Should this become the official WikiTree policy on Pre-1700 Reliable Sources? [closed]

Question

What do you think of this draft? Pre-1700 Reliable Sources

Please upvote the 'agree' and 'disagree' 'answers' below and leave comments on those answers to explain your vote. Thanks.

The following is a proposal to create a Pre-1700 Reliable Sources help page that encompasses any Pre-1700 profile. The page would be linked from the Pre-1700 Profile help page and would in turn reference each of the individual project's reliable sources page.

The intent is that the help page provides a summary of what types of sources are generally considered reliable, reliable with conditions, and unreliable. It remains the responsibility of individual projects to specify details about reliable sources and resources for finding those sources.

Along with this, the current Pre-1700 Profile help page paragraph that says this:

• A family tree on Geni, Ancestry, MyHeritage, Family Search, or any other user-generated tree (like WikiTree itself) is not a sufficient source for creating a pre-1700 profile. They may be valuable resources and may help you find original, reliable sources, but they must never be the only source.

would be changed to say instead:

• Any user-generated family tree is not a sufficient source for creating a pre-1700 profile. See Pre-1700 Profile Reliable Sources and the reliable sources for the applicable project

Advantages:

• The help page provides a place for the member who is unsure what project would apply to look for guidance. 
• The help page provides a backup for those projects that have not yet completed a reliable sources page. 
• By inference, all projects gain anything under the Frauds and Fabrications category as Reliable with Conditions. 
• Each project gains a list of family trees that are not reliable sources. 
• Each project gains a list of collections (e.g., Pedigree Resource File) that are not reliable sources.
• The help page provides section headings to be used consistently across new and existing projects. 
• Small changes in the Pre-1700 Profiles help combined with the addition of the Pre-1700 Reliable Sources help page might help reduce the number of Pre-1700 profiles created using only a family tree as a source, by bringing the guidance to attention.

Disadvantages:

• The help page must be generic so as not to contradict the specific guidance from any project. This might be construed by some as guidance to just say, for example, "parish records", despite caveats on the page to provide details and consult original records. 
• By inference, all projects gain anything under the Frauds and Fabrications category as Reliable with Conditions. It remains up to the project to provide any specific guidance for any of these items. 
• Because this is an overall help page it must remain independent of items that are specific to a general location. As an example, although several projects identify any work by John Burke (e.g., Burke's Dormant and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage) as unreliable, these are not mentioned on the overall page, nor is the reliable alternative.

Questions:

• Several different section headings were found among the individual Pre-1700 Reliable Sources pages. Are the headings used in this help page acceptable/preferred?

Please post an answer below if you have suggestions or questions that do not fit as comments to the I agree or I disagree answers below.

[Edit to add please post answer or comment to answer.]

Edit 08 July 2023: the draft Pre-1700 Reliable Sources has been updated to reflect feedback.

Comments

Kay, the bullet point

• By inference, all projects gain anything under the Frauds and Fabrications category as Reliable with Conditions.

appears in both the Advantages list and the Disadvantages list. Is that intentional?

Further, sorry but either I do not understand that bullet point, or I disagree with it. Firstly, it would seem risky to assume that anyone will ever infer anything :-) Secondly, aren't items under Frauds and Fabrications thoroughly unreliable, rather than reliable?

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Jim -

Please convert to an answer.

I agree we should remove by inference and just say each project gains.

It is an advantage that people are warned about the Frauds and Fabrications. It is a disadvantage that the project team now should review the content therein to ascertain how it applies to the project.

In reviewing all of the individual project Pre-1700 reliable sources pages some have caveats that there may be content in a fraud/fabrication publication that is accurate and not affected by the fraud. So it does not fall firmly within the Unreliable type but rather under Use with Caution.

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This was a comment because I had been asking about the presentation of the proposal, and was still equivocal, not yet ready to answer. Thanks Kay for dropping the "inference" part. But still, now things are clearer, I've had to vote no.

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And what to you mean by "project gains"?

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@Jillaine - The project "gains" items identified on the lists of unreliable sources that they might not have individually identified. An example might be the Millenium file.

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That is a usage of "gains" I've never experienced in 64 years. So you mean, a project might identify and add [is this where "gains" comes in?] specific sources not included on the general list that are reliable (or unreliable) ?

