FamilySearch Wiki talk:WikiProject U.S. counties

Places/Localities
Bottom of the page? you mean all the way to the bottom just above the category line? If so, you are HIDING the links to city/town/village and I assure you no one will go all the way to get to those links just to find additional information. Plain and simple mindset. Has anyone forgot the old Places/Localities stuff is being replaced with the template which has a FIXED width and does not wrap. Dsammy 05:13, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Replacing Vital Records with Births, Marriages, and Deaths
After thinking more about this, I still have huge reservations about this:

My biggest complaint is that Births, Marriages and Deaths is obscure when talking about US research. There are vital records (as known to most that it's created by the local/state government) but then there are multiple other record types that give birth, marriage, and death info. Are we leading the public astray but suggesting that BMD means you can only get that info from vital records? Or will we have to include cemetery, church, obituary, etc to this section (like in the new taxonomy)? And to be more accurate, we should put Births as one section, Marriages as another section, etc. They shouldn't be lumped together anymore because it doesn't make sense. Yet, I see that as opening us up to more confusion there because Birth Records isn't ONE kind of record like probate records. It can include multiple. If we clarify that it's Vital Records we can stick to just describing those that are created by the county/state.

I also worry about the domino effection from leaving off Vital Records: All the state pages have "vital records" not Births, Marriages, and Deaths. Do we make that one section? Split it up? And again, what is put under those? Vital birth records and every other substitute? how does that effect the rest of the sections?? BatsonDL 16:56, 14 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I am in favour of replacing Vital records with Birth, Marriages and Deaths as set out by the Common Taxonomy. Maybe it's because I'm a Brit, maybe it's because I haven't got years of research experience. Maybe it because many people have different definitions of what are vital records. To me a section titled Birth, Marriage and Death would be clear as to what it would contain. Yes the main section could be further broken down into 3 separate sub-sections. Each sub-section would include records created by local/state government, yes it would include other types of records such as cemetery, church, obituary, etc. The beauty of the wiki is that it is not a book. It does not have to be read in a strict order (page 1, page 2, page 3 etc). In any particular section you can refer/link to another section/article that covers the topic in greater detail. --Steve 08:29, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Neighboring Counties
I wasn't able to attend the conference call when Neighboring Counties was discussed. I like the direction to add a small map, limited to showing the the county and its neighboring counties (e.g. [[Media:IL-mapMcHenry.png]]). I would also recommend in situation where a map of this type in not available that the templace Geographic Location can be used to give a visual representation of the neighboring counties. An example of this in use can been seen in the article Rensselaer County, New York. --Steve 15:08, 21 July 2011 (UTC)