General Chat

Hi there The key amendment that I would make to the web-site design would be to tighten up the criteria for loading birth location details. I guess many people searching for distant relations for which they have only sketchy details would be searching by place of birth once they had a name and rough or accurate idea of time of birth. As the number of entries on the web-site increases it will become increasingly important that birth location criteria is more accurately and systematically recorded. The search problem is compounded by the fact that the first name by which a person is known may be different for different groups of people. We all know that a person with one or more given names are often known to their near relatives by their second or subsequent given name, whereas a more distant relative using, say, birth certificates will often record the entry by the first name. There is no way around this problem as one cannot assume that everyone recording an entry will have official data such as birth certificates. However I think the search problem could be ameliorated by search criteria that would enable an accurate narrowing down of possibilities of finding matches on location of birth. If you structured birth location input data at, say, 3 mandatory levels, I believe this would be very helpful. E.g. the 3 levels could be, (1) Country, (2) County / Metropolitan Area, and (3) Town / Village. For example if a person making an entry only knew that the entrant was born in England, he / she would put, (1) England, (2) Unknown, (3) Unknown (the system would require a mandatory entry). If full birth details were known, the entry would be, say, (1) England, (2) London, (3) Fulham, or (1) England, (2) Staffordshire, (3) Lichfield. Searching by a broad or narrow range would then be possible.