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Re: restore text that accurately reflects what the source says [1 November 2017]
The GOFA page cited is 393.
The actual text does not read, "Capt. Jabez Olmsted of undetermined orign [sic] ..."
It reads, "(Capt.) JABEZ OLMSTED, Ware River, Northampton County, Mass. ..."
I purposefully omitted the "Ware River, Northampton County, Mass." part, because you are watching this page and you usually insist on trimming these citations down to the bare minimum. I would have bet money that you would have followed behind me to remove it, so I was trying to be courteous to your preference in this case.
If you wish to comment that he is of an undetermined origin, I have no problem with that, but such a comment should be separate from the actual text, preferably enclosed in brackets, so that readers will not mistake your comments for the actual text, like they will now. --cos1776 17:16, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
- It was not in quotes, it was an abstract of what the source says, so you erased information - not that I would have pared down - but that I purposely put there as a summary of what the source had to communicate about the person. If you want to quote the whole 5-page passage feel free, but I wanted to communicate the essence so somebody with some AFN that assigns him to some assumed parents knows the sources indicates otherwise. When I don't have a primary record to identify concretely what marriage is being talked about, I usually add the parents of the two participants as given by the secondary source to make the identification more specific and less vague, in this case, that his parents are unknown. I am unsure what the Ware River comment refers to. That wasn't on this page and was not an issue in the referred to edit. --Jrich 18:23, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
- Elaborating further: I have a small appreciation for brevity, considering it a courtesy to the reader (not all readers are interested so don't want voluminous detail, and for the ones that are, one cites sources so they can research further), but my problem with clutter that appears to have informed your opinion above, has more to do with answering the question: where else could this go? So when people cut and past or (rarely) type multiple generations of a family on the Person page, I think they show little understanding of what the purpose of each page is. Clearly a person page is to describe a single person, i.e., not his grandchildren. Yes, his children would be somewhat appropriate to describing them, but the fact remains that the children can and should have their own page, and detailing the lives of children or grandchildren signifies a couple of possibilities: either somebody is cutting and pasting the same information to many pages thus creating an updating nightmare if the information is wrong; or they don't know what is important so simply post everything they can find. I prefer to have a page reflect, as briefly as possible, why we believe the posted facts are true and refute other credible sources that may be misleading. I want to have each page reflect care for that individual, and not reflect more care for a descendant or ancestor than for the person themselves.
- That said, the page in question is a family page. Long ago I posted a very long post suggesting that there was a serious need to develop guidelines for what goes on the Family page versus what goes on the Person page. The discussion ended immediately, probably because the post was too long and contained multiple complicated ideas, and there is essentially no architectural person currently active at werelate (the current philosophy has been stated as "Let's see what they do with it"), and all software changes seem devoted to what is simple. On top of that, there is now 3 million pages that have not necessarily done things that way. To me, a family page should ideally work no matter which person having the right name is identified as the husband and wife. Thus, in my view, the most appropriate comments on a Family page would seem to be to prove the date and place of the wedding, and in controversial cases, possibly the birth order of the children. Whether a husband and wife, or any of the children, belong to the family should, ideally in my opinion, belong on the person page of that individual, not on the family page.
- That is not a hard and fast rule, as the most important criteria is to indicate proof to the reader, and sometimes I respond to previously posted data and such factors. But usually, when I can find a primary source for the marriage, that is all I put on a Family page to prove the date, and when I find a Person page with a wedding source posted, I remove it (making sure it is reflected on the Family page). After all, if I have a primary source, chances are good somebody by that name got married on that day and eventually we will hopefully get the family page linked to the correct person pages. But if my only source is secondary, I cannot be sure the marriage actually happened. It is merely some book's assertion. Since secondary source frequently have a wider scope than a single marriage, I usually feel like I am not reflecting their assertion adequately if I don't make it clear who they identify as the husband and wife. The Olmsted book didn't just say that the wife of Jabez Olmstead was Thankful Barnes, it said it was a specific Thankful Barnes, the daughter of Thomas Barnes and Mary How. Without duplicating all the information that the book gives for her, which should be given on Thankful Barnes' person page already, the briefest way to accurately say that seems to be to include the parents given by the Olmsted book. Likewise for Jabez Olmsted, except in his case, it says his origin has not been determined. --Jrich 02:45, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
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