Using place-names to find profiles

Profiles would need to be in a project, and the project tagged with a keyword.

i. e. we have to enter place-names in this project (under a country) and link to a project belonging tothe place-name?

thanks

It sounds like we still need a place-names index on Geni, since we obviously can't make a project of every one-horse town.

Place names are indexed every time we enter data into the location field (i.e., Place of Birth) From my experience, the advanced search "Location" or place fields have never worked for me when I enter a name and a location or a name, date and location. Fix that issue and that seems like it solves the problem?

The index should already be there. Access to it is not.

"... make a project of every one-horse town ..."

On the other hand, there is a surname project for every one of those ... whose to say which there are fewer of??

This is a genealogical site. A Google search on the geni.com site works fine for me. You can also add other filters to the search. By the way, this type of search also includes locations found in suggested smartmatches! - timeline events as well.

I'd prefer members to spend time filling in at least the country in profiles (many don't bother - and this is encouraged by the quick-family-add feature) rather than give them another task to perform.

"... make a project of every one-horse town ..."

On the other hand, if my ancestors lived in that one-horse town they were probably related to everyone else there, so I'm going to be interested in making a project ;)

Why stop at locations? If I want to find which profiles Geni has on passengers arriving in New Zealand on the ship 'Bolton' in 1840, just type into Google

site:geni.com 1840 bolton zealand

The results came from the About', timeline events and projects. Trying to emulate this search within the Geni site would be unrealistic - I believe the same applies to the location project - creating something with great effort that already exists.

Elaine, I do Google searches like that all the time. I think most of us do. The advantage to having them pre-collected into a project is that you can use the Geni and Smart Matches to easily find and build out the tree around particular people with a focus on connecting them to one another. Of course, you can do that with Google results too, it's just much more time-consuming.

There are 100 million profiles out there. To do something on a scale that would be of use would be monumental in itself, whether manually or by program. If a location in a profile changes, or is enhanced, in the future, the links would need to change. If a merge, or a smartcopy inserts or changes the location would anyone change the location links?

This is all a considerable sub-system by itself, and would require amazing accuracy of input by a broad spectrum of members to be of any benefit.

Elaine, I can only tell you that I see it very differently. I don't have to worry about 100 million profiles. I only worry about what interests me.

I know that a lot of people only care about their own direct ancestors, but I like to see mine in context. I like seeing them in groups and looking for lateral connections -- cousins of cousins and in-laws of in-laws. And why not? Genealogy is a project that spans the generations. There's no reason to think we'll get it all done in our lifetimes. The work will go on long after you and I are dead.

It seems counter-intuitive (to me) to say that a group of people who are interested won't be able to manage a few dozen town projects with a few hundred or a few thousand profiles each, or be able to use that group to build out the hundreds of interconnections that exist in a typical small town.

I agree, but I use Google site search to achieve the same result - in fact, an enhanced result, as further criteria can be added to the search.

If a group wish to develop a project for a particular town - that makes sense, but to define all towns - wow!

Elaine, you and I will probably always disagree on that. I never see any reason not to let a computer do the work for me.

Why should I do a manual search every few days to continue work on a project that Geni could have automated for me?

And what you think of as an "enhanced" search is often a garbage search for me.

An example, last night I was looking for Geni profiles of people in Mantua, Utah. So, I did a Google search
site:geni.com mantua utah

Lots of good results, but also many results for people in Utah who came from Mantua, Ohio and many results for people who had a relative in Mantua, Utah but no events there themselves.

Mantua, Utah is an interesting little town. Population 700 now. Probably about 250 when I was a kid. Almost everyone in town is descended from one or more of the 12 Danish families that originally settled there. Jeppsens, Jensens, Johnsons, Hansens, NIelsens, Petersens, and Sorensens.

If you're working on one of them, you might as well resign yourself to working on all of them. It would be nice if Geni could collect them together in one place automatically, but since it doesn't, they have to be collected manually, which takes and wastes time.

It's the automatic function that puzzles me. The locations have been manually entered into Geni in a remarkably random manner - many have the town but not the country - others just confusing (what would a computer do with York, UK?) - and others with nothing at all (I wish Geni would prevent profiles being entered without some form of location - other sites do this).

That's why so many people have pointed out that it would be necessary to have a way to link variations manually. Could also be an impetus to clean up some of that data.

I have to disagree about forcing people to enter a place. One of my pet peeves is when a family bible says someone was born, say, September 19, 1821, and a dozen different descendants try to guess where the family was living. In genealogy it's a cardinal sin to make up information.

Innocent question (really): In a way similar to that of listing "Top Surnames" with profiles, couldn't "Top Places" also be listed? And would it then cause place-names to be searchable?

If place names were searchable within Geni, that would help a lot of issues all by itself.

This discussion about 'generated place projects' is a significant functional step beyond a simple search based on one (or more) of the "place" fields in a profile.

Place names by the way are very important when you are doing genetic genealogy. It's a real weakness in the current tools including Gedmatch's tools that they doing require and leverage this information.

Of course many people have no idea where their ancestors lived nor do they understand how to find that information.

Mike Stangel this discussion needs to be re located to the http://www.geni.com/projects/Place-projects/10940 project

I think that place-names should not necessarily be associated with projects to be searchable. They should be as easily searched as surnames.

Erica Howton done.

The more I think about this project, the more off-beat it becomes.

I would like, more than anything else, for members to insert at least a location when adding profiles. To ask for yet another step when adding a profile is way too much. In answer to objections that the country may not be known, and that it may cause the invention of locations, 'Europe' is an adequate location if nothing else is known. To battle profiles where the creator already knew that migration had/had not taken place is time-consuming and defeats the purpose of the tree.

Go automatic? Geni has automatically told me that Crowthorne UK is in the county of Bracknell Forest - strange, I thought it was in Berkshire.

Geni could easily have an automatic town project just like it does for surnames. I've asked for this many times over the past years. Because we don't have this feature, or even a good way to search by town only (except via google or myheritage) I have had to manually create hundreds of Jewish town projects. See, for example, the ones listed under http://www.geni.com/projects/Jewish-Communities-in-Bohemia-and-Mora...

I should add that the projects themselves are limited by the fact that we don't yet even have a decent sorter or search function for project profiles. They aren't even listed alphabetically. Why Geni hasn't added these basic features for projects is beyond me, since they are so incredibly useful for genealogy and are a unique asset that would again make Geni better than its competitors.

Just a chiming in -- yes, this is a database. Yes, place-names should be searchable. When working with surnames, location means a lot!

You can get them to list in alphabetical order now.

I can't see how you could search locations within the site. I can see the objections already - 'I want the birth place, not the death place'. 'Why doesn't it look for <town> in county?' 'Why does it look for <town> in county?'

Google has spent millions improving it's search engine - you want Geni to improve upon it? Suggestion - use the Google site search - it's available right now

Catherine, enter into Google...

site:geni.com <location> <surname>

Yes, you will probable end up with unwanted garbage as well, in which case you add appropriate further filters.

Why do you think that a Geni solution would be more appropriate? - Would you not have the same problem?

For some of you, just a reminder:

Some of the biggest problems with 'locations' / place-names are:

1) Historical names vs. current name vs. colloquial names -- and corresponding shifts in 'boundaries' implied (or explicit).

2) Names without disambiguating context (e.g. just a 'town' when there are 3 towns with the same name within a local region).

3) Typos and errors by people entering 'source' data.