Talk:Sanpete County, Utah

Fairview has a museum - it houses historical as well as individual genealogical contributions.

This will be taken care of when the city pages are created in due time. dsammy 20:16, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

familyjournals- you succeeded in BLOWING up the section so BIG, it now taking up almost entire window instead of 1/3. BAD PRACTICE! dsammy 21:02, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Cemeteries belong on cities/towns pages. dsammy 21:05, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Sammy we are in the middle of a lesson on the wiki. Would you please leave things alone. Thank you. Familyjournals

I was working on city pages when you undid it. dsammy 21:15, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

That is not true and you are giving me a great example of bad behavior. You also just took out information from a brand new user on the Fairview Page. Familyjournals 

This exchange violates Wiki policy on treating wiki contributors with fairness and civility.

Dsammy using CAPS and words like blowing up and telling someone what they are doing is bad practice is not proper etiquette. There is no policy in the wiki that Cementeries belong on cities/towns, that is logic and personal preference. Please do not enforce personal preference or logic. I have a cemetery near my house that is on unincorporated county land, it could not go on a city or town page.

Familyjournals, accusing someone of bad behavior is also not fair or civil.

I am going to plead with both of you to back away from each other's pages. I am asking for a voluntary moratorium, please stay away from each other for at least a week until we can get this all sorted out.

I need to tell you that I appreciate both of your desires to help with the wiki, I know your hearts are in the right place. And so I hope you will see that mine is too.

Jimgreene 18:31, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Will do. Sounds good to me! Thank you Jim. Familyjournals 18:35, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I just noticed a potential problem with the truce. Whose page is this? The History shows that although lately Familyjournals has made most of the edits, Dsammy made his first edit of this page on 6 May &lt;2008&gt;, while Familyjournals' first edit here was 14 March &lt;2009&gt;. If "ownership" is calculated by first edit, Sammy would be the owner of this page.

That said, I don't think first edit really matters here so much. If first edit were the deciding factor of all conflicts on a page, then a user could set up "squatter's rights" on thousands of pages just by creating stubs for them. That practice wouldn't ensure the pages in question would have the best guidance, now, would it?

The larger issue in this specific conflict between Familyjournals and Dsammy is enforcement of a style that is not a policy. Dsammy feels that all cemetery listings should be tied to a town, whereas Familyjournals feels that wouldn't work for all cemeteries and thus cemeteries should be listed at a county level. Dsammy feels his method is enforceable. I don't agree because the community hasn't ruled on even a best practice regarding this issue, let alone a policy. In my opinion, best practices are generally encouraged but not enforced; policies generally are both encouraged and enforced. But neither a best practice or policy is documented on this wiki regarding this issue, so no matter how much anybody supports either side here, neither side is &lt;enforceable&gt;.

Do we have a "three reverts" rule yet? That would apply here, because these two users are reverting each others' edits. I'm guessing at least three reverts have occurred, whether they occurred in the form of a rollback or simply an editing out of another user's changes.

To really solve this conflict, we'd need one of three things.


 * 1) A three reverts rule (the third revert would be the last, no matter who makes it).
 * 2) A ruling on who owns this page (the non-owner would have to withdraw from the edit war).
 * 3) A ruling by the community on which method we should use to link cemeteries (the county method or the town method).

Ritcheymt 21:31, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

(The following is an excerpt from an e-mail sent from Dsammy to Ritcheymt in response to Ritcheymt's comments above. See Ritcheymt's post below this post.)

Common sense, not enforcement. And it was pointed out to me by others the need to relocate the cemetery information as soon as the city/town pages become available.

Think carefully, when you see in obituaries, death certificates, family records, they mention towns.

By the very nature of the record, you go straight to the town, not county.

And incidentially every one of those cemeteries in Sanpete are located within the towns, very unlike those up in Box Elder or down in Juab counties where some cemeteries are way out in middle of nowhere far from any town.

And I had this very simple line that she deleted. This is same line that shows up in quite a number of counties throughout USA.

An experience today only reinforced the town first approach. A lady was looking for Goshen, she was NOT looking for Utah County. She went straight to that town because that is what her family record said.