(As for Millennium File, each and every project-- past, current and into the future-- should avoid THAT "source". Shudder...)

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Jillaine. Yes. Reviewing the project pages again I see that the United States project has a statement about encompassing sub-projects. This page should have something similar, changed, of course, to be project independent. Here's what the US project says (in part) "The following pages provide focused advice on sources for the topics covered by specialized projects within the broad span of the United States and its history. For topics within the scope of one of these projects, the advice on the specialized project page supersedes any conflicting information on this page. These pages also should be consulted for topics closely related to the scope of these projects"

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I prefer primary sources in the Biography and secondary sources in the Research Notes section. Peer reviewed scholarly sources qualify as primary along with government and church records. A family bible or register, family papers and/or correspondence are primary in my mind.

in the case for FindAGrave I use the death year as the burial date and I do not use FAG birth and date information for either Birth or death source.

ideally a death notice ‘buried’ yesterday is best, death cents, return of death certificates usually have burial info. (But then one ancestor’s certificate has the wrong Cemetery name. Go figure.)

Answer 1

I agree with the proposal.

Comments

Thanks for putting this together Kay! I like it, this draft page provides a good overview of general pre-1700 sourcing guidelines and I think it would help members understand the requirements.

A question I often see from members is whether books are considered reliable sources, so I think it would be a good idea to touch on this. The England project includes this in their reliable secondary sources section:

• Academic, scholarly or historical volumes, especially if primary sources are referenced.

It may also be worth mentioning that older books may have outdated information, and to check the project pages for specific reliable and unreliable secondary sources.

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It needs to say, somewhere, that "Parish Records", "Ancestry.com", "FamilySearch.org" etc.... are not acceptable.

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Examples of where Unreliable trees and collections are found  should be helpful for many members.  Too many members think that if ancestry, and other sites, have them as sources and 'hints', then they must be reliable.

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Overall, I am in agreement with this proposal and believe that implementing the Pre-1700 Reliable Sources help page, along with the proposed changes to the Pre-1700 Profile help page, will provide clear guidance to members and contribute to the reduction of profiles created solely based on user-generated family trees.

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I would like to see additional wording to clarify the difference between using familysearch, ancestry, and possibly other sites that have dual information types.  The distinction is required to emphasize that it's good to cite records in the repository, but bad to cite a family tree there.

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I'm essentially in favour of what I see as the main point here, which is to link to reliable source lists.

I don't like the term "user-generated" which (as a former computer scientist) I think is unnecessary jargon even though many people will understand it, and also fails to address the critical point there, which is that the family tree was made by someone far removed in time from the events in question and who therefore got their information from other sources, which should be found and used instead, because every time information is copied error may be introduced.  It doesn't matter whether the family tree was generated by a user of Wikitree or some other website, or hand-drawn by someone modern who never touched a computer in their life, the principle is the same for both.

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I support any efforts to provide guidance on sourcing, and can tolerate the ambiguities raised in some of the comments.

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YES We need one place to make it easier to find such pages.

YES Projects need to have a page JUST for their nuances -- but refer to this page

TOO many pages -- too many varied texts -- too confusing -- too time consuming-- as it is if you work on profiles from many countries.

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:) Also a computer scientist and so is my husband. He is a cyber-security engineer who has worked for Microsoft, Dell, Oracle and Blizzard. I'm a developer.

I'm fine with the term user-contributed instead of user-generated. It refers to profiles where the only source is "personal knowledge", "family records," "Ancestry.com", or some other very vague reference. It means the person has simply copied and not verified their sources.

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The draft page needs Wikipedia to be added to the list of unreliable sources. Any wiki can be edited at any time so cannot ever be cited as a reliable source. Wikipedia themselves say that it should not be cited as a source.  

Wikidata is also missing from the Unreliable sources list. Robot-generated info, mostly from a 1960s Russian encyclopaedia together with copying directly from the peerage (already on the unreliable list ), Wikidata is effectively completely unsourced and unreliable.

Answer 2

I disagree with the proposal.

Comments

I disagree with part of the proposal as formulated, though would agree if the wording were improved.

