What makes me "confident"?

Question

Right now, well-meaning WikiTreers are marking parents as "confident" on the basis on one published book, (without describing the evidence ... without anything but a citation), or on the basis of one census report.  No biography.  I am uncertain.

How do we now go from "Confident" to "Uncertain"? 

The instructions are that there must be "sources" in order to choose "Confident"   http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Confident

It needs to be more than sources ... any sources will do ... "defining all the sources that could make a relationship Confident would be nearly impossible" 

Yes, it would ... and trying to define it by defining the word is also nearly impossible.

That is the reason the Board for Certification of Genealogists recently moved away from "Preponderance of the Evidence," and went instead, to a description of the process.

We CAN define the process, and we don't even need to re-invent the wheel.  It has already been done ... the Genealogical Proof Standard:

  a reasonably exhaustive search;
   complete and accurate source citations;
   analysis and correlation of the collected information;
   resolution of any conflicting evidence; and
   a soundly reasoned, coherently written conclusion.

These five steps could be our criteria for confidence.  If these steps have been taken and described in the biography, it would go a long way toward increasing my confidence level. 

Might it be a move in the right direction to adopt something like this for WikiTree?
 
Source of the Genealogical Proof Standard: [http://www.bcgcertification.org/resources/standard.html The Genealogical Proof Standard]  Board for Certification of Genealogists, Copyright 2007-2013

Comments

That would make me confident.

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I like that idea Cynthia. We should take advantage of what experts in the field have come up with rather than reinvent the wheel. Does the standards board have any examples to show what compliance might look like?

In that once profiles are set to Confident, they cannot be set back to no flag being set for certainty, it makes it vital to have a good, clear, shared understanding before using it.

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I like the idea as well.

Answer 1

The problem is that there is a difference between being confident in a conclusion and being confident that a particular factual proposition is correct. Following the GPS procedures allows you (and more importantly others) to be confident in your conclusion. However, your conclusion might be that a person is "maybe" or "more likely than not" or "probably not" another person's parent. No procedure can guarantee a black and white answer because evidence is often incomplete and inconsistent.

I just read the BCG post about getting rid of "preponderance of the evidence" as the standard that must be met to "prove" kinship: http://www.bcgcertification.org/skillbuilders/learyevidence.html Having gotten rid of POE, BCG nonetheless says that its standard for "proving" kinship is unchanged and is somewhere between POE and "beyond a reasonable doubt" (which BCG mistates as "beyond a shadow of a doubt"). It says that kinship is "proved" when "the evidence supporting it is of sufficient power to convince a reasonable, unbiased person." Unfortunately, this just kicks the can down the road. Convince a reasonable, unbiased person of what? That it is more likely than not that the person is the parent? Convince a reasonable unbiased person so they don't have a shadow of a doubt that the person is the parent?

Most crucially, however, is the question of whether we need to even make a "yes" or "no" descision at all? Here's where breaking from legal conventions make a LOT of sense. In a civil case, the plaintiff either wins or loses; in a criminal case, the defendent is either guilty or not guilty. There has to be a yes or no answer. In genealogy, however, that does not have to be the case. We should be free to acknowledge that nothing is ever 100% certain and no matter how much research we do and how many sources we cite, we almost always end up with a conclusion that is somewhere along the spectrum from absolutely impossible to 100% certain. This is where Chris seems to be going. He is introducing intermediate statuses betwen "yes, they are the parent" and "no, they are not the parent" to acknowledge that facts frequently leave us with a very well reasoned conclusion that they "are probably the parent" or "its a reasonable possibility that they are the parent'."  I think this a big improvement over BCG's approach, which appears to be clinging to a binary "yes" or "no" standard.

Regardless of how many certainty/uncertainty statuses we create, however, we still need to define them. Of particular importance is deciding when it is appropriate to link one person as the parent of another. Regardless of the reality that we may conclude that there are several possible parents, we are currently still stuck with just choosing one. Since we are moving away from a simple yes/no approach, however, I totally agree with Chris that that standard should be well below BCG's binary decision standard.

Comments

I hesitate to identify the profile, for obvious reasons, but this is an actual example of a profile in which both parents have been marked "Confident,"

The profiled person was born in 1785, and the only citation is the 1850 Federal Census.  No information is provided about the census data, but I imagine the only reference to his birth was his age, birth state, and possibly his parents' birth state(s).

