Improving the way English profiles are identified

Profile manager: Steven Whitfield [send private message]

Improving the way English profiles are identified

We would like to let you all know about some pending changes to the way the weekly reports of England county statistics are generated.

Project members will be familiar with the protocol to enter a location field on an England profile as “Village or town, county, England” or “District of a city, city, county, England”. (eg "Ancoats, Manchester, Lancashire, England" or "Ancoats, Lancashire, England")

Unfortunately, a significant number of profiles contain location fields that don’t follow the protocols. Due to the way locations are identified in Wikitree’s current systems, issues with these profiles are not always flagged to the County Teams or Profile Improvement Teams to be given the attention they need.

An alternative method of analysing location fields has been developed that will mean that more profiles are identified as England profiles; and that more profiles can be allocated to the appropriate county. As a result, our profile counts (and suggestions, unsourced profile counts etc) will increase.

The new system is expected to ‘go live’ on 15 October at midnight. As usual, statistics and reports will be available on the following Wednesday or Thursday.

There is no need for England Project members to do anything differently; we should all continue to create and amend profiles according to project guidelines.

If you have any questions relating to this change of approach, please post in the counties channel on Discord.

For those members with an interest in the England Statistics, whether at County Level or as part of a Profile Improvement Team, there is more detail here