Several different ways exist to indicate a person's occupations, positions, and memberships. and the different methods depend on what the information is.

• If recording information that has a special section setup specfiically for that position -- politicians, military offficers, university officers, or peerage members, then use only that setup.  Go to add an event with type "Office" or "Military".  Do not use any of the below options to record that someone was a senator, governor, general, etc., as this is only duplicating information.
  
  
• If recording an occupation does not have a specific geographic location, or when the locaiton is not that important to record, or the location expands further than a single location, and the name of the organization is known, then use the event type "Organization" (see below) to record the dates (if known), organization name, and role (if known).
  
  Example: Riggs National Bank:  Role: President
   
  
• If recording an occupation that does not have a location or organization, perhaps listed in an obituary, tombstone inscription, or other biography, use the event type "tag" (see below).  Please capitalize only for items that should have capitals -- Methodist minister, Shakespearean scholar.
  
  Example: bank president, Methodist
  

More information on the Tags and Organization / Membership sections:

Organizations & Memberships:  Use the event type "Organization". Record the names of membership, civic, society, or fraternal organizations, committees, or conferences that a person belongs to, or employer organizations where a location is not needed.  Start typing, and it will show a list of matching organizations. Choose an existing one or continue to type a new one.  Because this is a shared list of organization names, use GENERIC names.  Anything specific to a person should go in the person's notes.

After saving, if a date is enterd, it shows up in the person's list of events, sorted by date;  if the there is not a date, it shows up in the "Associates" section of the page.  Clicking one will go to a page showing everyone related to that organization.

The choice of fields available is customizable per organization. There's a green checkmark button next to each, and this gives the option of enabling one or more additional fields for that specific organization, and this applies to anyone else attached to that organizaiton. The access to changing this is open to anyone if it has not yet been customized by anyone... but after options are added, it is locked down to only that person (and the website administrator). Anyone can still update the data, just not the choices. Options cannot be unchecked after details have been entered for that option and organization.

Because the fields are variable, they are collapsed in a section accessible by clicking the gray arrow to the right of the organziation name.

Available options are:

State, County, Place -- When the relationship to the organization is specific to a state. For example, the Virgnia Secession Commission. This is NOT just someone's place of residence at the time they are related.
Role -- Someone's role at that organization.
Appointed By -- A list of all Presidents and Governors, to choose who appointed the person. This adds a link to that President or Governor, and also adds a link from there back to this person, as it does with existing political appointees.

Tags:  Use the event type "Tag".  You can enter an unlimited number of tags or keywords related to a person -- occupations, hobbies, etc. -- anything that may be applicable to multiple ancestors.  Because this is a shared list of tags, use GENERIC names. Anything specific to a person should go in the person's notes.

To enable/disable tags showing in different colors, see the option under Account > My Account > What I See.

A few "don'ts":

• Don't include dates, names, or places. These are intended to be generic information that can be applied to many people, and including dates or names is too specific, possibly for only one person.
• If a person was both a carpenter and a plumber, and you want to tag both occupations, don't use an "and", as this will create one tag with both. Instead, type a comma after one or a "tab", and this will separate them.
• Don't repeat information from elsewhere. For example, there are other places to record religious affiliation, or military or political service -- there's no need to repeat that here.
• Don't abbreviate, as this can lead to multiple tags for the same thing. Spell it out.

and some "do's":

• When you start typing in the field, it will come up with a list of previous tags, including the current number of times each is used. Select one whenever possible to insure consistency, or continue typing in a new one.
• After saving, each one becomes a link to a tag page listing all people tagged with that tag. Some like "farmer" might not be that helpful, but others like "policeman" might be interesting to reference.

Updated: 8-19-2018