FamilySearch Wiki talk:WikiProject England

Census articles - Family History Library 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 Family History Library 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 Family History Library 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 Family History 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 Family History 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 FHLC, 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 Family History Library Catalog itself, as this is a proper noun.


 * Aside from the FHLC 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&thinsp;|&thinsp;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

Reply to the Alan Mann who created the template Hi Alan There are a few points I would like to make. You may want to look at the templates that I have created. Template:Suffolk Census and Template:British Census2. I feel no need to develop a consensus. I put text in the census section of the pages I am or was working on and it was replaced with this template. On some pages I've had to go back repeatedly to change it back to what I had. It appears to me that some people are claiming ownership of the census section which is a violation of the wiki rules. There not reading the pages to determine what is there, there just alphabetically going down a list changing every page. I added the template to some parishes up in Cumberland and before I knew it some of them were changed as well and it appeared that very day many of the Cumberland Parishes had that template added. It looks like I am being followed.

The second point I would like to make is this template is very poor. There are no links on that template to any census wiki article of which there are many. There are no parameters on the template that allow for linking other than to the catalog, and that link is rather confusing as it says 'first film' which brings up a long list of parishes on a film. The links to the websites have vague explanations to them. If we need links to go directly to websites, why is it in the census section? These websites have parish register info, civil registration indexes, probate indexes, etc. It seems to me that the links should be in the Website Section. Or are the same links going to go in every section. Donjgen 19:24, 20 May 2012 (UTC)