Genealogy Chat

but Sydney hasn't moved from one side of Australia to the other

Why fret about it Scozz...you know where Sydney lies...just delete GR's interpretation and add your own.

To be honest having travelled the east coast of Aus many years ago I have far more insight of the states than the London Borough's where my husband's ancestors are deeply rooted. A nightmare for those who are born up north of England and having no sense of direction researching/visiting London...and that is only in a few mile radius :-D

Linda

I'm not fretting. I am annoyed.

I get annoyed when things are wrong.

I get more annoyed when the people "in charge" are told what is correct, and they do NOTHING about it.

I'm getting more and more annoyed at the attitude of GR.

They seem to be ignoring members.

Seems to be a common problem
In geneology, sureley ALL places should be listed?
I was born in Liverpoo, Lancashire, now Merseyside.
If I look for relatives in "Messeyside" WILL i FIND THEM?http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards.page/board/genealogy_chat/thread/1296001#

I haven't checked my hotmail for a while, so this response from GR is a few days old (copied & pasted).

Thank you for your email, I have tested this in my tree and unfortunatly cannot recreate this problem. Please can you send me the name and year of birth of the person in your tree that this error is occuring under, so I can investigate this further for you. I look forward to hearing from you.

Re " I have tested this in my tree and unfortunatly cannot recreate this problem "

I don't understand why it cannot be recreated, because the GR system DEFAULTS TO SYDNEY WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

Do GR staff have a different tree? :-S

As I only ever upload trees to GR by gedcom, I tested this today directly via my GR tree
I removed a manually added place of birth ( Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) and re entered simply as Sydney....... GR offered a default setting which is indeed.. Sydney, Western Australia

Thankyou Anne!

I hope someone at GR reads this!

It's not a problem for me to type Sydney NSW, it's just bl**dy annoying that they got it wrong, and despite me telling them (first time at least two years ago) they still haven't fixed it.

The email from them (above) is just ridiculous. :-P

I wonder how many other places default to the wrong location in this system?

It´s not just on Genes. If you don´t specify a county or country, Ancestry automatically defaults to a same name place in America.
I´ve lost count if the number of fellow researchers who have rellies of mine marrying & dying in America when I know for a fact they never got further from Birmingham than Wolverhampton in their entire lives.

The situation on Ancestry is a bit different. Their programme will offer options
( so far I have not come across any that don't actually exist)
These are just 3 of the many possibilities:
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Sydney, Ontario, Canada
Sydney, North Dakota, USA
With Ancestry, it is up to the user to choose the correct option from the list, but with GR, only one default option is available for Sydney, which is :
Sydney, Western Australia...... which does not exist.

Most sites have defaults

But - they usually get them right!!

Sydney is NOT in Western Australia!