It is not adequate to list Frauds and Fabrications under "Reliable with Conditions", with the weak proviso that they can be used "with caution". If such non-sources are to be used at all, a much more rigorous description of under what conditions this can be done is needed, with concrete examples people can absorb. This should be done at a high level in the proposed new help page itself, not delegated to project pages which may not be read. As the wording stands, there is danger that many people will think they are being "cautious" when they are actually using false material recklessly.

It would be better to put mention of the Frauds and Fabrications category under the "Unreliable Sources" heading, emphasising "avoid completely" more and "use with caution" much less. Projects could then qualify that if they wish.

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The page should really be very short and say "books should never be classified as reliable or unreliable, each fact or assertion (or inference via omission) needs evaluated in context of who is providing the information, their proximity in both time and place to the event, possible bias and all available sources on the same event" and then refer them to Evidence Explained for the deeper understanding.

I understand the spirit of the page, but think we should plainly state the view above to new genealogists and not attempt to claim reliability for unknown works.

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Kay, I laud you for your suggestions and to make the policy clearer to users. When we are trying to exclude sources, I would favor spelling out specifically what is excluded. What if a family sketched out the tree in the pre-1700s? What if it is a tree from a book that has been peer reviewed?

My point is that there might be times when a family tree would be acceptable. The term "any user-generated family tree" broadens the current definition. I am reluctant to add any source to an exclusion list, but if it must be done. I would rather it be spelled out in a way so there is no ambiguity.

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Jim,

Let me review what each of the projects say about Frauds and Fabrications.

Jonathan,

I like your description for books, perhaps combined with what Danielle said. Unfortunately, very short probably won't help us with catching those folks who continue to use family trees, their own profile id, or other creative items as sources for Pre-1700 profiles. Also, there cannot be a blanket statement that a book is not reliable (see the PGM and England project reliable sources.)

Jimmy,

The guidance that a family tree is not a reliable source comes from https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Pre-1700_Profiles#Cite_reliable_sources. In the case of your example this perhaps not be a citation to the Bible (or whatever had the 'sketch') or the peer reviewed document? I see the point on user-generated, it is sort redundant.

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Thanks for commitment to a review, Kay.

The wording I have in mind could be something along the following lines:

Unreliable Sources

[The present lists, then add...]

The materials listed in Category: Frauds and Fabrications are also generally unreliable. Use of them should be avoided, unless an explicit exception for a particular case is stated on the relevant project page, and you are carefully following the instructions about that source as detailed by the project.

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Jim,

What gets me is that the Frauds category says "Some authors of family histories, even including once-respected genealogists, have created fabricated genealogies and pedigrees, or have introduced fake information into an otherwise valid genealogy." which to me implies that some of the data can be valid. The Frauds category is referenced from 22 of the project pages, but it will take another review to see if these reference it from the Reliable with Conditions or from Unreliable. Or perhaps both in the 6 projects that talk about determining if a book is reliable where they then reference the frauds category.

I have not reviewed all 51 of the fraud categories (some of which have multiple books) to see if any of the 40 projects specifically call out one of those books as reliable with conditions (other than Pre-1500 which is a separate case from this).

(Never thought I'd say this, but) FindAGrave is actually easier. Of the 32 projects that mention FindAGrave, 10 cite it as unreliable and 22 as reliable with the condition that there is a photo/image of a contemporaneous gravestone and then only for burial location or death date. A couple of the 10 do explain why there cannot be a reliable Pre1700 gravestone.

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Sadly, gravestone date inscriptions on occasion can be wrong as well.

Answer 3

I don't think I want to vote yes or no on this at present. I agree with the idea in principle, but there are a number of details that I find difficult to accept.

As with Jim Richardson's comment  I think that if Frauds and Fabrications should be "completely avoided or used with caution" then they belong under Unreliable Sources.

"Information gathered from original sources" seems ambiguous to me. There is direct gathering and others' published gathering. For example, there are published reconstructions of 17th century passenger lists made by gathering names from original sources for the timeframe, but these can be very variable in their reliability.

In the unreliable sources why are all databases on CDROM in this category but not those in any other medium? And all family association websites? Some databases on CDROM were of high quality, e.g the National Burial Index in the UK. Family association websites also vary enormously from unscreened compilations of anything submitted to material carefully curated by a professional genealogist. Unlike the other Items in this list, these are categories of sources not sources themselves, and each item in these categories requires evaluation on its own merits.

