USA places

Oh, yes, Counties in the US should be at the Parish Town et al level. They can be added but only once there are projects I think. Just like the buildings and towns won't be listed till there are projects.
Does that sound alright?

I cannot imagine a Geni project index page of 3177 counties (we also use the word "parish" in Louisiana) & the idea of listing all the towns & the cities on the same page as the counties & states? ? ?

We do of course already have project pages for the 50 states, if it makes sense to index those.

Being a global index page it is going to be mammoth! This is what I was trying to get across on the previous discussion. We may have to have a rethink and I'm up for suggestions.
Maybe an Umbrella Project giving links for the Continents &/or Countries and then an Index project for each Country or Continent. We probably already have many of these so it could just be that we need to have the upper level.
I thought if I laid it out initially it would be easier for others to judge and make suggestions for improvements.

OK, good. You need to get input from other curators. We have for instance quite a lot of place projects for the Jewish diaspora. I don't know how many but it's a substantial number that has an indexing system in place.

I look forward to people adding to this and seing it develop. I think it's an important stage in Geni in the absence of Place Profiles.

I would only have in this project's "Structure" as

Continents

ISO Level 1 (Country)
... and ...
ISO Level 2 (a.k.a. State, for the US)

There should be other projects to link in at that level.

Agreed, Dan. And the detail pages for UK moved to their own projects, otherwise it can't even begin to be international. Just those places fill the page up (as should be).

Okay so just so I understand correctly (don't want any more misunderstandings!)
What is ISO? International something?

Continent
Country
State/province/UK& Ire county

Then next level in projects
for each Country?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_administrative_divisions_by_...

Dan is suggesting "administrative divisions - first-level" only (50 states + in US, 9 regions + in UK, as example)

Even that is dicey for one Geni project page IMO.

It will be big but remember there are no profiles being added to these they are just indexes so once they are done they are there as a reference and compass.
It's nice and sunny here after a lousy summer so I'll have a go later at tidying up the project.
I suggest sub projects that are clearly 'Place Projects' so I shall use the work I did yesterday to create an 'England Places' Project and then one for Scotland, Wales Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Personally, I'd run away screaming, seeing huge lists like that, LOL. Please do not let that spoil all the fun. I am only joking :)

Can someone explain to me why these sort of lists are needed?

If I were to look for a project about let's say; Longford, Ireland, I'd try the search engine tool on the Project dashboard to look for it directly.

Forget even doing it for Canada as it will be nearly impossible to create them all due to boundary changes that took place over time.

I don't want to even talk about how big this would get for Saskatchewan as they still use the Section-Township-Range-Meridian form of locating some of the land and there can be upwards of 119 different townships.

Kevin

A thought (triggered off of the 'search' comment):

Maybe what could be useful (dare I say more than 'portal projects'?) could be to adopt a naming convention and a convention for the opening part of each project's Description which will provide "locating context".

Name such as

Place: xyz, locating in, State/Province/... Country

e.g.

"Place: Radio City Music Hall, New York City, New York, USA"

That way searches for any particular level of geographic detail will find the appropriate titles.

The Description (particularly where the political boundaries change over time) could (ideally) give a GPS mapping link, and perhaps a bit of history (Chronology/Timeline) of the changes ... at least the highlights. Such as "XYZ County, Virginia before YYYY; currently ABC County, West Virginia"

I like your thoughts, Dan Cornett. What you describe, is actually what the Tag button does for you. It would be useful to tag countries, cities, etc so that related projects can be found in the project dashboard.

Apperently this tool is overlooked by many projects. This is how websites can be found in Google, so can projects be found in the project dashboard.

Google search wasn't Google search if it presented these huge lists and portals directing you to other portals.

On Google you use keywords to find what you need in the quickest way possible. So should it work for the projects as well, who are basically mini websites.

In theory it should be enough to create a project and tag it but in my experience it is not enough. Place projects will prove very useful in genealogy research but whether it's because people are unaware that they exist at all or whether it's because Tagging doesn't really work well on Geni I'm not sure. I think a lot of projects are discovered by accident by visiting a profile and spotting a project of interest and then noticing that there are similarly interesting projects linked to that project so having a web of projects makes sense to me.
Does that make sense? I'm not saying that including GPS is a bad idea or that we shouldn't bother tagging - I generally try to tag but in trying to get people more involved in Geni I think that Place Projects are a good idea especially in the absence of place profiles.

