FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject Populated Places

Purpose
Finish putting populated places on the all the counties in the United States.

Task List

 * Task List Go here to pick the counties you'll be working on.

Step 1: Adding Populated places
1. Go to the Populated Places or Places/Locations heading on the page and see if it has already been completed. On some counties this section has not been completed yet. If this is so, then go to the section where, alphabetically it should fall, and type in ==Populated Places== and then save it. This will create a new section that you can now click on. NOTE: If the county has a large city or has anything strange about its populated places, then send a Yammer message to Janae. You may need special and unique instructions for this particular county before you begin working.

2. Copy the following paragraph and template and paste them on the page below the section header, Populated places:

For a complete list of populated places, including small neighborhoods and suburbs, visit [HOMETOWN URL HomeTown Locator]. The following are the most historically and genealogically relevant populated places in this county:

Step 2: Adding Home Town Locator Link
1. After copying the above information onto the page, go to HomeTownLocator.com

2. Scroll down the page until you see a blue box with a list of states. Select the state you are working in.

3. After you are redirected to your state page, scroll down the page until you see a list of the state’s counties. Select the county you are working on.

4. After you are redirected to your county page, select the tan “Cities” tab (NOT the red Cities one).

5. You will then be redirected to a page with a list of populated places. Copy the page's URL and replace HOMETOWN URL in your template with that URL. It should look something like the following: For a complete list of populated places, including small neighborhoods and suburbs, visit HomeTown Locator. You will need to change your Hometown Locator link for every county you work on.

Step 3: Adding the Wikipedia Reference Link
1. It's important to always reference information we add to the Wiki. Look up the county on Wikipedia and copy the URL on the top of the page. NOTE: You'll be using this Wikipedia page again, so just pull it up on a separate tab on your web browser and don't close it. 2. After the Home Town Locator link you should see the reference: Fill in the NAME OF ARTICLE, paste the Wikipedia county page URL in the URL section, and fill in the DATE with today's date. 3. Save your work. This section should look something like this now: For a complete list of populated places, including small neighborhoods and suburbs, visit HomeTown Locator. The following are the most historically and genealogically relevant populated places in this county:

Step 4: Adding Links to Populated Places
1. Make sure you've copied and pasted the template in the populated places section. 2. In the template, there are invisible tables for different types of municipalities (ex. cities, towns, villages, etc.). They look like this:

3. Go to the county Wikipedia page and look for the section with the names the municipalities in that county. NOTE: Sometimes a list of populated places is already on the FamilySearch Wiki page. Whether a list of populated places has been completed or not on the page already, go to Wikipedia and search for the county. Wikipedia should have a list of the populated places. Even if there is already a list of populated places on the FamilySearch Wiki county page, it is good to see if they are the same ones as listed on Wikipedia. 4. On the Wikipedia page, count how many of each type of municipalities there are for each type (just pick one at a time) and for each subsequent type of municipality repeat the steps below). 5. In the template, there are only three columns that we can put all of the "cities" in. these means you have to be strategic with how you put them in. For example, if there are 13 cities in the county, we would put the first 5 cities in column 1, 4 in column 2, and 4 in column 3. We want to try to distribute them evenly. 6. Once you've figured out how many "cities" should be in each column you're ready for the next step. We are going to add the name of the "cities" between the    in the template. It should look like this:

| cities-col1= 7. If there is a Wikipedia article for the populated places, add the URL to the FamilySearch Wiki. It should look like this: | cities-col1 =
 * Aurora
 * Belford
 * Bristol
 * Center
 * Cooper
 * Crystal Lake
 * Dudley
 * cities-col2=
 * Eureka
 * Firesteel
 * Gales
 * Hopper
 * Lake
 * Palatine
 * Patten
 * cities-col3=
 * Plankinton
 * Pleasant Lake
 * Plasant Valley
 * Truro
 * Washington
 * White Lake
 * Absecon
 * Atlantic City
 * Brigantine
 * Corbin City
 * Egg Harbor City
 * cities-col2=
 * Estell Manor

8. If no Wikipedia page exists for the "city", just type the name in the place name with an asterisk and don't add the brackets or a link.

9. For localities already listed on the county page but not in Wikipedia, do a Google search to make sure the place is in the county you are working on. If it appears to exist, place the locality in the correct position in the table to the best of your ability.

10. After you fill in all localities and there is no place listed under a specific type of locality (such as Ghost Town), remove that specific section from the page. NOTE: Only remove the "Ghost Town" section if there are none listed. If there is at least one "Ghost Town" listed, you have to keep the empty other two columns.

11. Review the following wikitext code for Aurora County, South Dakota to make sure you fill out the template correctly:

12. Put Adding Links to Populated Places in the summary box and select Save changes.

Example of this template on the Aurora County, South Dakota page