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Geni naming conventions - proposals for new fields or field changes
Formerly titled “Coalition for the Standardization of Geni Naming Conventions – Proposals for new fields or field changes”
Last updated 15 December 2023
Objectives:
- As we are working our way through fields we may be able to suggest simple changes that could make a field work better for a particular convention.
- As we are confirming our conventions it may help if we could measure the impact any new field proposals will have. We may need a combination of potential solutions for instance.
If it turns out we all fit 100% with a particular or many solutions we can use that to suggest this to Geni what will work for us all:.
What about the CURRENT Conventions then?
When we get new fields the process and procedure would be established on how to adjust a particular convention and we could simply talk it through and adjust the detail.
List of proposals
I have allocated EASY, MEDIUM, HARD, VERY HARD so long. The concept is to get feedback from Geni if they think a particular change is one of these categories so we can help to identify priority. A change that we can agree on we all need for instance as it will solve a particular problem .. ie BASIC Name localisations as suggested by Bjorn.
EASY
- Remove suggestions on Suffix
MEDIUM
- BASIC Name localisations as suggested by Bjorn. Links
- Comma as a delimiter in the single-field AKA name has always been there, - we should ask for using semicolon instead or even better a separate field for each AKA as the GEDCOM standard use.
HARD
- Changes to AKA to change it to work as per the Alternative names examples.
VERY HARD
- Timeline examples
Summary of Bjorns proposal:
LINKS:
❶ Remove the middle name field and concatenate the current values automatically into the first name field. That would remove most bogus hot-matches, make search better and also make it compatible with the GEDCOM standard which does not have a tag if a middle name.
❷ Add support for localized display names. That would stop most edit-wars of internationally known profiles and making it easier for people not using the Latin alphabet to view the trees as they are used to instead of the feeling that this is a US only site.All display names are searchable
❸ Use the first+middle, last name, prefix and suffix fields for best known as.
❹ Add an Alternative Names section which are searchable with a classification of the name (birth, married, immigrant, etc name) and optionally a source reference and/or a time period like a married named just is.