Place coodinates for regions: GIS centroids or centers of interest?

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1

What’s your opinion?

When I started using the GeoNames system to fill in coordinate Place data, I was simply thrilled with having more pins showing on previously bare Maps in Gramps.

But the more Maps I viewed, the more I realized GIS geeks have different priorities for their coordinate choices than research geeks. GIS interest seems to be the geographical centroid of the administrative division. Researchers are probably more interested in where the historical documents are likely to be available… which means the seat of government for that region.

I quickly grew annoyed by the USA pin stuck in the middle of nowhere. (near Lebanon, Kansas) It always looked like an anomaly that meant data needed fixing.

So I move the coodinates for the US to the capitol building in Washington DC. The coodinates of States to their state capital. The coodinates of counties to the county seat.

Suddenly my map pins started looking cleaner. But I expect the updating from place tools will fight my edits.

Which coodinates do you choose? And why?

2

I think it depends on the place. For a township, city, or cemetery, probably great! For a state? No… should be the capital; same for places with a county seat, or a capital city and federal district, or whateve else it is. Maybe there should be a distance limit.

3

Places with coordinates

Don’t do States, Counties or Countries prefer Flag images in Galleries
of individual Person. Don’t do Archives or Document Storage for me they
are not relevant to an individual.

Cities Towns Villages etc in UK use https://gazetteer.org.uk/index
Cities Towns Villages etc not in UK use https://www.openstreetmap.org
Mainly use Places of Worship as point of reference
for UK use https://www.genuki.org.uk/ and openstreetmap
phil

4

A Danish Gramps user was so kind to create a CSV file with all Danish parishes with surrounding shires and counties. The coordinate for each parish is where the church is placed.
This file can be found on the Danish Gramps Users Facebook page.
The Danish parishes are divided into land owner guilds. I add these guilds with a coordinate where there is a concentration of houses - typically a village.

5

I threw together a CSV of the modern nations … using their capitals.

The thinking was that it might be a springboard document for new users of the map pin features. (It is tedious to set up a place hierarchy.)

But after it was complete, I was ambivalent about whether sharing the CSV would be a “help” or a “hinderance”.

6

Faced with the same “relevance” issue, I chose not to have coordinate for “large” areas because they don’t really make sense in genealogical context..

I only store coordinates for “inhabited places”, i.e. towns, villages, hamlets, …

Regarding the location, I retain the townhall or the church depending on the date, the source of available data or the existence of such a building. In the case of hamlet, I aim the approximate center.

7

Another one I deliberately do not use coordinates for are Registration
Districts and other Administrative areas (usually products of
bureaucratic nonsense)I place these within an Ancient Shire County but
as these do not have coordinates either they do not clutter the maps.
phil