FamilySearch Wiki talk:WikiProject England

Census articles - FamilySearch Catalog entries
Firstly, I know this talk page is about the England articles, but I have a query that relates to across all English counties and I thought this might be the best place to raise it. If there is a better place, please feel free to move my question.

I have noticed that many of the English county census articles, for example Devon Census list each parish within the county linked to the FamilySearch Catalog entry for that parish. My question is why these articles are named county Census? In my opinion they better fit the description of county Parish, but I know that the county Parish pages are filled with redlinks for requested articles for each parish.

Perhaps these articles should be named county FamilySearch Catalog? Whatever the decision, I think it would be helpful if the notes column of the task table had a brief outline of what content is expected to be put into each article. --Steve 20:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * You may wish to view Vona Williams response to the concerns about the deficiencies in both the catalogue of census films in English counties which a group of contributors raised for four parishes in Sussex Census but identified generally in English counties. With some unaffected contributions as an exception contributors have suspended contribution for various counties until FamilySearch has resolved it's issues with catalogue material for England and the available forms of the FS Library film collections. Despite our original response which did not appreciate the significance of the problem contributors had raised the matter was referred to Vona Williams and we are pleased that our local knowledge has assisted to begin to resolve a technical issue for presentation of census microfilm in England. If memory serves this has been raised in earlier years (prior to Family Search Wiki) by one or two of the group who had sought to contribute this year in at least 5 counties. We await engineering and catalogue resolution and suggest that wiki contribution is liely to be unproductive until this has been overcome.


 * It is probably the third or fourth decade of suggesting that adoption of a North American spelling to describe an international catalogue of microfilmed record collections has always been poorly received by genealogists and family historians. Many of us have raised this and appreciate that these things tend to be set in stone in Utah but we do not spell in that way in the rest of the international English speaking world and it is perhaps time for a rethink of the way in which the FamilySearch Library presents a catalogue to those outside North America. I believe that it is accepted that wiki pages should be spelled in the language of the country; it is a pity that the FamilySearch Research wiki locks in North American spelling in such a way! Crescunt 14:44, 30 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the suggestion Crescunt. Is Vona Williams the person behind the username Chichgirl? I am no expert on the FS Catalog, but I agree that it does make sense that pages about English places and topics are written with local spellings. I recently changed many references in the wiki from "neighboring parishes" to "neighbouring parishes".


 * One thing I would continue to spell the American way is references to the FamilySearch Catalog itself, as this is a proper noun.


 * Aside from the FS Catalog I think the opportunity that the wiki provides for British based genealogists and family historians to write articles and create content in the "local language" is great. Plus it's not just the Brits - Canadians also use many British spellings as opposed to American ones. --Steve  16:01, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Proposed move to WikiProject England
I proposed that this article be moved to FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject England. At the moment that page redirects back to this article, but if no one objects I will make this change. Also child projects for each English county can be created following the same naming convention, ie. FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject Dorset etc. --Steve 16:54, 26 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I have now moved this article to the FamilySearch Wiki namespace and renamed it as WikiProject England. More work needs to be given to updating the tasks to be done and to explain the scope of the project. --Steve 18:28, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Pictures
The reason this has two pictures added is because we wanted them up so we could Feature the project. Dawne 16:26, 19 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi Dawne, I have removed the picture not used on the main page as it really was superfluous. --Steve (talk | contribs) 16:03, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Refresh Task List
As this project is currently being featured on the Main Page of the wiki, I proposed to refresh the list of tasks as the current ones date from the original Barn Raising in 2009 and need to be reviewed. Please feel free to add to the wish list of things to be tackled. --Steve (talk&thinsp;|&thinsp;contribs) 16:03, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Census Templates
I have noticed that the template "British Census" is being put on every parish page. Since I did not like the format of it I created 2 other census templates that add additional parameters. The templates is "Suffolk Census" and "British Census2"

It has to be remembered that these templates are drafts and subject to change. I would question putting the template "British Census" on every page because if one parameter changes in the template every page will have to be visited again to make that unique change. It is poor judgement to think that every parish page in England needs this template. I had Steve take the time to put a link on every parish page in Suffolk to the Suffolk Census page. Now most of those links are gone, replace with this template.

I do not think that the 500 parish pages in Suffolk need a link to ancestry.com, findmypast.com and the other websites in the census section of the page. There are pages created specifically that talk about these websites and it is easy to link to those pages. From what I see someone plans to put this specific template on the 10,000 parish page in England. Donjgen 01:38, 19 May 2012 (UTC) The templates in question
 * Template:British Census
 * Template:British Census2
 * Template:Suffolk Census