What is missing is something on how to evaluate a source's reliability. Randomly sampling half a dozen of the project-specific reliable sources pages, this seems to be a wider problem.  Teaching people the basics of what makes something reliable, and how to do their own evaluation, is of more use than a (necessarily restricted) list of things to use or avoid. A very basic summary would be: Images of primary sources are better than transcripts or indexes, which themselves are better than published compilations or histories. Primary sources need to be assessed by considering who provided the information and how soon it was written down after the events recorded. Publications need to be assessed by whether they are citing sources, and the likely reliability of those sources. If you can access the source referred to in a publication or compilation, it is preferable to use that source.

Comments

Andrew,

Thank you. Yes, we probably need a help page that specifically addresses what is a reliable source. (and probably not here). The Pre-1700 Profile help page references a G2G discussion on reliable sources. There is also a discussion on the Help for Uncertain. And, 5 of the project pages have a good discussion on determining if a source is reliable. And the introduction for a reliable source here needs to be refined. It might be a combination of some of what you have written above and some of what is written on various project pages.

I'm confused on Frauds and Fabrications. See my response to Jim. The frauds introduction actually says 'fake information in an otherwise valid genealogy' which implies to me that parts are really bad but parts are okay, which would seem like Reliable with Conditions. Again, we might need to review each of the frauds and each of the projects to see where any of those might be specifically mentioned (other than Pre-1500 where at least one is reliable with conditions).

It's tough to craft an overall placeholder for all of the projects. What would we put in Reliable with Conditions? Perhaps FindAGrave (see comment to Jim above)? Maybe Wikipedia, although the Tools->Cite this Page says to use it for further research). Maybe Our Royal, Titled, Noble and Common Ancestors which is categorized differently across projects?

As for CD-ROM, well the method of distribution of a source has absolutely nothing to do with the reliability of that source. (Color me idiot!) So instead where the Ancestral File, Family Data Collection and others are listed it should state that those are not a reliable source whether obtained online or distributed as a database, possibly on CD-ROM.

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I have seen many citations to "Broderbund" CD-ROMs. Apparently,  a couple of decades ago a company named Broderbund published a collection or multiple collections of pedigrees in CD-ROM format (I am only guessing, I have never seen this material).  I have the impression that at least some of the content may have come from sources like the IGI or the Millennium File. Regardless of where it came from, these CD-ROMs are no longer available, the copies that still exist are probably not readable without special equipment, and anyway the name of a published CD-ROM is not a good source citation. The Broderbund CD-ROMs and any other collections like them could be identified as "not to be used" (notwithstanding the fact that many existing pre-1700 profiles cite Broderbund, because we haven't yet done the research needed to replace the source or the content).

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Ellen. Exactly. There are 12 projects that have the following statement. "

Published databases containing information of uncertain origin: There are a number of "records" collections available on websites such as Ancestry and MyHeritage (and in some instance formerly distributed on CD-ROM) that do not identify their information sources and in fact are built in whole or in part from doubtful publications and user-contributed content."

Should we call out the information distributed by Broderbund on CD-ROM specifically as unreliable?

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It would be nice to have at least 2 examples of CD-ROM publications not to be cited. I don't actually know what's in the Broderbund disk(s), only that I see many citations that imply that Broderbund is an authority, but I have come to the realization that it was probably only a republisher of the kind of content we associate with Ancestry Trees, the Ancestral File, etc.

Regardless, a citation to a CD-ROM is never a good source citation. We should cite the content and the authors/origin/publishers of that content, not the publication vehicle.

