Familypedia:County navigation templates

(See Category:County navigation templates.)

Introduction

Since late 2007, the "place" aspects of this site focus more and more on counties (or near-equivalents). For the British Isles we focus on the traditional (i.e. pre-1970s) counties, while elsewhere we tend to use present-day boundaries but (ideally!) with extensive cross-references about former counties and the former states and countries places were in. Some countries, such as Australia, use regions as the main equivalent if counties are of little significance or had so many changes as to cause confusion.

The county navigation templates include:

• the "navboxes" for the county main pages and categories, devised by User:Phlox in late 2007 and applied semi-automatically to over 4,000 articles, needing little attention from current users; they appear primarily on county main category pages, but those are best created using inclusive templates such as Template:ctycat for America and Template:ctycat-eu for Europe.
• templates for (subsidiary) county-related categories, devised in the Australasian Spring 2008 by User:Thurstan and User:Robin Patterson; they generally combine the county page template with other links and appropriate wording and categories, all done very simply in about half a line of code (including place names dragged in from the page name) that can generally be memorised.

The following sections are about the latter class, because by early 2009 they were still being created and had been applied on only a fraction of potential pages.

County-related category templates

Names

Some have the long form such as "Died in UK" but all should have shorter versions, such as Template:d-uk, where:

• b=Born in (done for Aus, Ire Neth, UK, US)
• br=Birth records of
• bu=Businesses in (done for UK, US) (subcategory of "Organizations" or "Organisations") (**** maybe that should be "bz" in case we want "bu" for "buried in"?)
• ch=Church records of
• cm=Cemeteries in (done for Europe and US)
• cn=Census of (matching categories for particular years, such as "1910 census of ...")
• ct=Court records of
• d=Died in (done for Aus, Can, Ire, Neth, UK, US)
• di=Directories of
• dr=Death records of (Can we include burial records or must they be separate? - see "bu")
• f=Families of (done for Aus, UK, US)
• g(?)=Geography of (including maps and settlements subcategories, see Category:Geography of Adams County, Illinois)
• h=History of (including the subpages on archeology, prehistory, and timeline, which are unlikely to justify categories of their own on this wiki)
• i(?)=Images of (including maps subcategory)
• lm=Landmarks of (subcategory of "Geography"?)
• lr=Landowner records of
• m=Married in (done for Aus, Can, Ire, Neth, UK, US)
• mi=Military records of
• mp=Maps of (done for UK, US) (subcategory of "Geography" and "Images")
• mr=Marriage records of
• ob=Obituaries of (subcategory of "Death records"?)
• pr=Probate records of (subcategory of "Death records"?)
• q=Queries about (if this turns out to be distinct from "Talk about")
• r=Resided in (done for Aus, UK, US) (including families subcategory)
• s=Settlements in (subcategory of "Geography" — see Genealogy:Settlements; could have link to CuriousFox for British Isles)
• t=Talk about (but compare *q=) (done for Aus, UK, US) (the "Community messages" linked in the top line of the navbox; main "article" is a forum, so we use Template:CatmoreF; should have link to CuriousFox for British Isles)
• w=Websites about

What gets transcluded

1. Template:navcty, or the equivalent for UK etc, which puts the big navbox for the county right at the top of the page.
2. WikiMedia link, sometimes. Commonest will be Template:alsoWP, suitable for categories that have a Wikipedia near-equivalent, such as: "People from" (which can be used on "Born in", "Families of", and "Resided in"). For some, such as "Cemeteries in" and "Settlements in", link to the state category because WP has few if any for the counties. For maps and other images, use Template:commonscat with images for the state, because WP is much poorer and even Commons does not have full county coverage; see Template:mp-us. Those two fit tidily in the top right below the navbox.
3. Bold intro summary, right under the navbox (flush left), mentioning the county, state, and country (using templates as far as possible).
4. Template:catmore+ (which can follow the intro in the same code line to save space), the link to the existing or proposed main page for the category, with invitation for readers to create and/or use it. For the "Talk about" templates, use Template:catmoreF (referring to a forum) instead.
5. Paragraphs indicating which subcategories might be appropriate: division by time periods and spatial division (with piped link to settlement category; best to use the state category because the navbox already has a county category link). "Families" templates also have a note suggesting that categories with a surname in front could be better as "Surname in place" categories.
6. Categories for:
   1. County (no need for pipe because categories list by PAGENAME)
   2. "Born" etc about/in/of State (with pipe to list by county)

Instructions for use of templates

(For many of the templates, this is currently on the same page in a "noinclude" but should be moved to a standard "/doc" subpage, which requires more clicking by keen users but has advantages related to page protection and server load. User:Thurstan set the first one up - see Template:Died in UK/doc and Template:Documentation.)

1. Bold main paragraph saying what the template is for and how to use it
2. Optional notes about how to create similar sets of templates (see "Born in US" and "Born in UK")
3. Notes about adapting for other countries on same continent
4. Categories for the template (piped so that the abbreviated versions list next to the full names), e.g.:
   1. [[Category:County navigation templates|Born in US]] — whole set will be in this one —
   2. [[Category:Navigation templates for people in country subdivisions|Born in US]] — the words "people in" are changed appropriately: history of, images of, places in, organizations (e.g. businesses and farms) in, records of, ...

(The above categories should be transcluded by an "includeonly" from the doc template.)