I have added the States for the USA to this project now but we still have these projects linked. I think perhaps they should be removed and, if possible linked with the appropriate State project:

** [http://www.geni.com/projects/Farson-Eden-Wyoming/26622 Farson-Eden, Wyoming]
** [http://www.geni.com/projects/Fort-Collins-Colorado/18303 Fort Collins, Colorado]
** [http://www.geni.com/projects/Irvington-New-York/10351 Irvington, New York]
** [http://www.geni.com/projects/Jamestown-Virginia/11105 Jamestown, Virginia]
** [http://www.geni.com/projects/Mantua-Utah/26621 Mantua, Utah]
** [http://www.geni.com/projects/Westchester-County-New-York/10968 Westchester County, New York]
** [http://www.geni.com/projects/San-Diego-California/7199 San Diego, California]
** [http://www.geni.com/projects/Sleepy-Hollow-New-York/10465 Sleepy Hollow, New York]
** [http://www.geni.com/projects/South-Pass-Wyoming/26624 South Pass, Wyoming]
** [http://www.geni.com/projects/Williamsburg-Virginia/4105 Williamsburg, Virginia]
** [http://www.geni.com/projects/Howrytown-Virginia/26942 Howrytown, Virginia]

In my opinion remove those American places from this place portal. It is an indexing burden and redundant to how places "roll up."

And yes, plus one to Dan's suggested place project naming convention; and also to Dimitri's tag point.

If project tags are not working properly then examples need to be collected and brought to Geni's attention for a fix.

Terry - I just created a group of State of Kentucky projects. The state is indexed and asssociated with the USA portal, that's as far as I can take indexing efforts.

Thanks Erica. I'm off to bed now.

FYI: The reason I suggest the Title of the projects all start with the word "Place: " is that groups them all together when found via some other keyword ... and clearly identifies it as a project about the 'location', not about something else.

I've found using a consistent "prefix" for related projects to be a great way to both "group" them and to see them alphabetically within that group.

That would involve renaming an awful lot of projects Dan.... I can see the sense in what you are saying and would be prepared to change the index pages to all be "Place Projects - International", "Place Projects - England " Etc. but as long as we have used Tags and related projects is it really worth all the effort it will take to change all these projects?

Dan Cornett,

I have to agree with Terry that it would involve renaming an awful lot of projects to do what you want.

I don't think that it should be done.

Just a suggestion ... not to "make work", but as occasion arises to 'touch' each project, consider renaming it.

I'm not even sure it would be necessary to change the name-text in the 'indexing' projects for each of the sub-projects contained in a portal project's Description ... because the links will automatically change anyway, and the primary benefits (as I see it) are in those "dynamic" lists (vs: the Description in any one project):

-- the searching for adding a profile to a project (the popup suggestions list)

-- the listings of Related projects (particularly when the "parent" is not another "Place" portal but may be, for example, a 'family' project that identifies (among other things) the places where they lived. Those 'places' would all "sort together".

-- other search results listings.

I think maybe I need a better definition of a "place" project.

I think of a place (say, a county) as having profiles added of the residents. As different from an event project (say, a battle) that has profiles of the participants.

But if we're making titling distinctions with a prefix, then we would have to prefix with the "type" of project -- which has never been categorized.

Better to think about using tags.

Certainly there are grey areas - Battles are a good example Erica as they were generally named after the name of the place where they occurred and of course the people who died in battle that was the place of their death. I think tags are the way to go and I have been adding lots of tags to the place projects we have already. This is a lot of work in the first instance but once it's done I think it may be a draw for people with genealogy from these places and so may be an indirect way of improving outreach.
Battles could be grouped together like Buildings and Memorials as sub-projects of the county/state.

- The battle "site" is a place (geographic roll up)
- the battle itself is an event (military roll up)

And there are doubtless other ways of characterizing.