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I agree that the citation is important. Putting the name of the publisher of the CD rom is insufficient. Many aren't any more than user compiled family trees but some may be more valuable. 

https://www.demographic-research.org/Volumes/Vol1/4/html/5.htm  

Tells you what's on several cd roms including the two sets of Broderbund CD roms. The  large Broderbund  set was mainly  based on  the  user contributed Ancestry One World Tree (distributed with Family Tree Maker) The second  smaller set had various sources  included one from United Ancestries inc (? can't find them, supposed to be professional research),  one with gedcoms 'with sources' contributed by attendees at 'Gentech95' and  two from   'Everton's pedigree and Family Group Sheets' . These latter  are apparently now on My Heritage https://news.legacyfamilytree.com/legacy_news/2020/01/cousin-bait-before-the-internet.html 

In the UK there are still also  lots of CD roms that contain transcribed data from several  different types of primary records https://genealogysupplies.com/product/Category/Data-CDs (again a proper citation is paramount)

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Having created the Frauds & Fabrications category and several of its subcategories, I would never suggest that sources in that category can be considered reliable. Instead I would label all of them something like DANGER - Very Likely Unreliable - Do Not Proceed.

Identification in "Frauds and Fabrications" means that the author of the content has been found to have deliberately fabricated genealogy, generally many times over. Once we know that, we should not trust any of their work without thorough evaluation, and we need to recognize that the work of other honest authors who trusted these people may be contaminated by their frauds/fabrications.

Some of the works that got an author listed in "Frauds & Fabrications" are completely made up -- fake people, fake history, fake everything. In other cases, an author may have done work that was mostly honest, but when they ran into a brick wall they created fake ancestors or fake records to extend the ancestry farther into the past, often (but not always) to create a connection to aristocracy. Some fraudsters did not restrict themselves to fabricating ancestor pedigrees and biographies; some of them also created false biographies for themselves. I cannot regard the work of any of these fraudster/fabricators as inherently "reliable," but I acknowledge that some of their content may check out as OK after thorough evaluation.

Some confusion about the reliability of sources in the F&F category may stem from the fact that many ancestor profiles linked from these categories are there because someone once created genealogy for the person based on a fraudulent source, and many of those profiles have been evaluated and determined to be OK. However, that does not mean that that the fraudulent source is OK.

Edited to clarify.

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Thanks to Helen regarding the information about the contents of Broderbund CDs. Another family historian's family group sheets should not be regarded as reliable sources, whether they are found online, on a CD, or in a relative's filing cabinet. But they can be valuable resources for research, particularly if they identify their sources.

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It sounds as if the point about Frauds and Fabrications is that none of them can be used unless backed by a different reliable source. In that case, the reliable source should be cited, and after that the fraud or fabrication can be ignored. Conclusion: they should be listed as Unreliable, not Reliable with Conditions, as I suggested earlier.

Answer 4

Like Andrew, I am not ready to say yea or nay on this.  A few points:

1: you have genealogie.quebec as an unreliable source.  Realise that more than one site uses that name.  One of them being Institut Généalogique Drouin, which is a very reliable source, as it provides links to original documents.

2. missing from your list of reliable sources are notarial acts, particularly marriage contracts.  You only mention property deeds and land records.  Wills made by a person are normally done before a notary.  Inventories done by notaries also often include data on who the presumptive heirs are.

3. in some instances, original records are lost or too damaged to read.  There exist books by people who consulted them before their destruction, for instance in this province, Tanguay (1870s work) has a fair amount of data for which the records are in this state;  he has errors, as he sometimes tried to plug people into a family based on similarity of name, but there exists Complément à Tanguay which helps sort this out.  Archange Godbout also compiled a lot of data on records in France during some of his trips there (one dates from 1925), many of those records being lost in WWII.

Comments

Danielle,

Thank you.

1. Understand. So you are saying that genealogie.quebec is comparable to FamilySearch or Ancestry that it may be a repository containing records and may also have family trees. The section in the draft on Unreliable Sources should be clarified to ensure that people understand it is saying trees found on.

2. Thanks. Would notarial acts, such as marriage contracts fit under Court records or Church records?

3. Whether or not we think this proposal should move forward, we all agree that the section on Reliable Sources, and what is and is not reliable needs work. I think that your paragraph about the books from old records is great, and might be adapted to make a generic statement about books as reliable sources.

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yes, trees from Drouin Institute do exist, and would fall under the unreliable listing, but the site itself has actually limited number of those published, they were done for individuals for $.  Ancestry uses the Drouin Institute records a lot.  

Notarial acts fall under neither church nor court records.  Such can be used if there is a lawsuit for instance, but they aren't normally part of court records.  They remain with the notary.  Ancient acts go to archives, not the courts.

