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One secondary source - a good way to get in trouble [11 December 2011]
This page cites one secondary source with no references to any primary documents. Relying on one source, especially one secondary source, is a good way to make errors. The dates come from unknown sources, but don't fit with the parents' dates. Something is wrong. --Jrich 12:06, 11 December 2011 (EST)
You are quite right, one 2ndry source is not sufficient to establish fact. However, it provides a basis from which to work from. It is my thought that these pages are works in progress, and as a collaborative effort, others like you, may cite primary or "close to primary" sources before I add them.--Kpb2011 12:48, 11 December 2011 (EST)
[Added] After reviewing the changes, I think I understand what you were referring to. The listed source was cited to her name only, not the bDate and dDate. That is true. I happened to have the dates in my personal database, which I suppose I could have cited. However, felt it best to provide some context to who I thought Patience Foster was. I do not intend to cite, as a source, my own database (which is really a family tree organized in Family Tree Maker). I was confident on the dates for Patience.
- Except, as it turns out, the one was apparently typed in incorrectly, being 10 years off, and represented as a birth, when all that is known is her baptism. So that her parents appeared to have been roughly 15 when she was born. These pages are works in progress, however, it is a common practice on the Internet, unfortunately, to copy and propagate first, and ask questions later, if ever. First out of fear of misleading people and wasting their time, and second, out of fear of having an error take on a life of its own as it gets thoughtlessly propagated, it is easy to imagine that there should be a higher standard of due diligence required before posting to the Internet than there is for recording data in one's personal database. Then, because we are collaborating with people we don't know, to really enable others to make any judgment about our contribution and work with it, it is necessary to know what the sources are. --Jrich 13:31, 11 December 2011 (EST)
- I believe that if you look at my contributions as a whole, you will find that it is not my intention to cut/paste spurious information, that in fact, my intention is to add citations sourcing the information I post. All I can add is that you must have an enormous database with detailed citations and/or quite adapt at quickly accessing an enormous number of resources for you to be able to add citations as you walk behind me step-by-step.--Kpb2011 13:39, 11 December 2011 (EST)
- I got called away while editing, and that got posted prematurely, thinking I'd get back sooner. (Bad habit, some idle time process causes my computer to freeze if left alone for a while - some old software not properly deleted, I suspect). So it was not meant to be a complaint but it reads like that... Sorry! I am aware that the page for Patience didn't exist, and it was an improvement to have it added. I was working on a suggestion that some secondary sources need to be followed up.
- The fear of posting mistakes leads me to try and find references to primary documents, not just secondary sources, some of which have proved extremely unreliable (for example, Pierce who wrote the Foster genealogy has a bad reputation, although he seems correct about Patience, but many of them - even widely used ones like Bond, Savage, etc. - make a surprising number of errors). It gives much more confidence to be able to find the underlying contemporary document, though even just confirming that there is no disagreement with other major sources will disclose many of the errors. There are actually a lot of sources for colonial Massachusetts on line. Many of the pre-1923 family genealogies (many being the seminal works on a surname even still), as well as many town histories, and even many of the earlier issues of genealogical magazines such as NEHGR, are viewable at books.google.com or archive.org (or heritagequest.com which is available at many libraries, and can often be used at home by entering one's library card number). Further, many published vital records for Massachusetts towns are included in the above sources, or have been scanned at ma-vitalrecords.org. Once one learns how best to manipulate the various search engines associated with those websites, it can be pretty easy to located desired information. Even if one can't find the fact itself, perhaps one can find a fact that makes it likely, such as the death record for the first wife when no record of the second marriage exists, or the birth of a child mentioning the second wife by name, or the will of a father that gives the married name of a daughter. Etc., etc. Sometimes all I can find is someone's word that something happened, but I try to have more than that before posting. --Jrich 15:39, 11 December 2011 (EST)
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