I asked one of Library staff for her astute opinion, she said it is the nature to go straight to the town first.

I can understand listing of cemeteries on the county page only IF there are NO town pages.

&lt;here Michael snips out some of Dsammy's e-mail&gt;

I am trying to figure out how to grow Salt Lake City more because of lot of information available for the city alone (hundreds of church records, 15 cemeteries within the city boundary, something I brought up to Fran to consider.) Dsammy 22:25, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Dsammy sent me the e-mail above because he thought he was not allowed to continue this discussion here. As community and content manager of this wiki, I'm going to clarify something and tweak the community's understanding of what Jimgreene said. (Jimgreene is the product manager.) Jim was right in asking FamilyJournals and Dsammy to stop the edit war on pages they both care about. However, Jim's appeal for that edit war to stop has left at least one of you believing you can't continue the discussion here. Preventing that discussion will just delay a solution, so I'm instructing Dsammy and Familyjournals now to continue posting on this discussion page the merit of your ideas regarding whether cemeteries should be linked from the county pages or the town pages. What you should not post is further edits to genealogical content pages on which you conflict. I am also going to invite some cool heads (James Anderson, Jimmy Parker, and David Dilts) to weigh in to this discussion. Above this post, you will find a post I added here which captures most of Dsammy's e-mail to me. I've going to sign it with his username, but I want everyone to understand he did not post it; I did. (So please, admins, don't discipline him for posting.) Ritcheymt 18:10, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Cemeteries
A topic is: should cemeteries be listed on the county page or on the city page. I say do both. Here are a few examples of cemeteries on the web that have been placed in order of their county.


 * Erie County, New York Cemeteries this is a great little site, you will notice that some of the cemeteries serve several cities.
 * Weber County Cemeteries on ePodunk lists the cemeteries with links to the towns that they are in.
 * Bristol County, Massachusetts Cemetery Directory has all of the cemeteries listed with links to the USGS 7.5' Map Location
 * Alamosa County Colorado The Political Graveyard lists information by counties
 * Pickaway County Cemeteries has a map locating the cemeteries in the county and lists the community they are in with links.

This is just of sampling of cemetery lists that are published by the county they are located in. When there is a case that the sheer number of cemeteries would overwhelm a county page, a new page with a link could be created. i.e. Des Moines County Cemeteries. In this list is found a Miller Farm Plot. How would you know what city to look for that farm in? But, by checking at Des Moines County Cemeteries you will see it listed there along with the community it's in.

For example: the cemetery located in North Ogden named Ben Lomond Cemetery has people (dying to get in) from not only all over the Ogden area, but from out of state too. One might know that ggrandmother was buried there but have no idea of which city or county that is located in. A quick check of the county page would show Ben Lomond Cemetery instead a long search of each city in Northern Utah.

Until something more elaborate could be created about the cemeteries, I see no harm in listing the cemeteries on a county page and city pages in tandem.

What do you all think? Familyjournals 19:12, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I am trying to do an editing with track changes on and it doesn't work well with this editor. I will use strikeout as needed to take out inappropriate comments, and where I add things I will underline--these are suggested verbiage to make the tone more acceptable. Comments will go in Brackets [].

Jimgreene 22:27, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

You're ignoring [ telling someone they ignored something is assigning a motive, like "willfully", or is telling them they are blind and missed it--it is inflammatory] You may have missed the tagline attached to Ben Lomond Cemetery "(former Union Cemetery until 1953) (often referred to as North Ogden Cemetery) in plain view [this is inflammatory, calling them blind.. I am also not sure why you are calling this out.  Familyjournals is making the point that some cementeries names are known and a person unfamiliar with the geography may search a county page first.  She is making a case for listing the cementery under both county and town.  Your motive seems only to point out she missed something]. Also you ignored the clear  [ Inflammatory, this is like name calling] There is also a link "Cemeteries near or within cities/towns, please refer to the list above." which is in plain view [ inflammatory, just like the other three times], which is designed to lessen the amount of space on page-- which can be good in a Wiki since people may get tired of scrolling. And it isn't an issue at all because Having cementeries listed in both locations is not needed since the search engine already will pick up a search by cementery name wherever it is listed either one. Even Google is picking it up now (the Wiki pages are showing up in the Google) (per the sysops and I even picked up the pages.)

