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Archiver > GENBOX > 2004-02 > 1078122403


From: "wim prange" <>
Subject: RE: [GENBOX] Places
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 07:26:43 +0100
In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.2.20040301154744.02c68b50@mail.internode.on.net>


Robin,

First: Levelnames don't have an impact on the place itself, those names are
only used inside Genbox and not for Charts/Report/Gedcom. They could have
easily be named L1, L2, L3, L4, L5, and L6. The helpfile on Level Names: "The
names on the place levels are meant to be suggestive; City/Town would also
include village, hamlet, etc.; County/Parish also includes district. When
entering data, look at the place names and decide on a consistent way to
divide them into six levels."
Second, on the number of Levels: "As a special convention, a Nation/Area can
link to another Nation/Area. This allows nations to be grouped by continent.
It also allows larger governmental structures to be represented: "England"
links to "Great Britain", which links to "United Kingdom", which finally links
to "Europe".

In the end, I have hundreds of place-levels: I could set up a place using
Higher Levels that stretches from a character in a word to a sentence in a
paragraph on a page in a book on a shelf from a bookshelf in an aisle in a
library at a street in the neighbourhood of a town in ...

Second: Genbox can use namevariants for places, each namevariant can have it's
own hierarchical organisation: political, geographical, administrative,
clerical, postal, historical, etc.

Third: you are not obliged to assign a level to a place in Genbox.

Gr. Wim


> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: Robin Lamacraft [mailto:]
> Verzonden: maandag 1 maart 2004 6:30
> Aan:
> Onderwerp: RE: [GENBOX] Places
>
>
> In other places, I have publicly argued that the current set of place
> elements is insufficient to cater for a sensible and consistent method of
> storing place names for many places around the world and in historical
> contexts.
>
> You are in this thread considering only one aspect of the problem. I think
> that Bill should look hard at this before too many users get committed to
> squeezing the place info into too few holes. The GENTECH model said that it
> was poor design to force users to do this. If you look at the levels
> between village and county, there can be at least 2 additional levels
> needed here in the UK context - there are Postal Towns, Registration
> Districts, or the towns of which the suburb belongs and there is an
> administrative/geographic sub-region like the "Isle of Mull" within the
> County. In 19th Century Europe there were more levels between the
> equivalent of County and the Country (due to feudal agglomerations). I see
> a definite requirement that like items be *always* stored at the same level
> so I would not encourage the moving of like data to more than one level.
>
> Robin
>
>
> At 16:56 1/03/2004 +1300, Murray wrote:
> >I have the same problem, even in nearby cities you often do not know the
> >suburb names. As the information ends up being sent to relatives around
> >the world, I err on the side of over information.
> >
> >Another reason is to cluster names into a smaller area for visits /
> >research.
> >
> >Just moving the names up a level makes sense, but are there any obscure
> >reasons (searches perhaps) to keep all cities, say, at the same level?
> >
> >Murray
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Brant Gibbard [mailto:]
> >Sent: Monday, 1 March 2004 4:36 p.m.
> >To:
> >Subject: RE: [GENBOX] Places
> >
> >
> > > If I had a Christening, Marriage or Burial there, I would enter it as
> > > just that and not as "...., Chelsfield, Bromley, London" even though
> > > Chelsfield
> > > is now part of the London Borough of Bromley.
> >
> >The problem I have with that is that it assumes you know where
> >Chelsfield is. I might be very familiar with small-level local place
> >names in areas where I do a lot of research, but when dealing with
> >countries or regions other than my own I want to have the additional
> >information to give me some clues as to what area I am talking about. In
> >particular, I would definitely want to know that I was talking about a
> >place located in London (and I've never heard of Chelsfield before, so I
> >would have to be told that). Similarly, when presenting my own
> >information to others, while I may know perfectly well that Yorkville is
> >a neighbourhood in a particular part of Toronto, but I wouldn't expect
> >someone from Lithuania reading my webpage to know that.
> >
> >However, I do think that Wim's idea of promoting larger cities up to the
> >level of Township (or possibly even county) would handle this, as most
> >such large cities are in fact at least as large as a township.
> >
> >
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> >
> >==============================
> >Gain access to over two billion names including the new Immigration
> >Collection with an Ancestry.com free trial. Click to learn more.
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> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >word "subscribe" as the subject line. Then email your messages to
> > and they will appear on this list.
> >
> >==============================
> >Gain access to over two billion names including the new Immigration
> >Collection with an Ancestry.com free trial. Click to learn more.
> >http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=4930&sourceid=1237
>
>
> ==== GENBOX Mailing List ====
> To join this list, send an email to
> with the word "subscribe" as the subject line. Then email your
> messages to and they will appear on this list.
>
> ==============================
> Gain access to over two billion names including the new Immigration
> Collection with an Ancestry.com free trial. Click to learn more.
> http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=4930&sourceid=1237
>
>

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