as well as to the appropriate State Maintenance category.  If it is just listed under Maintenance or if there is no guidance on the State profile, profile manager could not easily find it or know of its existence.

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I agree.

And the reason it the Virginia one is being renamed was to correct capitalization. I just did that earlier this morning. Perhaps it was changed somewhere along the way, but I'd like to have all the states in agreement as to how the unknown place is categorized so that there is consistency.

This was discussed before in G2G as well as in the Cat Project.(Just researched it.Every state didn't seem to think this was necessary.) It was decided that Unknown County, State was fine. There is already an Unknown Parish, Louisiana.

Answer 3

I apologize - I made the changes in Kentucky and some other states - I did leave the reason on several and changed to the lowest category where I could.  I am sorry I didn't leave a message on all to let you know what was going on.

I hate to have created more work for you; where I couldn't find a place besides the state, the category was deleted.

It was a great idea to put Unknown Place, Kentucky as a category, and I will create the same on any other states.

Please forgive me.

Sheryl