Is your source for pre-1700 genealogy reliable enough to use on WikiTree?

Question

Hi WikiTreers,

There have always been controversies in our community about which sources are reliable enough to be used for creating and editing WikiTree profiles.

We have never attempted to define acceptable sources for modern profiles. It's in our Honor Code to cite your sources, but your source can be a family tree handed down to you or whatever else. Profiles can and hopefully will be improved upon later with more research.

However, we have had stricter rules for pre-1700 profiles. You need to self-certify for advanced WikiTree contributions and coordinate with others who are working on people from the same time period and location through projects. These projects are the forums for members to develop regional style rules and decide which sources are reliable.

Now we have an easy way to find out whether project members have determined if a source is reliable or not: Reliable Sources lists.

These lists will never be definitive or complete. (In fact, as of today, some of them are brand new and practically empty.)

When you want to use a source to create a pre-1700 profile that doesn't appear on the appropriate project's list of reliable or unreliable sources, simply ask about it on the project's discussion list or here in G2G using the project tag and the tag pre-1700. Project members will grow their lists based on these discussions.

Of course, you are welcome to ask why a source is considered reliable or unreliable, and you can dispute its classification. These decisions will be made in an open, collaborative way, like we do just about everything on WikiTree. Everyone will not always agree, but everyone can voice their opinions (courteously) and attempt to change the consensus.

For more information, see these help pages and ask here if something is still unclear.

• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:Honor_Code
• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Pre-1700_Profiles
• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Pre-1700_Projects
• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Uncertain
• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Research_Before_Editing
• https://www.wikitree.com/quiz/pre_1700

Onward and upward,

Chris

Comments

Isn't it bizarre to set a higher bar for pre-1700, given that the available material is so much poorer in quality and quantity?

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RJ, seems to me that the poor quality of available material is precisely why we have to have a higher bar for older profiles … but this is from a non-pre-1700 certified member so please take it with a grain of salt.

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An improvement...Yay...Thanks

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 Thank you!

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This intro seems to make it acceptable to use handed-down family trees all the way back to people born in 1700. I'm sure that is not the intention. At least I wouldn't trust auntie's hand-me-downs beyond my great-grands, which would mean pre-1850 rather than pre-1700.

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I agree Eva, especially since good sources for 19th century profiles are usually easiest to find. Contributors who rely on unsourced published genealogies for post-1700 profiles should expect to be challenged, because a lot of this data contains errors.

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Is this a discussion for ALL WikiTreers, Chris?

If so, we need better tagging abilities so ALL WikiTreers will know about this and similar "lost in the cracks" discussions:

• pre_1700: 59 followers
• leaders: 63 followers
• policy: 4 followers

How do my fellow WikiTreers even know when serious policy discussions are taking place?

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It's mentioned in the weekly feed, but in a way that makes it seem unimportant.  It doesn't say, you really need to go to this thread and follow the links to see the rule changes.

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I agree with Lindy, please add more tags to reach more people, I only found out about this because pages were created for Québécois and Filles du roi projects and I was put on them, had to ask what was going on, and was referred to this G2G.

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Actually I now see the new rule was added on 7 December (though without involving an actual list).  But if it was announced then, I missed it completely at the time and I can't find it now.

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I fully appreciate the intentions behind this change, but I think Wikitree has jumped ahead of itself - substantially so. We need to have much more complete lists of reliable sources than we have at the moment. And even then, there will be Wikitree members who, like me, often hunt out unusual but reliable pre-1700 records, some of which are one-off (eg an original contemporaneous deed held in a French archive). Could those who oversee projects really be expected to cope with the potentially large workload if people follow this guidance strictly and seek to clear every use of sources not on a project’s reliable sources list? And will they have the expertise?

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Michael, on that French deed, take a look on how that is covered in FrenchRoots project page.  Not each individual item has to be cleared.

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quibble:  what is 1776 Project doing in here?

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Danielle, thanks. What is said on French archives for the French Roots project is very sensible: but what is in the reliable sources list for the French Roots project is often not in the reliable sources for other projects. We currently lack a commonality of approach across projects. Each project has its own guidelines on sourcing. And it is wrong to think that a profile which uses as a source a deed in a French archive will necessarily fall within the French Roots project: that will, for instance, often be untrue of profiles of members of Anglo-Norman families.

At the moment, there are big gaps in the lists of reliable sources for different projects.

