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morenewsat11 t1_iyxqmma wrote

>Viney’s experience of searching for his parent’s graves in the 72-acre municipal cemetery in Carlisle sparked an idea. “I thought it would be quite good to be able to find people easily,” he says. His company has now taken on the task of mapping every churchyard and municipal burial ground in England—a total of more than 18,000—to create a Google Street View of graveyards in which descendants, genealogists, and conservationists can click on a map and see who was buried there and when.

...

>It takes about a week to process the hundreds of thousands of measurements and create an accurate map of a graveyard. A different team will then go to the same site with better-quality cameras to photograph all the headstones and memorials. Original records of baptisms, marriages and burials, some dating hundreds of years back, will also be scanned and linked to the appropriate grave on the 2D map.

Amazing undertaking. That headline doesn't do justice to what Viney is building.

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Cheap_Amphibian309 t1_iyy4tcr wrote

I image some serious crowd sourcing will be used as well

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SlapunowSlapulater t1_iyyjogu wrote

It's called findagrave.com.

You can search anestry.com from it for the records mentioned above.

This guy seems to be duplicating an existing effort. Why not just volunteer to update that database instead?

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Buckwheat469 t1_iyylel3 wrote

I used findagrave.com to help my grandma find her father's grave in Oregon. Findagrave listed a location and had the image. We walked to the spot and it was someone else's grave. My grandma remembered it being by a tree, the only tree in the cemetery, but it wasn't there either. Then we went to the cemetery registry sign and found it in a different location. A bit of searching later and we found it in a completely different row than what the registry sign said. This is when I realized that they're just moving grave stones around, so you're likely not even standing next to your loved one sometimes.

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CoziestGhost t1_iyyzkle wrote

I can 100% guarantee you they are not “just moving gravestones around.”

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Yes-Eggplant-3551 t1_iyzcz3e wrote

Yes, because gravestones are notoriously easy to move around, like Guess Who.

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Cheap_Amphibian309 t1_iyzuo6f wrote

Does findagrave have gps coordinates?

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SlapunowSlapulater t1_iz086oe wrote

Yes it does if they are entered by the photographer.

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Cheap_Amphibian309 t1_iz094c7 wrote

Looks like a lot don’t (from the few I looked up). I think have coordinates would be very beneficial especially considering people may forget exactly where their loved ones are and have to spend time walking around looking for them.

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iamboywond3r t1_iyxvsih wrote

This seems pretty cool tbh, and I can see this helping a lot of families in the long run. I wonder if anything similar is available in America already. If not this could potentially take off.

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DanishWonder t1_iyyhmla wrote

We already have findagrave.com and similar sites. They generally just have a 2D photo of the headstone. Some users have added more detail around location. I have spent an entire afternoon looking for a headstone in a large cemetery before. But you can always go to the cemetery office when they are open (I was there on a weekend when they were closed). The office can tell you exactly where the plot is located.

TLDR: we have a basic website that does this in a limited capacity. This would be a tremendous amount of work for marginal improvement.

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9-11GaveMe5G t1_iyybklv wrote

Seems like it would be useful but a lot of privately owned graveyards probably will not want them around.

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Sacrifice_bhunt t1_iyy0ufy wrote

it’s called findagrave

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CrankyBear OP t1_iyy2ac0 wrote

Find a Grave needs a lot of work.

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DanishWonder t1_iyyhsjm wrote

Then volunteer and make it better! It's only as good as it's crowd sourcing. I find it to be quite good for my family. I spent an afternoon last summer linking GPS coordinates for my family members.

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Avoider5 t1_iyzt0rw wrote

Yup. But it’s a fantastic start. I’ve contributed and used it a lot. Why start over from scratch?

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loopernova t1_j1na302 wrote

Honest question what kind of improvements does it need?

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jaildoc t1_iyyzl6b wrote

Cemeteries are among the best places in the world to go birding. Quiet, old growth trees, often have water features. I search for them everywhere I travel. I’d welcome Google maps. Also loaded with local history.

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alerionfire t1_iyxtybu wrote

Cant help but feel like this would lead to more grave robbing

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jaildoc t1_iyyzvn8 wrote

Grave robbing is pretty much a thing of the past,unless of course you’re an archaeologist. Then you’re okay.

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Doschupacabras t1_iyyge76 wrote

People are dying to see this come to life.

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twin-shadows t1_iyyjzz3 wrote

As the family genealogist this would help me loads.

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Acidflare1 t1_iyyu8jz wrote

This is why on my head stone it’ll have a bust of a bust and say “all about them titties”. If I outlive my wife at least.

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boonepii t1_iyywihb wrote

This is a worthwhile project for sure. Very cool

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tfg49 t1_iyyxumz wrote

Went to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris this year and used google maps to find the famous grave sites, would be cool to have something more robust and comprehensive though

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[deleted] t1_iz0h6d7 wrote

I did a school project identifying clandestine graves using ground penetrating radar. It WAS SO FREAKING COOL.

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The_299_Bin t1_iz0vyyx wrote

I’m still waiting for Google Maps to incorporate old world maps.

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OldWolf2 t1_iz1o2ot wrote

A lot of responses here saying "bruh findagrave" and missing the point of the project, which is to be able to quickly and easily locate a gravesite, especially in a large cemetery.

Findagrave profiles typically have plot numbers, which are somewhat tedious to translate to a location -- it can still take 10 minutes or more to find a location knowing the plot number; and sometimes the plot number was typed in wrong, or various different numbering schemes exist for the same cemetery. If you want to plan a tour of 10 graves that can take hours.

Furthermore, many have no plot information, and many more don't even correspond to burials (you can create a profile for anyone in any cemetery, and people do).

A minuscule few have GPS coordinates, which is a huge improvement and more akin to what this new project is doing; although there is no access to this data other than displaying coordinates on a per-profile basis, and pins on an aerial photo. The TOS also prevent scraping the GPS coordinates to make improved interfaces such as touted in this article.

A second major aspect is that there is little to no thoroughness or quality control on Findagrave. Mistakes will usually only be spotted when someone looking up their own relatives finds a mistake, and then has to go through the procedure of dealing with amateur profile managers who often have attitude problems and/or are unresponsive.

Thirdly, findagrave is a commercial project owned by ancestry.com and the crowdsourcing volunteers could see their work lost at any time; never mind the fact that their free contributions are already being monetized by Ancestry with no return to the contributors.

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