FamilySearch Places: FAQs

When do I add a new historical period?

The answer to this question comes from the Principles page.

Guideline: Unique place representations (historic periods) for the same place set are created:

  • To show a change in parent jurisdiction (such as towns in Moravia having a historical period in Austria and in Czechia)
  • Sometimes, to show a change in official name. If the locality already has a significant number of historical periods or is a high-level jurisdiction like a state, it may be more appropriate to represent a name change with an alternate name instead of a historical period.
  • We generally do not add a new historical period for changes that lasted less than 5 years.

Generally, a place set will only have one place description for any given time. Overlaps in place dates or gaps (periods of time between valid places that are not covered by another place) represent opportunities to improve data.

Historical Periods and Changing Borders

A county, district, state, etc. may change borders and still be represented by the same historical period. The smaller jurisdictions, like towns and villages, will tell this story by having historical periods where they move to a different county. New historical periods for the county should be added when its parent jurisdiction changes. When several counties are merged into a single one, if the name of one of the counties is kept, that county can have a single historical period for before and after the merge. The other counties that were merged should have end years and have a Related Place connection to the county that kept its name. If a new name is chosen after the merge, all pre-existing counties should have an end year at that point and have a Related Place connection to the new county.

When do I add a new place set instead of creating a new historical period?

1. When a jurisdiction splits into multiple smaller jurisdictions, each of the smaller jurisdictions with a different name than the original jurisdiction should be created as a new place set.

  • Example: The province of Sulawesi, Indonesia (1945-1960) split into North Sulawesi, Southeast Sulawesi, Central Sulawesi, and South Sulawesi. Since none of the new provinces kept the exact name “Sulawesi,” each new province was created as a new place set.

2. When multiple smaller jurisdictions combine into a larger jurisdiction with a different name than any of the previous smaller jurisdictions, the new large jurisdictions should be created as a new place set.

  • Example: In 1946, several German states (Hanover, Braunschweig, Oldenburg, and Schaumburg-Lippe) combined to create the new state of Lower Saxony. Since none of the previous states had the exact same name, Lower Saxony was created as a new place set.
  • Example: In 1990, Mecklenburg and Prussian Western Pomerania merged to create the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Since the new state kept the name “Mecklenburg” and had previously been called “Mecklenburg-Vorpommern” from 1945-1952, a new historical period with the new name was created from 1990 – TODAY and no new place set was needed.

What is the appropriate place type for smaller settlements?

As we are discouraging the use of Populated Place as a place type, we must be actively encouraging the use of more descriptive place types. The following steps should help editors in FamilySearch Places select the best available place type:

  1. Look first at how the place describes itself. If it has its own local government, how does it classify itself. It may be incorporated as a Village, Town or City. It may be organized as a Municipality (Commune-French, Comuna-Italian, Gemeinde-German, Obec-Czech, etc.) or a Parish (Frequesia-Portuguese). Check Wikipedia and/or official local government websites for this information. If a place classifies itself as a place type that FamilySearch Places recognizes and uses, that should be the place type selected.
  2. If a place fails to classify itself as a type that is available in FamilySearch Places (i.e. it is an unincorporated community or census designated place), we should continue by checking it against the following place type descriptions and selecting the most appropriate.

a.
Hamlet
A very small, unincorporated settlement. Normally only serves residential purposes, i.e. it does not have a place of worship or a store.
b.
Village
A local division of human settlement sometimes incorporated administratively, smaller than a town or city in most countries of the world. Normally includes a place of worship or commercial services (a store).
c.
Neighborhood
A recognized subdivision of an urban area. May or may not have its own local government.
d.
Dispersed Settlement
An area of scattered houses (often farmsteads) with no obvious center, known by a collective name.

What happens when a place-name is the same for two different place types?

Example: Baltimore, Maryland, United States is the name of both a city and a county.

In certain cases, a user experience only shows a simple drop-down list of textual representations of place standards, from which a user may then select an appropriate textual description of a standard. These are not actual standards because they are not connected to a unique identifier or the additional information that is available with every place standard. This causes a glaring problem with places like Baltimore (city) and Baltimore (county). Because the textual description for each of these place standards looks exactly the same, they are de-duped before the drop-down list is even created and users are left to choose a textual description that could describe either of two different place standards.

The best practice for any user experience involving FamilySearch Places is to expose both the place type (independent city or county in this case) and the span of valid years as part of the drop-down list. This will help the user know they are choosing a correct standard and will leverage the additional power of standardization and shared meaning.

Why doesn't the standardized place's display name match my record? Should I make another entry?

This answer comes from the Mission & Purpose Statement.

The complexity of world geography means that in some cases, FS Places may combine historical periods to prioritize shared meaning. Having a few distinct place standards reduces confusion and increases user accuracy when selecting a standard. In cases where simplification is necessary, search algorithms help funnel a user’s place information into the correct standard.

In certain cases, the display name might not perfectly match a user’s record. In these cases, there is no need to create another place, which would create confusion. It is better to ensure that the information in the record is contained in an alternate name (in the case of a name being different) or related place (in the case of the parent place being different).

Why are there incorrect names listed under Alternate Names?

The Alternate Names are intended to include all types of variations of a place’s name, including common errors. The intent here is to direct anyone that may be searching for the place in question to FamilySearch’s known standard.

We tend to err on the side of too many alternate names, even incorrect ones, as a way of helping users identify the correct standard. This helps us and all FamilySearch users fulfill our core principles of keeping the data meaningful and useful. This will in turn help users select the correct standardized place and improve accuracy of the users record.

Why doesn’t FamilySearch include ALL place descriptions from genealogical records in the FamilySearch Places database?

Example: "North of Cumberland and East of Caney Fork Rivers," Smith, Tennessee.

We recognize that "North of Cumberland and East of Caney Fork Rivers" is a description of a census enumeration district. However, it is simply a geographic description referring to a rural section of a county. It does not directly reference a known village, town or city. As such, we suggest that you use the standard for the specific county.

For the present time, we wish to focus our limited time and resources on identifying and describing actual towns, villages, cities and cemeteries and the jurisdictional entities that these are described within. When we feel confident that we have described such places well (in the distant future), we may decide to turn our attention to enumeration districts such as these. In the meantime, please use the county as the standard and provide more description in other fields (such as enumeration district) in the Family Tree.

How does FamilySearch Places address places that are politically contested?

FamilySearch Places strives to be politically neutral. However, we acknowledge that choosing a parent place can be controversial in contested regions of the world. In these circumstances, we try to represent the place in the way it is perceived by most places in the world, using positions from organizations like the United Nations as guidelines. We also use Related Places to show relationships with multiple jurisdictions.

In the case of colonization, we use Related Places relationships instead of parent-child relationships.

Some URLs are too long to be used in Citations. How can I make a long URL shorter?

Certain auto-generated URLs are very long. The "Source Reference" field in a citation only allows 255 characters, and this can present a problem.
Many URLs can be truncated or simplified.
For example, searching for the Rural Municipality of Wallace-Woodworth in Google Maps yields a very long URL: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Rural+Municipality+of+Wallace-Woodworth/@49.8434723,-100.9630694,14.75z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x52e73612789edb91:0x6ab0c8071030130a!8m2!3d49.843066!4d-100.964243!16s%2Fg%2F1hc465xdy

Clicking on the share button generates a much shorter URL: https://goo.gl/maps/mFA2boxqFKGz7o7x8

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