Answer 1

Not to play the devils advocate here BUT ok so now if I am a person who has worked on pre 1700 files after passing the pre 1700 certification, worked with leaders and other knowledgeable wiki folks and all that good stuff so I know a good primary source from a sketchy secondary etc but now you want me to run any non-listed sources by the leaders of projects for a nay or yay vote as to it's cite-worthyness? Is that not going to set the leaders up for an endless list of sources they have to go see if they are any good? does that not mean we are going to be waiting to hear about this "new" sources before we can improve profiles?  Does pre 1700 certification mean nothing then?  Can we not be trusted to go and look and compare the information on sources we find for a person and determine if they make sense and should be included as sources?  I have been working on a family I came across - the source is not perfect - is quite good for the time frame close to the time it was written, but going back has some bad information contained so of course I have used other sources including the few primary sources I can find for them - so now what?  Do I just abandon these profiles because I do not see the source I used to create them on the list?

Don't get me wrong - I do appreciate the lists - I go to project pages and look for the resources to help me know where to look for good sources for the time and place covered by that project - some are very helpful but this move seems like we now have an elite list and that is all we can use and I know that will end up being a limiting factor, making improvement of some more non-mainstream places where folks lived very difficult.

Comments

There seem to be two steps here.  A new rule was added in December which said

You must never create a pre-1700 profile without citing a reliable source.

But it also said, if you aren't sure if your source is reliable, contact the project.  Which seemed to imply that you were allowed to decide for yourself whether your source was reliable enough.

In the latest version, as of Tuesday, the "if you aren't sure" bit has gone, and there's a new bit that says

Do not create a profile unless the source you are using is on the appropriate project's list of reliable sources.

This is black and white.  It goes on to say, there will be a whitelist and a blacklist, and if your source isn't on either, contact the project, who will add it to one list or the other.

Obviously there have to be two lists, to avoid the same questions being endlessly re-asked.

But all of this only seems to go to the creation of new profiles.  So far.  Obviously it won't stop there.

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As the creator of, or contributor to, several of these new "pre-1700 reliable sources" pages, I am very aware that they are not complete. That's why several pages I contributed to have notices on them that call them a "work in progress."

In general, the Leaders who created these pages placed more of our initial focus on describing "unreliable sources" than on describing the "reliable sources." The fact that a source -- or type of source -- is not yet listed as either reliable or unreliable doesn't necessarily mean it's not deemed reliable. It may simply mean that we haven't gotten around to adding it to the list(s).

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"You must never create a pre-1700 profile without citing a reliable source." is not a new rule, but a clarification of what (I believe) was always intended.

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The new rule, as of Tuesday, is much more specific:

Do not create a profile unless the source you are using is on the appropriate project's list of reliable sources

But the previous weaker ambiguous version has been left in place to confuse things.

So as usual the help file can be taken more than one way, and different people are taking it different ways.

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I remain a little bemused that Tuesday’s tweak of wording was introduced at a time when projects are at very different stages in their drawing up of reliable source lists, ranging from having blank lists upwards, and when there is inconsistency as to whether the lists need explicitly to mention primary or near-primary sources or whether they should be confined to secondary sources, with an assumption that primary sources are always acceptable.

These source lists will always be very incomplete, as appears to be acknowledged.

If all good sources that are accepted are added to reliable source lists, those lists will become so long as to be unusable, and will include sources that are relevant to only one profile or a small number of profiles. That cannot be sensible, and the current wording in the help guidance is likely to need modification - or to be treated with considerable judicious flexibility.

This latest tweak of guidance can apply only to project-related pre-1700 profiles. I do not know what others’ experience is, or what the overall stats are, but of the many hundreds of pre-1700 and pre-1500 profiles I have created or done work on, very few have come under projects, and I suspect most are never likely to come officially under a project umbrella.

Finally, a lot of sources are not black or white. Many, perhaps virtually all, books and websites will have some errors. Even a book or website which has some substantial errors or a lot of dubious sourcing may quote primary sources like official and church records, wills, deeds and memorial inscriptions. What I try to evaluate is the quality of the evidence for particular facts, for particular relationships, and for the existence of particular people. Another reason for judicious flexibility of approach on sourcing.

