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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2002-04 > 1019576760


From:
Subject: Re: On Douglas Richardson's new books [very OT]
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 11:46:00 EDT


In a message dated 4/23/02 4:07:46 AM, writes:

<< It would be better to put speculative, still-to-be-tested connections and
additions in an appendix and leave the tested part as a whole. That way
people
would know what is provisional. Does that make sense? >>

It makes a lot of sense to me. Good to hear from you, Paul. My point is that
total accuracy will not likely be obtained by anyone anytime soon, if ever.

I have not spoken or written to Douglas for some time and he knew nothing in
advance of the post I made. It was prompted by the completely inappropriate
remarks that I have seen here in the past few months. Please remember that it
is hard to keep your cool when vicious spears are being slung.

I am not certain how Douglas credits feedback from the forum. The length of
a book is very important to publishing costs and retail pricing, so I suspect
that a credit page thanking contributors to this forum for their help and the
mention of a few names would be more than sufficient. One cannot expect
individual recognition for every established correction in a book of that
size and scope.

<< Doug is not the only human being in our field attempting this. We all
build on
each other, and some of us spend a great deal of time at it. - Paul Reed >>

Douglas is one of the only people with credentials enough and credits enough
to build and successfully publish huge databases such as these. Granted,
everyone has personal data and some have quite a selection, but no one is
documenting these ancestries in such a comprehensive form. This
comprehensive form in itself is a severe problem, as the capacity for errors
is compounded with each added entry.

It has been said before, but many people on this forum tend to crucify the
messenger along with the message. It is as though they expect perfection in
an imperfect world where perfection is an unattainable goal and accuracy can
only be an approximation.

- Ken

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