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Thanks. Yes, see Gaile's comment. We certainly need to distinguish between citing a record in a repository (good) and a family tree (bad).

Notarial acts should be added. Since I just completed another review of all of the project reliable sources pages I see some things that might help to organize/clarify some of the reliable sources.

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ah, one must be clear on citing repositories, there are some you see from Ancestry that just cite the repository, like Edmund West etc, what is needed is citing the actual record within such, not just the repository.  Saying something can be found in such-and-such stack of records isn't conducive to helping people with an interest to find it.  One has to point to the exact record, or the thing doesn't hang together.

Answer 5

Every source is more or less reliable for different types of info in the source. We should require a "reasonably reliable" source (or combination of reasonably reliable sources) be provided that support each genealogical assertion in the profile. A policy that says "You must never create a pre-1700 profile without citing a reliable source" is too simplistic and can be misunderstood to suggest that merely citing a reasonably reliable source for a person's existence is sufficient to, e.g., make connections to other profiles.

That said, I do think it is useful to have categories for sources that are presumed to be reasonably reliable for all the info in them, only certain info in them, or for no info in them.

Comments

The intent of this page is to build on the content of https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Pre-1700_Profiles#Cite_reliable_sources and that of the individual project reliable sources https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Reliable_Sources_for_Pre-1700_Profiles. In other words, the Pre-1700 Profile help and the individual projects are providing the specific guidance, and this page is providing a summary overview.

It would be a daunting task to build a list of all sources for all projects categorized as you noted above. If you look at the 40 projects and just consider the sources noted as Unreliable or Reliable with Conditions there are about 80 sources. The number grows exponentially when you add reliable sources. As does the analysis, since with just the 40x80 there are sources that are Reliable in some projects, Reliable with Conditions in others, and Unreliable in others.

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I can't agree with "Every source is more or less reliable for different types of info in the source" Some sources such as fantasy family trees are totally unreliable to the point of being completely incorrect.

Answer 6

I’m not sure where I stand. While I agree for a source it shouldn’t be just a link to an ancestry or family search tree I’m puzzled by the book comment. That books aren’t a reliable source.

Little by little I’ve been trying to put the Genealogy of the Tucker Family from Various Sources into wikitree. Prior to that there had been to many Tucker pages that had little if any profiles or references in them as well as profiles that should have actually been two profiles. (Two separate people same name). As I come across them I’ve been adding screenshots and sources from both family search and ancestry in them. The book has been right throughout. Ancestry is even using it as a source. I’ve added the same screenshots to find a grave where they’ve had no dates etc in them as well.

Am I too assume that books can’t be considered a valid source?

Comments

Hmm, which book comment? Ah Valerie said "Academic, scholarly or historical volumes, especially if primary sources are referenced" as noted by England.

Books can be a reliable source, can be reliable with conditions, or can be unreliable. It depends upon the individual book and the guidance from the project. This paragraph (found in several project pages) discusses family genealogies. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:United_States_Project_Reliable_Sources#Family_Genealogies

So for example, several projects state that Richardson's work is reliable. The Mayflower Project lists the Silver Books as reliable sources. In the US (which I see is where your family is) the books by Cutter are reliable with conditions / use with caution.

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Oh good cause I’ve made a lot and changed a lot of profiles in using the books and other citations from family search and ancestry.

The book has been right on the money it seems as far as accuracy.

Answer 7

A question; how does this idea apply to the inclusion of a Family Search link to a profile as a source?

This was recently discussed at

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1602505/do-really-want-categorize-people-their-family-search-trees?show=1602527#a1602527

Currently I am researching a number of pre-1700 ancestors that I adopted.

When sourcing I include the link to the actual source not the profile to which it is attached.

The information on a FS profile can change frequently as improvements and corrections are made by contributors.

Comments

Excellent question. Of course from a Pre-1700 Profile Reliable sources perspective, if a tree cites a reliable source, instead find that source and cite it. That needs to be more clear here.