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Thank you Michael - you are saying so eloquently some of the things I thought of when I saw this - apparently this started early December and I saw nothing until a few days ago - just seems to be un-doable and it will delay lots of things - which in many cases means it will halt work on some things - if it is too hard to do something - and there is little incentive to do it when it becomes real hard you are going to GIVE UP!  Now from what I have seen on Wikitree the idea is to all pull together and create, improve and source this one big tree - helping and teaching those that come after - asking and learning from those that came before is the reason I love this place and have so much enjoyed getting back into genealogy after a time away from it

I fear this will seem overly restrictive to many, I feel I do not want to submit lots of sources I have discovered that may apply to just a small amount of people and not be worth leaders time checking to see that yes it is valid for some of it's contents but has some errors or has copied some errors from elsewhere so should be used with caution -as I can see that for myself  - and leave notes to that effect in the Research Notes section in the biography of the profiles concerned - do they want this added burden of fact checking every source people can drag up off the internet or out in the libraries of the world? 

I am sitting on three or four sources not on the list for three lines I came across that go up into the Puritan Great migration Project that I have been working on for a few weeks (work full time so my time here is quite limited) and I am so tempted to dump them as is - but want to finish improving to the best of my ability - and this came along in the middle of that and now I feel hobbled by this list requirement and the fact that PGM has as it's source list mostly repositories in paid sites I can not afford a subscription to so I feel inadequate to finish what I started in some ways now - or to say it another way this has cut my self confidence on finishing the top of these three lines and it just is frustrating

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Thank you, Navarro. For my part, I will continue operating as I long have been. I hope, and anticipate, that in practice Wikitree will end up in a sensible place whatever the strict letter of the official guidance states. But I would prefer not to have guidance which has to be interpeted with considerable flexibility to achieve a sensible outcome, and which may well put some good researchers off. At least in my case most of the work I do on early profiles does not relate to project-linked ones.

Like you I love Wikitree. Keep up your good work!

Answer 2

Hi Chris, Please add a section with this information to https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Sources  I have been using that page as my "source" for source questions on G2G and it is incomplete without this information.  Thank you!

Comments

Hi Kitty, 
That will defeat the purpose of this exercise. The Help:Sources page has a very wide definition of sources. "A source is the identification of where you obtained information." That means that even "Tree on Xyz website " is a source. The purpose of what has happened here is to establish a minimum standard for pre 1700 profiles which does not apply to the whole of Wikitree. This however does not mean that members should not apply it to all of the profiles which of course would be ideal. You should read the Uncertain page and use it as a reference to sources.

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I still think it needs to be on the sources general page, even if it just a notation the pre-1700 profiles have stricter requirements with a link to the new information.  I didn’t know about these restrictions until this g2g from Chris.  New people can’t be expected to know where to look for information unless we tell them.

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For some reason unknown, your English sentences translates poorly: I understood that you wanted the Help:Sources page added to the above list, hence my previous reply. Just a reference to the above list under a Pre 1700 heading on the Help: Sources page would be welcome.

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The identification of where you got the information is more likely the repository of the source, not the source.

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A very wide definition open to interpretation.

Answer 3

Are we opening another hornets nest here? Multiple secondary sources as a group can be as reliable as a single primary source. Are the people making these decisions qualified to do so?

Comments

"Multiple secondary sources can be as reliable as a single primary source". This implies, of course, that the multiple secondary sources are not all copied one from another.

The reliable sources listed in the pre-1700 reliable sources pages do include secondary sources. And the situation you describe may be covered in the Help:Uncertain page: "A proof summary of multiple sources of supporting evidence used to draw a reasonable conclusion", included in the list of reliable sources.

Answer 4

How does this differ from Pre-1500 Resource Page ? 

I Don't have a problem with this new group, I just Link Historical Sources of Ireland to where ever it is needed. It's up to 9 places now and growing every day. I'm kind of glad that I started the page. If I need to make a change, I do it on one page instead of 9.

Comments

Can we please make sure the resources listed on the pre-1500 resource page are included on the various help pages for pre-1700?

We worked very hard to get a good list of quality resources and these have all been vetted and the list is annotated.  

At least put the link to the pre-1500 resource page on the other help pages.

Thanks!

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It could certainly not be wrong for someone on the trusted list of that page to simply include it in the category [[Category: Reliable Sources for Pre-1700 Profiles]] ?

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Eva on which page?   I have not done a lot of category coding so am not sure if you are saying add it to the pre-1700 page or add it to the pre-1500 page.

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Add the code [[Category: Reliable Sources for Pre-1700 Profiles]] to the https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Pre-1500_Resource_Page and it will put the page in among the other pages in the category.

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Thank You!  I just added it there.

Answer 5

Thanks Chris!

