Primary, secondary and other sources.

Question

Clearly there is a difference between actually seeing a document (or a scan of it) and relying on e.g. Family Search transcriptions. In the first case you have the primary evidence. In the second you hope the transcriber got it right but you can't be sure.

One of the known problems is relying on Ancestry trees, some of which contain a lot of guesswork or complete fiction.

Should there be a standardised way of indicating the reliability of sources?

Answer 1

Thanks for pointing this out, Martin! There definitely is a difference, which should be clear from the source citation, ideally.

In Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills there's a good explanation of source quality. It breaks it down into 3 parts: sources can be original or derivative (transcriptions on FamilySearch for example being derivative), information can be primary or secondary, and the evidence can be direct or indirect.

I'm currently working on making footnote templates for citing sources using Evidence Explained. That citation style is supposed to include enough information that people can tell how reliable the information is.

Comments

Lianne,

I'm absolutely THRILLED you're making EE-compliant templates. Can I help test? or otherwise support you? I can't wait.

---

Thanks, Jillaine! I'll definitely let you know, and keep you updated on them as I make some progress. :)

---

I am excited about the templates too. I have been using the new " citation needed " one , perhaps a little too liberally on my work (-:

Let me know if you need a tester too .

Answer 2

The source is where you found something. In absence of anything else, references to low-quality sources are better than no source information at all.

WeRelate.org (another genie wiki) tried quality rating as you suggest, Martin, and I think they abandoned it.

I'd rather we put our energies into finding and using better sources. And really pushing people who are uploading gedcoms to make sure they're including their sources. (Many genie programs allow you to export GEDCOMs without source information. We do NOT want that here IMHO.)

-- Jillaine

 

Comments

I see where you are coming from,Jillaine, but how will people ever know whether something is reliable?

For example, there is a spurious marriage in an Ancestry tree for one of my ancestors (not my tree) and it is sourced correctly. The trouble is it is the wrong marriage leading to a lot of descendants who are not related at all. Now if someone put up a profile here and referenced it to that Ancestry tree, it would be totally wrong, while appearing to be OK.

I think we should at least differentiate between primary and other sources.

---

Martin,

I use the bio section for discussion of problematic and disputable  information.  Anderson, for example, does this repeatedly in his Great Migration series, and it's a good model to follow and a more direct way to bring people's attention to the difference between types of sources especially since most people continue to confuse primary/secondary and direct/indirect and original/derivative.  

That said, if we were to choose one of those to go with, I'd recommend original/derivative over primary/secondary as a) that pairing applies to sources and b) that's where the bulk of errors show up.  Ie, most errors are found in derivative sources (eg, published genealogies) vs original records (eg, birth, marriage and death certificates).

 

--jillaine

---

I don't thnk we are disagreeing on this, Jillaine. I'm perfectly happy with original/derivative. Basically that is what I mean by primary and other. Anyway, let the discussion continue with the aim of making Wikitree material as unimpeachable as possible.

I'm now beginning to tidy up the profiles in the tree I uploadsd (lots more to come). To help clarify my use of sources I've decided to put details on my own profile page and then supply links to that. It will save endless repetition.