The other question, perhaps more of a style issue for Pre-1700 profiles (either overall or per project) is the inclusion of the link to the online tree. I have seen this done under Research Notes, under Sources, and under a Sources subsection. I'm not sure where this should be addressed (style? overall Pre-1700 profile?), but I am positive there will be a wide range of opinions. My personal opinion is that the tree might contain clues that will help find other sources and that it therefore makes sense under Research Notes. (Although not Pre1700 I found this guy on a tree yesterday with tons of family reunion pictures and a 2nd or 3rd cousin to try to get in touch with, his profile is not yet completed https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Grasty-57)

Answer 8

I am specifically addressing the issue of books.  Many books are created from unsourced trees using the publishing feature in many gredcom software programs. These are not reliable sources even if a book in a library.  There are other books that cite sources and may even have photos of the ancient documents those are reliable there are other books that mix cited info with family lore and are a mixture of reliable and unreliable.  Just because it is in a book doesn’t make it true just like like a lot of stuff on the internet is not correct.  During some times in history it became fashionable to be able to claim relationships to nobles.  Often families paid for research that quite frankly was manufactured. And not real. So even a book by Henry VIII historian was renounced in a court case as not being credible.   So. Books can be deceptive.  

Next. Tombstone photos are easily faked.  There are online software programs free to use that creat very real looking tombstones.  And info on them is given by purchasing person. Dates are not from official sources. Once again be careful

Comments

Laura,

I agree about books. What do you think about how this paragraph states that? https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:United_States_Project_Reliable_Sources#Family_Genealogies  (Same statement is on several different projects.)

Oh and for FindAGrave, see the paragraph about the one on the books. This statement, or something similar, is on the 22 projects that say it is reliable with conditions.

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yes that is a wonderful write up

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Doesn't the book question depend on the book?

If a book is one that is as Laura said 'Many books are created from unsourced trees using the publishing feature in many gedcom software programs.', or they are a vanity project created by important families many years ago, they can be pure fiction.

If it is a book that is a transcribed and printed version of old church records, or other original records, the content should be no different than the original records that were used to create the information, sometimes the transcription is slightly different. As are other transcriptions done by different researchers or transcribers at other times.

Due to the amount of research I do in the Staffordshire area of England, I have -in the past-purchased books of transcriptions of the entire records of some churches.

I have yet to find any errors.

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Yes the transcript books are my second example that I said were reliable. I have many of these.  Good ones show how family listings relate and you can often get multiple generations from them. But they cite sources.

Answer 9

What makes a source reliable?  It has an authoritative source. Like a church document or government document.  If someone doesn’t know what makes a source reliable they really shouldn’t be creating pre 1700 profiles.    That is my opinion

Comments

that takes us back to requirements for pre-1700 certification, which is another subject entirely.

Answer 10

The proposed help page needs to be re-written from the point of view of a user searching for information.  With headings, sub-headings, and emphasis based on user workflow. (Think "Sourcing for Dummies".)  Currently, the flow is reflecting what you don't like about poor sourcing.  ("Thou shalt not..." instead of "This is how to do it with the resources you have...")

It has too many words. TL;DNR is a thing.

It isn't consistent.  For example, the first two times Ancestry is mentioned, it is as a repository of sources.  Subsequently, it is mentioned as unreliable.  

Please do not let my critique of style imply that I disagree with the effort.  Well-sourced and researched profiles are my goal, too.  

Comments

The whole thing is not fot for purpose currently. The quiz asking "Is FamilySearch.org a reliable source?". What does that mean - trees, records? I got the quiz wrong several times because I didn't agree with the ambiguity of the questions!

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Peggy, what does TL;DNR stand for?  Beware abuse of acronyms.  

Since the first draft was done, a second draft has been provided on the same page.  That one has become much too long.  I personally disagree with the xyz for Dummies approach, I prefer the KIS approach (Keep it simple).  The longer the text, the less likely a person will read to the end.

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Too Long: Did Not Read also known as TL:DR (Too Long: Didn't Read).

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TL;DNR = Too Long; Did Not Read

Basically, we agree.  "The longer the text, the less likely a person will read to the end."

Thanks, Danielle.

Answer 11

In general, I agree with the proposal. Just realised though that one of my favourite types of source is missing.

 Contemporary diaries, commonplace books and letters and autobiographies

How to categorise them as a genre in broad  terms of reliability is more problematic.