I am aware of Podunk [ no one said you weren't, this wiki is to educate everyone] ePodunk does have with their limitations (no way to add other sites for same cemeteries). Their cemetery links in most cases do not lead to the cemetery DATABASES. This is key.

Here's the big joke - Some other examples of ePodunks shortcomings : Weber County does NOT have St. Joseph's Cemetery as ePodunk shows. It never existed (I know because I called St. Joseph's Catholic Church personally.) (Weber actually have 24 cemeteries, not 18 as shown by Podunk. It is worse with Baker County, Oregon, Podunk listed 30, when there are 72.) (so

"Cemeteries (Rural)" is basically the ones that are out of city/towns. Miller Plot Farm would fall under this heading.

I am very familiar with Erie County Cemeteries by Western New York Roots (aka Kathy). They will be linked to those town pages. [So what are you recommending? ]

Washington County, Maryland Cemeteries is not a good format because it leads the researcher to assume they are the only links when there are other sites having databases or more information. [Because something is not a good format should we not include it?, Isn't it ok to list all sources, good and bad?] Findagrave is not 100 percent as you should know by now [Inflammatory, insinuates that if you don't you are stupid, again, don't we want all sources, good and bad? If one is not 100% accurate leave a note to that effect with the link]. And it is not allowing addition links to sources available through various libraries for specific cemeteries. (BTW the url is bad. Should be Washington County, Maryland Cemeteries, not Washington County Maryland Cemeteries without the ",")

Political Graveyards is not complete and I know what limitations so I make effort to link to specific cemetery if listed (the link is there in Political Graveyards site.)

Bristol County MA - thank you for providing me that link, even it does not lead to any database of burials and it doesn't list every cemetery as there are more missed by the GNIS. I have the master cemetery book for all of Massachusetts, including the missing cemeteries.Think "death certificates", "obituaries", "family records". [Great paragraph!! This is perfect, thank you]

The researcher will type the town or city first, bypassing the county. I've observed the researchers in action to know it is very frequent route. [Great comment. Very helpful.] [I hope other community members will voice their opinions, we can come to a consensus, and that everyone can live by the consensus--for this page.]

dsammy 21:46, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

There is a drawback with ePodunk - when you look at the list of cemeteries, it does not say which town/city the cemetery is in unless the cemetery name is obvious, meaning the researcher would have to open each link to find correct town to find the correct cemetery. It is worse when the position is reversed - when you go to city, it has link to cemetery page but it does not say which cemetery. And in case of Weber County I noticed "Cemetery Unknown", a quick look at the link, it led to Ben Lomond Cemetery.

That is why I made it a point for me to check throughly any site to be sure links will lead to something valuable and worthwhile before adding the site link.

I think there is a better solution, just give me time to put it together and show it in my Sandbox. dsammy 01:07, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Another Idea
If I was trying to find out where Ben Lomond Cemetery was located, I would just do a Google search for "Ben Lomond Cemetery." Conducting a search today did not produce a link to the Wiki on the first two pages of search results (100 hits). If I already knew that Ben Lomond was located somewhere in the state of Utah, I would use the Utah Cemeteries Database online. I have also observed many researchers who were looking for cemetery records and going directly to the town level has not been one of the frequent methods. I am asking myself several questions: Why does a researcher need to know where the cemetery is located? When conducting research, will the cemetery location help them find the records that are available either online or off? Maybe this subject needs a discussion at a higher level, something along the line of methodology and not just what page the cemetery name should be listed on.

For instance: If I wanted to visit the cemetery where my ancestor was buried, I would need to know where the cemetery was located today. On the other hand, if I wanted to record in my record manager where my ancestor was buried, I would want to know where that cemetery was located at the time of burial. Where the cemetery was located in 1850 may or may not be the same location it's at today. And knowing where the cemetery was located at the time of burial may help me locate the records for that cemetery, especially if they are not online. Franjensen 14:02, 20 March 2009 (UTC)