Talk: Translations:fm-birth locality

A locality is a general term that refers to a settlement, village, town, city, municipality or other local community or governmental unit.

That's artificially narrowing the meaning of "locality". The Nullarbor Plain and the North Magnetic Pole are localities in normal English. Births can occur there. One easy way to restore a fair semblance of correspondence to plain English would be to replace "refers to" by "includes". A better long-term way would be to cut it right down to a simple dictionary definition such as "the position or site of something". — Robin Patterson (Talk) 07:02, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Why "locality" (four syllables) instead of "place" (one)? — Robin Patterson (Talk) 07:02, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

A contributor could construe a county, province or landmark like a building as a place. The location hierarchy is

• street address(multiple, including building names); (I really don't like this name- I want something that covers buildings and landmarks like public squares, but since building names are allowed in these lines by internet convention, I went along with it)
• locality; (this is what microformats community uses- and they picked it up from other internet standards to mean anything from a community like Riccarton in Christchurch that is not even a city or distinct settlement, to Shanghai/Moscow/New York are megalopolis's that have consumed neighboring cities. Maybe multiples should be allowed? eg: Brooklyn, New York City
• county;
• "state"(province/oblast/department- "sub government unit"); (Isn't canterbury on the south island one of these? It functions like a county, but there is nothing like a province level between it and the national government)
• country

Syllables may not matter anymore. Nobody will by typing "locality" because of the forms interface. "Place" is ambiguous, and suggests it would be ok to put "Texas in there. I don't really care what we call "locality"- it just needs to be broad enough to cover something really small to something enormous, but still less than a county or province. If you want to call it something different, play around with the names and suggest something else. It isn't easy, and though locality is clumsy, it is better than the alternatives- eg town. Shanghai is not a town, and neither is Riccarton. -~ Phlox 17:39, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, if nobody types it much if at all, syllables don't matter. "Locality" has more feeling of smallness than "place". But the idea that it must be inhabited won't do, for reasons I stated. Landmark Mount St Helen's can have births on it now that the ash has cooled. So we need more terms or maybe more variety of terms in our definition. I guess we also want the user to enter something unique. Riccarton (which was a borough until 1989) and Canterbury (which has been a local govt region since then and is a recognized genealogy region) and Brooklyn (which could be in Wellington although the prominent one is a whole county of New York) are not. AMK will want the country mentioned....

Which Wikia sites have progressed further than you have?

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 15:35, 12 May 2009 (UTC) late to bed again; I hope you like my recent promotions of SMW, including the Central Wikia category.

Ok. We can add something for uninhabited places at any time. Let me know the field name and I'll stick it in. Locations has been thought of a lot in the community of folks to concern themselves with these various metadata schemes. Of course we could introduce something like "landmark" that could handle buildings, mountains, squares and what not. For precise locations, we can use the coordinates, and those are very nice because we will be able to view stuff like gravesites and former residences from 300 feet up using google earth and and the other virtual earth programs.

I am not aware of what the other wikia are doing. My initial survey was that hardly any that had asked for the extension were using it much and had even neglected to ask for the forms extension. The forms are not normal pages and their interaction with templates is unusual compared to normal wikimedia functionality.

I need to tidy up the forms a bit- these are getting closer to the stage where some of the more technical dudes can figure out how to tweak them. It's just table fiddling- not too bad really.

I have not done anything with querying yet. This is where the SMW stuff is really going to bring home the bacon for our stalwart genealogist and micro history contributors. Regarding promotion, I don't see any harm to it. What are you doing, wearing placards and banging drums outside the beehive in Wellington? -~ Phlox 16:56, 12 May 2009 (UTC)