Ron wrote: >It would seem to be that our different reasons for publishing (in whatever form) lead to different conclusions as to what standard of sourcing is appropriate for the published output. This inevitably poses the question as to what should be stored in our respected sources. A decision has to be made at the outset because one cannot pick and choose what to exclude or include when compiling a report. The answer, for me the "bare bones", whereas for yourself (I think) a full citation. One could run two databases with differing 'quality' of sources, but not for me, thank you.
Ron, you describe the situation well. Some of us are, by nature, "minimalists" and others are "explainers." Obviously, I'm an "explainer." As such, I'd ask: what's the harm in it? Too many totally wrong genealogical assertions, unfortunately, exist because someone did not understand a "barebones" citation, guessed wrong about what it meant, and then put their wrong guess into circulation as a fact. (My mama raised me on the old cliché: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. :) >From another perspective: if we strip down our "working citations" to the "barebones" that we might eventually publish, we are also stripping away our own ability to evaluate exactly what we have--especially after the recollection of that entire source has gone cold. Even an attached page image doesn't tell us all we need, because looking at one page from a census or one document from a collection is the same as isolating one person out of a photograph and stripping away the whole context of the picture, no? >For the last year I have been involved in a discussion with someone as to whether we share the same nth grandfather. He has approached the family from the female side and myself from the male side. We are both agreed the the grandfather married a woman called Ann, but which Ann? By a process of elimination he arrived at an Ann who married my grandfather, and to be fair he has checked and doubled checked but cannot find a marriage that is an 'exact' fit and he may well be correct, probably is, but that does not meet my standard of proof, As a result I will not publish the result. Here in the U.S., when one feels they have developed a good case for an identity--although no document specifically states the connection--the next step is to develop a proof argument that follows the tenets of the Genealogical Proof Standard and then submit the essay to a peer-reviewed genealogical journal such as NGSQ. Has your long-distance cousin developed such a proof argument? Elizabeth ------------------------------------------------------------- Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL, FASG *** Holiday discounts on Legacy 7.0, add-ons, books, and more. Visit http://tinyurl.com/65rpbt. *** Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyfamilytree.com/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