This does not make me confident about his parents.  Now, my question is ... how do we go from Confident to Uncertain?

Jim, I will find you some which (I think) do follow the process.

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It's probably hopeless to hope for any uniformity in the use of these things.  There are huge numbers of WikiTreers, most of them only occasional, and they don't read the help files or follow G2G.

Mostly they just do "their own tree" and will go with their own ideas.

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RJ Horace is on to something important here.  Wikitree is not driven by precisely the same motivations and rules as, say "The American Genealogist".  It is "open" and therefore we must bring some understanding of sources other than what a professional genealogist might approve.  I know my grand mother's name and I don't need any references to prove my certainty.  And so forth.  I have a copy of the front page of my cousin's bible so I am "certain", etc., etc., etc.  It is endless if you are dealing with the public.

I think the real question is whether an "outside" observer who comes along after the profile is posted and who doesn't know the family should be "confident" or "uncertain" in the data presented and more importantly whether such an outsider should be able to change the status on the profile from "confident" to "uncertain".  I think a related question would concern the rationale for having a confidence level at all.  You can easily scan the proflle to see if there are sufficient sources and make up your own mind.  So what critical information is derived from the "certainty" field? Not much, as far as I can see. I think it simply refers to how "certain" the creator of the profile was, not how "certain" the data is in terms of some set genealogical criteria.

MSp

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Michael - As to your last  point - re what information "certain" adds:

Having a profile that is exhaustively sourced and well documented has everything to do with whether an oustide observer should be confident in the conclusiions stated in the profile. HOWEVER, that DOES NOT mean that the facts in the date fields are necessarily "certain." The best sourced and documented profile may conclude that a date or relationship in a data field is only plausible or probable, in which case the data field should not be marked as certain, despite the fact the issue was well sourced and docmented.

In order for a data field to be marked certain, TWO requirements should be met:

1. The issue addressed by the data field should have been sufficiently well researched and analyzed that we are confident of the conclusion AND
2. The conclusion is that we are reasonably certain that the fact stated in the date field is correct.

I therefore believe that "certain" indicators for data fields do (if used properly) provide very valuable information.

While "certain" should mean something very specific - eg the 2 requirements above have been met, "uncertain" unfortunately could mean that either of the two requirements was not met. Personnally, I don't think we should run around and mark everything that has not yet been sourced as "uncertain." That IS something we can tell just by looking at the profile, without any need for a flag. I would reserve "uncertain" for situations where we have thoroughly researched an issue, but have concluded that, while the value in the data field is reaonably plausible and is most plausible value, we are not reasonbly certain it is correct.

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I joined a heredity society and I knew I was going to have trouble with one generation because I did not have a birth certificate, or reference to a record, for a GG GM. But low and behold the accepted the only thing I did have ad that was her on a census with her four daughters who lived in a boarding house and worked in the mills near Springfield. There was enought good supporting evidence surrounding her (e.g. her name on children's birth certificates, wedding or death certificates and other such things) that it was evident that she was the mother of my G GM.

I suppose that is why they required at least two "first tier" sources for each person's category of record (BMD).

FYI   Jim

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I suppose I should have been more specific in my initial question.  I am not really concerned with anyone's grandparents.  I would never question that.  I am more concerned about our use of  "Confident" in regards to profiles of people born ... say before 1800 or the Open privacy level profiles.

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This is al relly too deep for me. I didn't undestand a word of what someone wrote to me. I huess thatr';s why there are "Valedictorians" and "class clowns"...of this I am certain:)

I do know thatI have seen stuff recorded incorrectly. They had the date for to couples switched. My G GF names was not his name but it was I learned later. He was French Canadian and his name was all twisted arround and differant. Finally I had someone at the FCGS, I thik it is, get me past the few first generations.

I saw above here that someone said that getting people on Wiki aboard on this will be difficult. What I understand is the we are being asked to grade the source as to weaather we think they put the correct info in the record with we feel "certain" or "uncertain" that the info is correct and pertains to the person in the profile? Maybe that is on the line of the Legacy program that you grade the source between 1-5 as to your confidence of the source.

I guess that's my few cents worth for now.:)

Answer 2

Is there a aparticular profile on Wiki that displays "confidence" about the the parents and exemplifies what is being talked about. Being visual oriented, it helps to see am example.

Thank you,  JIm