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[add comment] [edit] What does "primary" mean to you? [1 November 2009]Based on some back-and-forth edits I'm seeing to this page, it seems like there may be some difference of opinion about what we each mean by a primary source. My understanding -- and I realize the following are perhaps oversimplified for the sake of brevity is that:
-- Jillaine 15:07, 31 October 2009 (EDT)
If you see my comment a couple of days ago, I stated that PA, CP, MGS and AR7 among others are hardly primary sources. The "LDS GML3-4" calls them primary as part of the source record, whereas WR catagorizes them in the citation, so if we change it it must be done manually.
Some folks maintain that the only proof is in a primary contemporary source. However, many contemporary writers had an axe to grind and since history is written by the winners, sources like the above may be more reliable. Had things turned out differently, we might have a totally different view of Richard, III rather than as a vile little hunchback. So being tertiary does not automatically make sources questionable.
BTW Katherine's name was not Swynford but de Roet, Swynford being the surname of her first husband. Neither was John of Gaunt named Plantagenet. Plantagenet was a sobriquet used by Geoffrey of Anjou and was first used as a surname by Richard, 3rd Duke of York, 1411-1460, the father of Edward, IV and Richard, III, both of the house of York. Contemporarily, the kings from Henry, II thru Richard, II are known as the Angevin kings not Plantagenet. I am currently merging the pages I uploaded and will try to deal with such corrections later, although JRM has a decent handle on it and has been cleaning up behind me. Feel free to do the same. Of 138 families uploaded, 94 were proposed as candidates for merger. This leaves only about 100,000 families to go. I am seeing matching pages with things such as 19 children credited to a couple who only had six or credited to the wrong wife, etc. Apparently there is still much merging to be done as merging of families has created many duplicates among the children.--Scot 16:31, 31 October 2009 (EDT)
Jillaine, I have long lamented that the work of the Medieval Families Identification unit was lost in a political squabble and the source documentation was never published. Our pages for medieval personages are a godawful mess, mostly unsourced. While I hesitate to accept wholesale the work of folk who don't understand what a primary source is, but Cokayne, Weis, Sheppard, Faris etc. are well-respected as reliable sources as opposed to Burke's, Roderick Stuart and such, who are not. I am not uploading kaka data, that has already been done, some of the existing pages in WR are the result of 15 or 20 versions of unsourced kaka data merged into one. maybe the best way to fix it is to delete all of it and start over. This just occurred to me, but maybe it is a viable solution. After all we have been discussing how to protect these pages, eliminating Adam and Eve, mythical descents etc. Thoughts anyone? JRM?--Scot 13:22, 1 November 2009 (EST)
Probably not, but if it were a coordinated effort, you could download your Gedcom prior to deletion and then re-upload it after. It's just a wild idea but as I think about it more, the more I like it. At onetime the AF was closed to submissions after 1500 or so from the public. All of the data for that period was submitted by a committee. Nothing was entered unles there was a valid source. The committee was eventually disolved over lack of agreement on the definition of valid. It is all in the AF but the sources are not. In order to tell if it was a committe submission, each individual entry had to be examined for submitter. This new database has culled that data and pubished with source information, however a bit sketchy. At least it is a guide of where to look. Someone of us just might have access to Cokayne for example (a 14 volume work.--Scot 15:24, 1 November 2009 (EST) |