Genealogy Chat

When adding details to the place of birth ( and other place details), a drop down pick list is provided, this however not always correct for example entering Southowram - the list gives:

Southowram, Ripponden, Borough of Calderdale, England, United Kingdom

This is incorrect as Ripponden is some miles away and is in fact the other side of Halifax.

Also some of the pick lists are of the current name of a location for example

West Yorkshire and not West Riding Of Yorkshire
or Calderdale, which is a relatively new creation.

Also some smaller villages are not recognised.

Also the pick lists are long and include England UK - others do not

My questions are:

1. Can the pick lists be changed?
2. Can I create my own pick list?
3. Can I clean up my already entered data ---- into a standard format.

I hope this is on the correct board but this technicality is begining to bug me.

Don't know about a creating a pick list, but you can continue typing to enter the place as you feel fit.

As an experiment, I started to type 'Lewisham' which at the time of the birth was in Kent. Although it wanted to give me Lewisham, Greater London (as it is now) all that was necessary was to continue typing 'Kent', and save.

Could you create and save a document listing your prefered place names? Then you could copy and paste into your tree to provide uniformity.

Some off line tree programme have the facility to identify and change place names. If you downloaded a copy of your gedcom you could alter the incorrect place names, then up load again.
However, notes and attached documents or photos might be lost in the transition, and the uploaded version will over-write what is currently here. You might lose years of written notes.

If,as I assume, this refers to this site.......ask GR

Although, forgive me, but I have to say it seems an incredibly unimportant thing about which to get 'het up'

GR's 'counties' are as after 1974, and there's no way they are likely to change that...........they aren't family historians.

I agree with Reggie re: getting het up. I did at first, but now I just ignore the suggestions.

But it is indeed a pity that "they" are not family historians. If they were, then "they" would not have used post 1974 location data. Because a high proportion of all tree records relate to pre 1974 location data.

Thanks for your thoughts and contributions. Perhaps my expectations of the GR product are too high........

Other sites do remember place names that you put in and include them as options when you put in new data.

Double edged sword, Ken, as they can easily end up with an even bigger list of inaccurate data unless there is some sort of human validation intervention