Another stint in the boiler room, this time adding dates to a place's name (aka its 'title'). eg if you look at this 1945 photo, you'll see these places listed:
- Chinese Methodist Church, Wanchai [1932-1994]
- China Fleet Club [1933-1982]
- Luk Kwok Hotel (1st generation) [1933-1987]
The dates in the square brackets are now added automatically, as long as the person creating those places filled in their "Date Place completed:" and "Date Place demolished:".
I expect it to help in a few different ways:
- Identify different generations of buildings where there were two or more generations with the same name. This will be especially helpful on maps, where several markers are close together, and have the same name.
- Identify the date a photo was taken. eg in the example above, it's clear the photo must have been taken some time between 1932 and 1982.
- Trigger new ideas. eg in the photo above it's odd that the three buildings were all built within such a short period - until you realise they were all built on a freshly reclaimed piece of land.
- Help catch mistakes, by making it easier for readers to spot incorrect dates.
If you're adding a new place, there's nothing extra you need to to - just remember to fill in the dates for 'completed' and 'demolished' if you know them.
If you've previously created places and manually typed dates in the title, just delete them from the title as and when you have a chance. I'll have several of these to do.
And if you see a place displayed that has dates entered, but the dates don't show, please leave a comment below with a link to the page where it was shown. I've tried to catch all the different ways we show a Place's title, but there are likely some I've missed.
Regards, David