Geni consistency & plausibility checker

Pam - a global replace for Cherokee Nation East could be done in the Cherokee genealogy project. Need the handover date.

I should also add a point specific to Jewish Eastern European genealogy that perhaps may also apply to European countries with changing borders.

Jewish genealogists prefer to enter current day locations in Europe. That is because there are extensive shtetl mapping projects based on GPS coordinates to locate the lost villages, and replacing the Geni profile data with whatever obsolete term from records would mess with that painstaking work.

Croatian curator preference is also to use current place names.
War scar's are still fresh regarding recent political entities and more historical names become meaningless to users without deep-ish local history/geography knowledge

I personally prefer to use current mapping in my location fields as it's able to utilize GPS and mapping. I've even thought about adding a pin / map hover to Geni locations (via SmartCopy injection) that have lat / long data. I like to describe the historical location information in the About.

What about a slight change to the Geni field label that says "current day" location ?

Or a SmartCopy label to detect Historic vs Current day?

For me the issue is labeling. I'd rather have a choice on which to work with, historic or current day, but I want most to know which im looking at.

Personally Rappelye Street was around the corner from my house in Brooklyn, but I had had no idea it was part of the old name. So the historic data was far more interesting.

Terry Jackson (Switzer) , I'm running it with the simplest criterion: if "city" appears in "place_name", delete "place_name". I hope that catches most of the cases without causing havoc.

(PM me for issues and other similar tasks.)

Private User would you be able to run a script that checks profiles with Unknown Birth Order
I have recently been seeing a lot of profiles where the DOB of all siblings is known but due to the way the tree has been build Geni code has not assigned birth order.

I definitely use the place /city / province names of the time.
For me, to do anything else is to deliberately erase accurate historical data.

I do use the modern Country, though - so the profile isn't lost to modern mappers.

Sharon, I agree with you. There was no United States before 1776 for example. Yesterday I found a bunch of West Virginia locations in the 1700s. Only about 160 years off. Let's be correct.

I have been told that for Geni we should use the current names of a place rather than the historical names.

I have so much trouble with this. Someone born in Iâl, cantref of Maelor, Wales, before 1277, wasn't born in Yale, Shropshire, England. And certainly not the United Kingdom, which wouldn't exist as a term until the 18th century.

What I REALLY like is when the place names are close enough to the original to be able to locate them historically, with an added, in parentheses, something like (now Yale, Shropshire). So that the place can be found on a map now, but can also be understood if you are reading a history book.

Re: I have been told that for Geni we should use the current names of a place rather than the historical names.

——

It would be nice to know who said that because Geni does not have a policy guideline other than “be consistent” within the profile. It is a user choice on how to use the software, same as names, and up the us to establish best practices.

For Colonial America I get member requests practically daily to edit out United States before 1776. So to me, the members have spoken ....

Its location would need to be relevant to the profile. As Australia became a country in 1901, presumably the colony name is used as the country name before this date. Therefore...

1836 Melbourne, New South Wales
1851 Melbourne, Victoria
1901 Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

1840 Auckland, New South Wales
1841 Auckland, New Zealand

This could get confusing, especially if historical and current names are mixed.

All of the continental American territories.

I use historical names, and add current names in parentheses. Obviously not the best solution, but since Geni does not have any good solution this both saves the historic value and in addition helps users understand the location.

I would have written:

1836 Melbourne, Colony of New South Wales (now Australia)
1851 Melbourne, Colony of Victoria (now Australia)
1901 Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

1840 Auckland, Colony of New South Wales (now New Zealand)
1841 Auckland, New Zealand

I put the historical value in parentheses in the Place textbox and use the current location. This way it can align with the current location consistently.

Example by Benjamin Schoenbrun sounds like the best policy, Thank you for this discussion and input.

I, on the other hand, put the historical information into the detail fields, with the current name in parentheses on the same field when needed to clarify a name change (most often for county names, sometimes state names, such as Virginia -> West Virginia).

I always use current location names for burials/markers. Birth, baptism, marriage, death locations as historical (when feasible).

There are a number of reasons I always put something in the Country field, even if the location was not officially a "country" at that time. e.g. "Colonial America", or moving Scotland, Wales, etc. into the Country field prior to the U.K. formation.

When a heads up is given that the Birth Surname of a woman is the same as the last name of her husband would it be possible to have a check box if it is indeed the case?

This is a great idea June, I see this a great deal in the Appalachian regions where a lot of cousins intermarry. Also see it in dealing with the Melungeon, Lumbee, Saponi and other multiracial ethnic groups. Many that "technically" from a DNA perspective aren't related had same surnames as many just took a name when they were released from slavery.

June & Lloyd: re: same surname 'okay checkbox'.

This would be a great thing to have, and has been suggested before.

The technical problem is that this would have to be a 'checkbox' on the Geni profile itself ... it is not something the SmartCopy consistency-checker can do on its own because there is currently no place to 'keep' such a check-box.

One alternative which *could* be implemented is to check if a female's father has the same surname as her husband, and thus bypass the 'diagnostic' message in that situation.

Thanks Dan Cornett !

Something I do that I have to check is, I go back in to add BAPTISM and click the link, all moves and sometimes does not open and the date goes in to DEATH box.

So if you see I have someone married with children, that only lives a year, that is why :(

Yeah, the issue with giving an ok for the surname is where to store the data. I don't want to keep a backend database where each consistency check has to then query to verify if this and that profile has been checked. It could be applied to only your browser, but that has storage limits. And I don't expect Geni would maintain such a field. So, not sure :/

What about the 'father surname' check, Jeff? Would that be reasonable?

Re "One alternative which *could* be implemented is to check if a female's father has the same surname as her husband, and thus bypass the 'diagnostic' message in that situation."

I often come across people who have the same surname marrying. ie cousins marrying.

There is already a check that checks that a wife has the same surname as the husband - what extra value would this extra check add?

That might be doable - it would require an extra query, but we could do it only if that situation occurs.

Leanne ... the display of the current check of the "wife same birth-surname as husband" would be suppressed if that wife has a father with that same surname.

In other words: if the information is present (via father of the wife) to check for it, don't display a warning for the wife & husband having the same birth-surname.

Jeff: That was my thought, to only query within the birth-surname check when they match.