Should "Genealogy Help" here in G2G have regional subcategories?

Question

With over 20,000 questions in Genealogy Help, should we start breaking it into subcategories?

Regional might make sense. We discourage regional tagging. We've mainly been using them for surnames and projects.

Comments

Rather than regions, have you thought of having a help category for questions linked to WikiTree profiles and another, for those that are not?

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Hi GeneJ.,

Theoretically, shouldn't all questions be linked to profiles eventually? Just theoretical, I realize, but I'm not sure I'd want to encourage the opposite.  I think the only good reason for a person not to have a profile is privacy. If they're being asked about in G2G, that's not an issue.

Chris

Answer 1

It would certainly help to have it broken down by country at least.

Comments

I agree with Christine on the country level as well because many  G2G questions forget to put in the locations when they make a request

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I agree with this, especially by country.

Answer 2

I think a regional breakdown would be good.  It might encourage members to help in areas they are more familiar with.

Comments

I agree for exactly this reason. I find the Genealogy Help category overwhelming, and would be much more likely to look and see if I can help someone if I could see Canadian questions.

Answer 3

Eliminating questions extraneous to one's area of interest is good but there's a problem of where to draw the lines. For example I'm tracing people who came from "Austria". Today's Austria is quite different from the 19th century when it included parts of present day Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bosnia, Croatia, Russia, etc. The danger of compartmentalizing is that you can end up in the wrong compartment.

Answer 4

Hi Chris,  As I said in other places, more and more categories or subcategories, is not necessarily a good thing.  R. Hutchins brings up a very real problem with this.  What about areas that changed political boundaries?  I still say that those looking for all entries about Atlanta, Georgia, USA can do a Search G2G and find all the Atlanta entries.  

What about St. Louis, Missouri, USA?  It has been:  

• St. Louis, Kingdom of France 1764
• St. Louis, Viceroyalty of New Spain 1767
• St. Louis, Republic of France 1800
• St. Louis, Louisiana Purchase 1803
• St. Louis, Missouri Territory 1812
• St. Louis, Missouri 1821

The only possible subcategories, as I see it, would have to be geographical, not political.  So if you feel a need to have subcategories (and as I said, I do not), I would suggest:  Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, North America, South America, Central America, and Islands.

Thanks for all you do!