Phase 2 Plan B - England Counties Working Party

Profile manager: Steven Whitfield [send private message]

Phase 2 – Plan B
17 Nov 2022

Executive Summary

This note contains a revised proposal for Phase 2 of the project to recognise more profiles at county level.

I am now suggesting that we should only add places to the Locations Table if they meet one of three criteria

1. Cities that at some stage have had county status (eg Chester).
2. New authorities (eg Cumbria)
3. (Possibly) counties where the name has been widely used historically (eg Devonshire).

The significant change from the original proposal is that places that don't meet one of these criteria (eg Manchester, England) should be corrected manually.

The places that meet these criteria with at least 1000 profiles are

City Status	Instances
Gloucester, England	2852
York, England	2510
Nottingham, England	2025
Lincoln, England	1731
Worcester, England	1370
Bedford, England	1014

New county	County Status	Instances
Yorkshire East Riding, England	1996	3912
Leicester, England	1997	1425
Cumbria, England	1974	1263
East Riding of Yorkshire, England	1996	1242

Historical Usage	Instances
Devonshire, England	6269
Somersetshire, England	1911

In addition to deciding whether the three criteria are appropriate, we also need to decide between two approaches

1. Should we correct the location field(s) of poorly formatted profiles before adding these places to the Location Table?
2. Or should we add places to the Location Table now on the understanding that the location field will be corrected by county teams on an ongoing basis?

My proposal is that we try to correct locations fields before adding places to the Location Table.

Background

On 24 October, I sent out a note which included a list of 116 towns, cities and 'counties' that, if added to the Location Table, would have a significant impact on reducing the count of England Unknown County profiles, boosting county figures by about 60,000.

Feedback on my note and other discussions have led me to rethink. The main issues that have influenced me are:

• Ales said he was happy adding locations with over 1000 profiles, which only covered 11 of the 116 places on the list. This would mean that the proposal would have only a limited impact.
• Ales expressed some concern about losing precision in geolocating a place. Even if he added Liverpool to the Lancashire table, we would still need to correct 'Liverpool, England' to 'Liverpool, Lancashire, England' to address this.
• Over the last few weeks, 3 people in the Lancashire Team have been working through a table of Lancashire towns and cities correcting poorly formatted locations. We continue to add terms and places that need reviewing to this table on a rolling basis. Some useful lessons have been learnt. It is possible to work though these lists fairly quickly correcting locations fields. (Without distractions, about 50 profiles in 30 minutes.)
• It has emerged that there are a number of towns and cities that have had county status such as Chester, that can be properly recorded as 'Chester, England'. These locations should not be amended to 'Chester, Cheshire, England' without due consideration. There are 18 places in this group
• There are a number of other properly formatted locations (in counties such as Cumbria or other new unitary authorities as detailed in this table of counties). We should not be amending location fields where they meet the Wikitree location guide to use the name that was used in that place, at the time of the event you're recording. In due course, the Location Table will need to accommodate these new counties. However, the number of profiles that are properly located to many of these new counties is low, as most of the profiles relate to dates before the new county was created. The need to add many of the places in this table is not at all pressing; we have more significant issues to tackle.
• The new county of 'England Unknown' gives visiblity to a figure that the county teams can collectively aim to reduce. There are around 320,000 profiles in 'England Unknown County'. A third of these profiles include something in a location field other than just 'England' or 'England, United Kingdom'. There are therefore about 105, 000 profiles that could relatively easily be allocated to counties.

All these points taken together led me to change my views on how we should proceed. It may be tempting to look for the short term gain of a few thousand more profiles at county level by adding eg 'Liverpool, England' to the Location Table, but this should be overridden by the advantages of having a more robust approach to improving location fields, especially as the manual process to correct a location is less onerous than I previously thought.

A case could be made for adding places (eg Cumbria) to the Location Table before correcting the older profiles in the hope that the locations will be corrected by county teams. I would argue however that correcting location fields before adding these new counties to the Locations Table would give more visibility to our progress and would give ongoing focus to what we are trying to achieve.

Revised Proposal

County Teams Challenge

We should launch a challenge across our county teams with the collective aim of trying to reduce the 'England Unknown County' figure by 100,000 by the end of 2023. There would be several stages. I would propose that we see how successful Stage 1 is rather than being too prescriptive about what comes in each stage, but to give a flavour of how it might work.

• For Stage 1, a draft table has been produced with profiles containing 'England Unknown County' birth locations that can be allocated to a county. I would see this being a high level reporting table. Counties would probably need their own FSPs similar to the Lancashire Challenge . Larger numbers can be broken down by time period or by towns within a county to make them less daunting. We can report weekly on progress. If enough people participate, we should see a noticeable reduction in Unknown County profiles; and at county level, people will be able to see the impact the team is having on their profile numbers.
• Stage 2 might be an 'adopt a town' request to encourage members of county teams to correct a specific town or city.
• Stage 3 - quirky lists eg places that end in '.....sham' or '...castle' or '....field' not picked up by the above and not easily allocated to a county. Allocating these lists needs some thought but numbers should be low. These lists could be well suited to a 'project challenge' as co-ordinated by Carol and Fran.
• Pre-1500 profiles need qualified members to work on them. Pre-1500 lists could be produced by separate searches. There are currently 884 x 15th century England Unknown profiles with more than 'England' in the birth location field and 543 x 14th century profiles.

It is hard to gauge how many members might be willing to participate in such a challenge. About 4,000 profiles have been 'cleaned' in Lancashire over the last month, but we are probably not a representative sample.

Additions to the Location Table

When a place has been cleaned, we can ask Ales to add the place to the Location Table on the basis that the recorded location should be correct. The list should only include:

1. New authorities (eg Cumbria)
2. Cities that have had county status (eg Chester).
3. Counties where the name has been widely used historically (eg Devonshire)

In some instances, the number of the new additions to the table could be relatively small when they have been cleaned. I would explain what we are doing to Ales at an early stage so that he understands what we are doing.