I get the biblical reference of "gagging at gnats", but I don't understand what part of this discussion is the equivalent of swallowing camels.
I have no qualms with leaving jurisdictions blank, but I am unwilling to make assumptions that compromise the quality of my data; i.e., I wouldn't presume that unqualified references to "Boston, MA" mean "Boston, Suffolk, MA". The point rather is that I'm annoyed that the implementation of the hierarchical place names in FTM myopically requires conformity with the built-in Place Name Authority (PNA), which cannot handle blank jurisdictions.
Your treatment of unincorporated Hatchville, again, does something I wouldn't do, but it has nothing to do with my sense of *propriety*. It's about accuracy and good data, not conformance to what the genealogy gods think is the proper way to do things. Simply put, records for events that took place in Hatchville are likely recorded in one of three counties. By presuming "Dunn" you obfuscate that with a needless, amateurish assumption.
I cannot find where in this discussion that Township and Ranges have been referred to as "historic names", as you wrote. I think you misread and/or misunderstood what was written. I called them "historical places" (two different words!) in the sense that they once did not have names and were referred to by geographical coordinates in census and other records. I think this was readily understood by KathyMarieAnn.
Jurisdictional hierarchies--especially historical ones--are important because they reveal potential locations where records might be stored, consolidated, archived, etc. Not to mention they often provide meaningful context. You don't *have* to use them in FTM, so they shouldn't be considered a complication. You can put anything into the place field that you want. (You just can't take advantage of the new hierarchical place structure when your names don't conform to the place names prescribed by the Place Name Authority.)
KJ's suggestion of the polygon only reiterated what I wrote myself earlier in the thread. The point here is that the map tool available to us in FTM uses a single set of GPS coordinates to denote a place. That's fine for a point. It doesn't work for an *area*, hence the polygon. We are discussing FTM's shortcomings. We are not arguing about best practices for the recording of place names. We're already mostly in agreement about that.
I have no qualms with leaving jurisdictions blank, but I am unwilling to make assumptions that compromise the quality of my data; i.e., I wouldn't presume that unqualified references to "Boston, MA" mean "Boston, Suffolk, MA". The point rather is that I'm annoyed that the implementation of the hierarchical place names in FTM myopically requires conformity with the built-in Place Name Authority (PNA), which cannot handle blank jurisdictions.
Your treatment of unincorporated Hatchville, again, does something I wouldn't do, but it has nothing to do with my sense of *propriety*. It's about accuracy and good data, not conformance to what the genealogy gods think is the proper way to do things. Simply put, records for events that took place in Hatchville are likely recorded in one of three counties. By presuming "Dunn" you obfuscate that with a needless, amateurish assumption.
I cannot find where in this discussion that Township and Ranges have been referred to as "historic names", as you wrote. I think you misread and/or misunderstood what was written. I called them "historical places" (two different words!) in the sense that they once did not have names and were referred to by geographical coordinates in census and other records. I think this was readily understood by KathyMarieAnn.
Jurisdictional hierarchies--especially historical ones--are important because they reveal potential locations where records might be stored, consolidated, archived, etc. Not to mention they often provide meaningful context. You don't *have* to use them in FTM, so they shouldn't be considered a complication. You can put anything into the place field that you want. (You just can't take advantage of the new hierarchical place structure when your names don't conform to the place names prescribed by the Place Name Authority.)
KJ's suggestion of the polygon only reiterated what I wrote myself earlier in the thread. The point here is that the map tool available to us in FTM uses a single set of GPS coordinates to denote a place. That's fine for a point. It doesn't work for an *area*, hence the polygon. We are discussing FTM's shortcomings. We are not arguing about best practices for the recording of place names. We're already mostly in agreement about that.