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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2000-01 > 0948745171


From: Stewart Baldwin< >
Subject: Re: Ratings issues
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 20:19:31 GMT


On 23 Jan 2000 09:11:14 -0800, (Rafal Prinke) wrote:

[snip]

>Stewart Baldwin suggested "a consensus among scholars" as the minimum
>requirement for accepting a given filiation as reasonably certain.
>The problem with this criterion (as well as others) is that consensus
>is not something stable - it changes with time and itself has
>different degrees of "weight". An article published in a peer reviewed
>journal represents a much stronger consensus than one in an informal
>bulletin of a genealogical society - but much weaker than inclusion of
>the same fact in a scholarly synthesis or encyclopedia.
>
>But such consensus is always outdated by currect research. So if we
>accept ES as representing the consensus, there is already a whole
>body of articles and monographs questioning particular pieces of
>information included there. These may - or may not - be incorporated
>in a future update.

I think this misinterprets what is meant by a "consensus". ES may
represent the consensus for SOME of the relationships that it states,
but it certainly cannot be regarded as doing so for all of the
relationships contained therein. Each claimed relationship has to be
looked at separately. To give an example where consensus is clearly
present and is unlikely to change, King Henry I of England is stated
to be the son of William the Conqueror in a multitude of contemporary
documents, and I am unaware of any scholars who question that
affiliation. Medieval genealogy is full of noncontraversial examples
like this (which, because of the presence of a clear consensus, tend
to not get discussed much in this forum). The case of Agatha (wife of
Edward the Exile) is one where consensus does not exist at this time.
The case has been contraversial, and there has not been enough time
for enough experts to read the relevant articles and offer their
opinion. My perception is that there seems to be a shift of opinion
in the direction of the Russian hypothesis, but it will be some time
before we see if those proposing that solution have produced enough
evidence for their case to get a scholarly consensus.

Of course, what it means to have a consensus might mean different
things to different people. I think that most would agree that an
absence of contraversy about a particular link could be regarded as a
consensus, provided that a reasonable number of people have looked at
the problem. For example, if an article is published in a journal
like TAG offering straightforward evidence about a newly discovered
relationship, and has been read by the general readership of that
journal without any objections being raised, then I think it would be
reasonable to regard it as representing a consensus. (After all, most
genealogists are not shy about raising objections if they think they
have spotted a serious goof. :-)) On the other hand, if the article
is about something that has been a subject of argument in the past,
then more time is needed to judge the reaction to the article. Also,
some may call me elitist for saying this, but when deciding if
something is supported by a consensus, the qualifications of the
people involved need to be considered and weighed accordingly. For
example, if all 50 or so of the F.A.S.G.'s agree that the alleged
royal ancestry of an American immigrant is false, then that far
outweighs a multitute of inexperienced wishful thinkers who want to
keep the phony line.

As for the criterion of consensus not being stable, that is hardly a
valid objection. It is inevitable in any subject of possible
contraversy, and every single one of the "rating systems" that has
been suggested is similarly unstable and subject to change as new
discoveries are made.

As for the proposed rating systems, I still don't think that they will
have any effect on the general run of garbage genealogical databases
that plague the internet. If a database is both large and bad, then
it is almost certainly also unfixable (since the time needed to
properly fix is probably much greater than the time needed to start
over from scratch). If, on the other hand, the goal is to form a new
database (or collection of interlinked databases) with relationships
"rated" in some way, why not fix it so that problematic relationships
are in a field of their own instead of just marked with a tag? For
example, if A has been proposed as the father of B, but that choice is
contraversial, and hotly debated, why not have a separate field
labelled "Proposed Father" (or something similar, which might have
more than one entry) in which proposed candidate(s) could be given,
leaving the entry in the "Father" field blank for the time being.
This would make it somewhat harder for plagiarists to change a
proposed father into a certain father automatically. (Of course, they
could still do it manually.) Another field that might be added to
such a database program is "Falsely Attributed Father", in which you
could list the phony father(s) that had been claimed for the
individual in bad sources, along with the reasons why that claim is
known to be false. Of course, we know that some "genealogists" are so
deluded by wishful thinking that such an indication would not faze
them, but information of this type, in addition to being a useful tool
for experts, would be quite useful to the intelligent novice who is
comparing various databases, and is at the very beginning of the
learning process.

Stewart Baldwin

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