FamilySearch Wiki talk:WikiProject English parishes

Parish History section
The 'Vision of Britain' is a good gazetteer but it is not Parish History material for the most part. Many parishes are very small and have only a few sentences in the gazetteer. It really don't make sense to take a few sentences and reduce it down to a few more sentences and call that the parish history excerpt. It looks like systematically this is what is being done to every parish. There is a Gazetteer section on every parish page that one would think is where gazetteer entries would go.Donjgen 06:33, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree with you Don. I have moved your comment to this talk page and replaced it on the project page with an brief description of what ideally should replace the expand section template. --Steve 13:47, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I also agree. The problem has existed for several years due to anonymous FHL volunteers working alphabetically through counties and ignoring other detailed contributors and omitting to engage in talk/discussion pages. Unfortunately this alienates from FamilySearch wiki contributors who have good local knowledge of parish boundary changes and new church building. For beginners there is a need for them to locate where their grandparents were married etc. and therefore post 1900 diocesan creations need to be included. No gazetteer will provide this information! The FHL would perceive their enquiries as pre 1837; anyone involved in research in England or who has taught beginners classes in family history would want to identify the archive location of later material. The parish history should also reflect the post 1970 local government changes for civil parish. It is possible that a parish may be in one county for administrative purposes but the Diocese may be a 1920's creation and located elsewhere. The parish history should offer information to guide about such administrative and diocesan changes and the later paragraph on church records should identify where the original record series are located and where any surviving Diocesan material is held. The Bishop's Transcripts series is likely to have microfilmed in many diocese but diocesan archive material including relevant parish history will not have been.

The growth of Online Parish Clerks in many English counties in the last decade together with FreeGen projects and University lead projects to transcribe all parishes in a county (Cheshire springs to mind) suggests that the FHL needs to learn that in alienating large parts of the volunteer effort in England it is doing the development of wiki no favours. I can understand the reluctance of local historians and record agents and archive staff to contribute when collaboration is not qavailable and existing material is not read or understood. DowneOPC 07:37, 23 November 2012 (UTC)