Answer 6

I think this is really good. Thank you! I have always been a bit nervous about pre-1700 profiles unless I am undoubtedly convinced of the information and sources I have found. This makes it less daunting knowing we are working together and able to discuss it.

Answer 7

This is great, Chris. Thank you.

Answer 8

I am all for doing what we can to improve sourcing, but instinctively dislike hard and fast rules. If the latest change follows on a general discussion in G2G, I missed that discussion. I doubt I am the only one who was unaware of the latest change in guidance.

Because the lists of reliable sources are so very incomplete, I think it is really premature to try and apply this tightening of policy at this stage. There are big gaps in lists of reliable sources at the moment. Until that situation changes, if people follow the guidance strictly, those overseeing projects are likely to be inundated with requests to approve sources.

There is surely a core of sources that should be accepted as reliable by all projects concerned with pre-1700 profiles. State Records, Wills, and Inquisitions post Mortem are obvious examples. Would it be sensible to build up a list of these that is shared among all projects? The pre-1500 resource page, https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Pre-1500_Resource_Page, gives a starting point for consideration and evaluation.

As has been mentioned elsewhere, One Name Studies would seem not to fit well with this system. A One Name Study is not a manager of profiles, and there is often not a one name study sticker.

There are many pre-1700 profiles that don’t have a project as a project manager, or even a project sticker. That is not oversight. It is consistent with current guidance for eg the England project. The implicit assumption that there will always be a project associated with a pre-1700 profile is not correct.

Comments

It's certainly the intention that there will always be a project.  The current shortage of projects is described as unfortunate.

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I fear that intention reflects an unrealistic ambition. I would myself regard it as misguided. There are for instance a mass of English medieval, Tudor and Stuart profiles which do not currently come under projects, and clearly do not fit into the more specialised projects like the Magna Carta Project or the Euro-Aristo Project. The England Project rightly steers against bringing them all formally under that Project and points towards just using geographical and other English categories for the vast bulk of English profiles.

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So ok what do we do? Plop our unlisted sources here for proper vetting? I just hate to do this but here is one that I used in creating and improving several profiles that go up toward and include some of the Puritan Great Migration Project profiles - https://archive.org/details/earlysettlersofr00blod_1/page/398

which is:

Early settlers of Rowley, Massachusetts : a genealogical record of the families who settled in Rowley before 1700, with several generations of their descendants

by Blodgette, George B. (George Brainard), 1845-1918

and I am using it cautiously as I have noted errors already for further back facts stated 

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Several thoughts, Navarro.

1. The tightening a few days ago of the guidance is about the creation of profiles, not about improving them - and clearly is confined to profiles linked to projects. So you can go on adding information to existing profiles in the way you might always have done provided you follow long-standing Wikitree principles. And you can create non-project-linked profiles as before. I imagine the main worry which has led to the recent tweak is one many of us have about the many fictitious relationships that lurk on Wikitree.

2. Particularly for projects like Magna Carta Project (and I imagine the PGM project, though I have not been involved with that) there has long been a concern not to have new family relationships added to project-managed profiles without consultation, which can take the form of a G2G question, a comment on a profile page, or something in a Project’s Google Group.

3. There has been long-standing guidance that really major changes to project-managed profiles should be discussed, in the way outlined in my previous paragraph, but things which are more minor or are just clear improvements need not be. I would usually include in things which don’t have to be discussed the adding of good sources and fleshing out biographies a little (such as adding jobs held, etc etc) in ways which do not raise issues about family relationships.

4. You can always create a set of family profiles, not linking them to the PGM project, with appropriate sourcing, and then, when it comes to adding a link to a profile already under the PGM project umbrella, put a comment on that profile explaining why you think the link should be made, citing sources, and take things from there. That would not be so very different from what should have happened under the previous guidance on project-managed profiles and what commonly happens for eg Magna Carta Project profiles.

As I read the latest tweak to guidance, all this is entirely within the strict letter of the new guidance. And is sensible, provided you are confident of your sourcing.

I would not want to comment on the particular source you have referred to: it is outside my area of expertise.

Answer 9

I'm with Elizabeth Shown Mills who says in her influential Evidence Explained: "As careful researchers, we cannot apply an easy, generic label—reliable or unreliable—to any document, much less any type of document."

This matters because Help:Sources & Help:Sources Style Guide say that WT's preferred style & format are based on Evidence Explained (EE) & associated Chicago Manual of Style.

The biggest problem with binary reliable-unreliable listing is that this has inherently pejorative connotations that go against the grain of careful research and researchers.

