User talk:Donjgen

Suffolk CDs
Hi Don, It sounds like you've come up with a good project for you and your friends to do. The structure of a parish register online records table has been well defined in the FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject English parishes project. You should not deviate from it, as it is being implemented nationwide in England and has been agreed upon by those involved in the English parishes project.

If you wish to create a separate section for the more difficult to obtain CD editions of the parish register indexes, that would be appropriate. Murphynw 17:44, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Suffolk Navigation
Navigation boxes at the bottom of Wiki pages is a standard feature of Wikipedia and the United States portion of FamilySearch Wiki. It is also a joint decision by Family History Library staff. The navigation boxes are being added by a team of missionaries from the Family History Library. I do not understand how that adding navigation boxes to Suffolk parish pages is disrespectful to your welcome contributions; however, if you would like to raise this complaint to the Wiki Community Council, here is the link: Wiki Community Council. Murphynw 23:32, 2 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm getting ready to do a Suffolk project. If you'd like to participate just, let me know. Murphynw 10:08, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Please see example of suggested way forward at FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject England/Navboxes --Steve 18:31, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

TOC and NOTOC
I have started to use the TOC and NOTOC on the webpages mentioned above. Those tags move and remove the contents box that is automatically generated when four or more headings appear on a page. Most of the pages are quite short right now so I am using NOTOC on the parish pages. The content box that is automatically generated often appears out of place. I have put comment tags next to it so if someone edits the page they will know what the tags are for

Area Conversion from Acres
Many of the areas noted in gazetteers and histories of parishes and other places are in acres. I have found a website that converts acres to square miles or square kilometers at metric conversions.org Most people are more familar with how large a square mile or kilometer is than an acre. Such as 3592 acres = 5.6 square miles or 14.5 square kilometers

Huntingfield page
You've added a delete template to this page and I'll be happy to do that, but there are a couple pages linked to it and I'd appreciate if you would fix those and get them where you want them first.averyld 17:36, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Swiss pages
Thanks for your note about the Swiss pages.

I struggled with how to label the pages to determine Kirchgemeinde vs. politische Gemeinde, and I followed Denmark/Norway's example and put the word 'parish' to distinguish between a parish and a municipality. Whether or not it's the best way to do it is at this point is really beside the point, as I've created 500+ pages of these for 4 cantons in Switzerland, and I'd prefer the country to be the same across the board for continuity's sake, and I'm not recreating all the pages, and links, and etc. etc. etc. My concern is more about getting the information onto the Wiki first.

The map seems to work; I haven't checked but my only concern would be that the parishes you list actually touch Aarwangen, and to include links to the parish pages on the map. If you want to check out a page I've done more fully in Bern, check out Vechigen. I'd like to create a clickable map like they have on the Norway page, maybe at the Bern level, maybe divide Bern into Bezirks (if only the canton would leave political boundaries alone!).

Let me know if you have any other questions or would like to talk about it further -- gublerjones 12:40, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

In terms of organization by Bezirk, I think the 1875 would probably be the best way to do it, though I don't know how extensive the use of Bezirk was back then. I wouldn't want people to include the Bezirk in the location of the records they type in --- meaning, I'd hate for them to type in something like "Vechigen, Bern-Mittelland, Bern, Switzerland" - that seems highly redundant and potentially very confusing, as most Bezirke were simply the name of the town that was the headquarters of the Bezirk.

For your map references, I think I'd prefer to use 1875 church parish divisions, to prevent extra steps of identifying the parish for a particular spot. Meaning, the map for Aarwangen wouldn't just include the municipality of Aarwangen, and point to Bannwil as a neighboring gemeinde, but would indicate the surrounding *parishes* rather than gemeinden. I want to include the vast majority of the information for the Gemeinden under the *Parish* as that's where you're going to find the records. Meaning, any particular information for Bannwil would be listed under Aarwangen. I've done stuff like that for Zürich, if you'd like to take a look, see my pages for, say, Kilchberg you'd get an idea of how I've set that up.

Your question about the Swiss Reformed records for the towns you mentioned in Solothurn: That part of Solothurn had few if any Catholics. Each specific gemeinde within Solothurn (and other areas in Switzerland) basically voted to determine what religion they were going to be, during the Reformation, and then the whole town either stayed or switched to that religion. You get very very little religious overlap for most of Switzerland (there are a few exceptions, like Thurgau, for example). So those parishes in Solothurn are going to be *catholic* parishes. If there is any indication that any residents of those Catholic parishes in Solothurn were Reformed, I'd include a note in the parish pages of what church to look in. I'm still working on how I'd end up showing that, which is why I haven't done any pages for Thurgau yet.

Hope this answers your questions and comments. I'd appreciate any further feedback. I appreciate your interest in the Wiki project though -- I want it to be a standardized place to come for a comprehensive look at what is known and available for each parish in Switzerland. gublerjones 11:27, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Swiss pages
I see little need to create a geographic map for the political municipalities, but feel free to create them if you'd like. The main purpose of the wiki is to assist in family history research. Because there are no records available for Switzerland after 1875, by far the main record set to be used are church parish registers. That's why all I've done is create municipal pages with the purpose of directing them to the appropriate church parish. My big problem with giving more than a 'see this parish page' information on the municipality pages is I feel like it'll give the impression that the researcher should look for records specific to that municipality, they'll look, not find them, and make (incorrect) guesses as to why they don't exist. I don't want to distract them from going to the primary source of information: the parish records (and the parish pages). I see no need in creating a municipality page in addition to the parish pages for towns. I've included all pertinent 'municipal' information (i.e. website, civil registration district and address, etc.) on the parish page. Why create duplicates when they're not needed? Again, to me the wiki's purpose is to give information that will help do genealogical information, so that's why my major focus is on the parish page. gublerjones 10:40, 28 April 2014 (UTC)