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FamilySearch Wiki talk:WikiProject County Page Template: Difference between revisions
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*Similarly, some "brief history" sections read like a travel brochure, touting the benefits of the county in broadly worded abstract terms, with references to the county's "southern hospitaility" or the like. What I see as a major problem is rampant, and that is the verbatim reuse of county introductory material from other websites - usually either Wikipedia or a county government page. I don't know about Wikipedia's policy regarding verbatim copying from its website, but in some cases this very widespread practice appears to perhaps constitute copyright violation. | *Similarly, some "brief history" sections read like a travel brochure, touting the benefits of the county in broadly worded abstract terms, with references to the county's "southern hospitaility" or the like. What I see as a major problem is rampant, and that is the verbatim reuse of county introductory material from other websites - usually either Wikipedia or a county government page. I don't know about Wikipedia's policy regarding verbatim copying from its website, but in some cases this very widespread practice appears to perhaps constitute copyright violation. | ||
*I personally like to see links provided for web pages for specific towns and townships within a county, but I don't know how many others share that view. I have been adding links to pages for towns and townships from such sources as Histopolis (Collaborative Genealogy & History), ePodunk (which contains some very useful genealogy-related options at a highly localized level), etc. I do this by adding briefly worded links separated by vertical lines: | . Unfortunately, however, some counties have the towns or townships already placed into some sort of table that precludes adding any kind of links. | *I personally like to see links provided for web pages for specific towns and townships within a county, but I don't know how many others share that view. I have been adding links to pages for towns and townships from such sources as Histopolis (Collaborative Genealogy & History), ePodunk (which contains some very useful genealogy-related options at a highly localized level), etc. I do this by adding briefly worded links separated by vertical lines: | . Unfortunately, however, some counties have the towns or townships already placed into some sort of table that precludes adding any kind of links. | ||
*For some counties, a huge amount of data has been entered that, in my opinion, is far too specific. Someone might have added a link to each individual person for whom there's an early will, for instance, when all the data is in the same source and one link for all would suffice. Or someone might list every Civil War military unit for that county when, again, they're from one source and a link to that source would suffice. In | *For some counties, a huge amount of data has been entered that, in my opinion, is far too specific. Someone might have added a link to each individual person for whom there's an early will, for instance, when all the data is in the same source and one link for all would suffice. Or someone might list every Civil War military unit for that county when, again, they're all from one source and a link to that source would suffice. In a few cases, I've felt that, frankly, Civil War interest has virtually (no pun intended) taken over a county page, providing far too specific lists of things where just a few links would suffice, before anything else is entered. | ||
*In many instances, someone will go into a specific section of a county page and enter data in a format that assumes that this listing will be the only item anyone will ever enter. This is usually a somewhat lengthy explanation of something with no subheading or opening heading, perhaps followed by a bulleted list containing one item. In order to add additional items I've had to reword such items, perhaps prefacing them with some sort of brief identifier, before converting them into a single bulleted list in what then becomes an expanded list. I don't know that there's any way around that. | *In many instances, someone will go into a specific section of a county page and enter data in a format that assumes that this listing will be the only item anyone will ever enter. This is usually a somewhat lengthy explanation of something with no subheading or opening heading, perhaps followed by a bulleted list containing one item. In order to add additional items I've had to reword such items, perhaps prefacing them with some sort of brief identifier, before converting them into a single bulleted list in what then becomes an expanded list. I don't know that there's any way around that. | ||
*In one case, I had a somewhat unpleasant back and forth conversation with an individual about one county page, because the introductory section contained matter-of-fact summaries of various county families, briefly stating, apparently, where the earliest "known" generations of these families came from, with of course no documentation and no possibility of extended discussion. I pointed out that this was no place for this sort of material, because the "brief history" section for a county does not afford room/space for extended discussion about what SHOULD be a controversial matter, that being the origins of specific families. In other words, this material was either unproven or not documented at that point, and it wasn't the proper place for discussion about whether the pedigrees behind these claims were true or false. We went back and forth on it and never got anywhere. Finally, I inserted extra wording to the effect that "it is said" that these families had such-and-such descent or originated from such-and-such a place, but I don't think that dogmatic pronouncements about the specific ancestry of specific families has any place in the "brief history" section of a county page. | *In one case, I had a somewhat unpleasant back and forth conversation with an individual about one county page, because the introductory section contained matter-of-fact summaries of various county families, briefly stating, apparently, where the earliest "known" generations of these families came from, with of course no documentation and no possibility of extended discussion. I pointed out that this was no place for this sort of material, because the "brief history" section for a county does not afford room/space for extended discussion about what SHOULD be a controversial matter, that being the origins of specific families. In other words, this material was either unproven or not documented at that point, and it wasn't the proper place for discussion about whether the pedigrees behind these claims were true or false. We went back and forth on it and never got anywhere. Finally, I inserted extra wording to the effect that "it is said" that these families had such-and-such descent or originated from such-and-such a place, but I don't think that dogmatic pronouncements about the specific ancestry of specific families has any place in the "brief history" section of a county page. | ||