It would be much better for WT to seriously espouse EE in terms of language and the basic principle that, according to the EE's Evidence Analysis Process Map: "SOURCES provide INFORMATION from which we select EVIDENCE for ANALYSIS. A sound CONCLUSION may then be considered "PROOF" ."^

Application by WT of this EE basic principle could surely help avoid ludicrous treatment in Help:Uncertain to the effect that the following four items should be included among the list of original source examples:

• Books that cite primary sources. This would Include books that transcribe birth/marriage/death records as well as authored family histories or trees that cite birth/marriage/death records.
• History books that would have collected information from the subjects themselves.
• Newspaper articles with the publication name, date, and location. 
• A proof summary of multiple sources of supporting evidence used to draw a reasonable conclusion.

The first three above items are by definition derivative sources; that is,.anything that is not an original source is a derivative source. The last item is a proof summary and not an original source.

In terms of  Help:Uncertain's derivative examples, the list is evidently too restrictive; indeed, everything ever published that are not original sources,  including the Internet, are derivative sources.

Inclusion of 'Family bibles with birth/marriage/death dates' as original source example is partly true and partly false. A bible is by definition a derivative source; the writeup of BMD / NDP data is evidently an original source. However, accordance to EE Process Map parlance, the bible is secondary information; the writeup is also secondary information, unless the author was present at all the BMD events written up in bible.

In summary, the short answer to the above G2G question, Is your source for pre-1700 genealogy reliable enough to use on WikiTree?, is that the current binary reliable-unreliable listing adopted for various projects is not coherent because it does not rigorously adhere to EE's rational, systems approach to history & genealogy research.

^ Refer for example to Using the Genealogical Proof Standard in Your Research.

Edit: From 'derivative example' to 'derivative examples'.

Comments

ESM makes up her own terminology.  What she calls "authored" I would call secondary.  But nobody in England has read ESM.  The number of American books in English libraries is usually about 0.

She says "Each and every assertion we make as history researchers must be supported by proof... family-history standards require a higher level of proof than does most litigation." (pp. 17-18)

But if we apply that to pre-1700, we aren't going to be making a lot of assertions.  We can do unassertive, but if we want proved, there won't be much of it.

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Re 'ESM makes up her own terminology', I love it. ESM supports her Evidence Style with a 22-page book appendix glossary and a basic EE Blog vocabulary. ESM thus plays a compelling pathfinding role in addressing complex history and genealogy sourcing issues in a rational systematic manner. Which begs the question: How resolute is WT in its preference for EE as a sourcing style?

Re calling 'authored' secondary, this strikes at the heart of EE's Evidence Analysis Process Map in that it mixes up a 'source' sub-category with an 'information' sub-category, where there are three 'source' sub-categories: Original, Derivative & Authored Narrative or Work and where 'information' is a more fine-grained sub-set of 'source'. Talk about need in EE Blog vocabulary to 'Break the language barrier.'!

Dwelling accordingly on the term "authored' itself, ESM's full wording is "Authored Narratives: hybrid works. Authors of historical narratives will study many sources and synthesize findings. From that study, they reach conclusions and then develop a totally new piece of writing. Because the core information comes from other materials, much of an authored work is derivative. However, an author's conclusions and narrative will (or should) form a new, original, creation."  I don't have a problem with this source definition. EE's use of the term 'authored' is similar to what in academia would be called peer-reviewed works, which is what this G2G question is all about: "Project members will grow their lists [of reliable sources] based on these discussions." Bottom line, there is a case to be made to differentiate as ESM does between seminal 'authored narrative' from garden-variety 'compiled work', 'secondary work', etc..  

Re 'nobody in England has read ESM', I for one seem to be able to garner quite a bit of information from the two available EE book previews (1st ed., 3rd ed. Kindle) and the EE Blog. Again, What about WT preference for EE as a sourcing style? 

Re 'we aren't going to be making a lot of assertions' [in pre-1700 case], the rebuttal to this issue and the above G2G question is provided in the last sentence of the paragraph that you quote from EE on p. 18: "If sufficient evidence does not exist to accept or reject a hypothesis, we can—and should—simply delay a decision until that evidence is found or accumulated."

Edit: From book review to book preview.

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She does say that doesn't she.  But it's contradictory.  If the evidence doesn't exist, it isn't going to be found.

She means, if sufficient evidence isn't in hand.  She assumes the evidence is out there somewhere.  But what if it really doesn't exist?

Either everything goes on hold in the vain hope of something turning up.  Or else, case closed, nothing can be proved, so nothing can be said.

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Let's go back to  EE's Evidence Analysis Process Map basics: 

"SOURCES provide INFORMATION from which we select EVIDENCE for ANALYSIS. A sound CONCLUSION may then be considered "PROOF" ."

where, the process map flows from the universe of raw SOURCES through more fine-grained INFORMATION to nail-on-the-head EVIDENCE leading to ANALYSIS and, possibly, CONCLUSION. In other words, the proverbial scientific method.

The issue is that there may or may not be SOURCES out there.

From ESM's point of view in regard to this sentence, the issue cannot therefore be what  researcher-specific INFORMATION is derived from any such SOURCE or SOURCES, much less what EVIDENCE researcher uses in ANALYSIS towards a 'proof' CONCLUSION.

I completely agree with that ESM last sentence of par. on p. 18.

Edit: ESM echoes sentence argued in this comment and in this G2G question generally in the following terms : 

"EE is built on one core principle: We cannot judge the reliability of any information unless we know

• exactly where the information came from; and
• the strengths and weaknesses of that source."

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Yes, provenance is key.  But then again, this is a negative conclusion - "We cannot".  Understanding the provenance of the information won't tell us what actually happened.

Often the paperwork needs interpretation.  But the likeliest interpretation isn't necessarily the right one.  Proof is mostly about ruling out alternative interpretations.  But sometimes you can't.

And even then, there's always the possibility of a mistake.  Information with excellent provenance will have to be questioned if it doesn't add up to a feasible story.

So.   Having decided what we need, to do genealogy properly, the basic problem with pre-1700 is that usually we can't have it.  It's not there.

So we can give up, or we can make the best of what we have.  But there isn't a flowchart for that.

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I disagree completely. There is no question of giving up.

ESM is dealing with history and genealogy, which is inherently backwards looking.

Models such EE process map can be considered as generally unchanging except but their application gets progressively more difficult as the time horizon backwards lengthens. Still historians come up with history books and genealogists keep probing farther and farther backwards.

The scientific method always works no matter how difficult the challenge is. It is utterly unacceptable to give up on the scientific method because results become harder and harder to come by as you look backwards.

New techniques such as DNA become available. Time marches on. But there can be no making the best of what we DON'T have!  

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The issue RJ disputes is basically genealogical methodology.

In that respect, Bruce Durie's article, What Is Genealogy? Philosophy, Education, Motivations and Future Prospects, says "As a methodology, genealogy depends on the existence or [sic] primary sources ... or where these do not exist, reliable substitutes. Sadly, not all substitutes are reliable—compiled genealogies are notoriously untrustworthy, and in some cases purposely falsified to establish a case."

Which is interesting in regard to this G2G question, since Durie suggests that emphasis should be on delineating reliable from unreliable substitutes, the assumption being that primary sources ("official and other records of vital and other events such as court cases, deeds") are inherently basically reliable— so why make an issue of the obvious sort of thing.

And this underscores need in pre-1700 genealogy to build on derivative and authored work sources to fill the gap in original pre-1700 record sources.

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Still historians come up with history books and genealogists keep probing farther and farther backwards

But they don't prove much, by ESM's standards.

It's a mistake to think everything said by Anderson or Richardson is proved.  A lot of the time they can only give you what seems to be likeliest.  If you could go back and find out what really happened, it would sometimes be more complicated.

Sometimes the evidence of that might turn up, eventually, in the last place you'd look.  Sometimes you'll never know.  In the meantime, it's all provisional.  Work that can never be finished has to be published unfinished.

If ESM did medieval genealogy, to her own rules, how much would she ever get published?

Stewart Baldwin's Henry Project is gold standard.  A huge amount of work over many years.  But only 265 profiles.  And even then you have to think, if another scholar did the same independently, it would come out different.  Not everywhere obviously.  But wherever a view has to be taken, experts will take different views.

 

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RJ, So how would you summarize the thread of comments to my above answer in relation to the G2G question, Is your source for pre-1700 genealogy reliable enough to use on WikiTree?

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"As careful researchers, we cannot apply an easy, generic label—reliable or unreliable—to any document, much less any type of document."

Agree entirely.

"the current binary reliable-unreliable listing adopted for various projects is not coherent because it does not rigorously adhere to EE's rational, systems approach"

Also true.  But rigorously adhering to EE on WikiTree would be scary.