Template talk:CohabitationWithoutFormalities

The following section was copied from the Watercooler discussion on this template subject.

Cohabitation without marriage formalities [30 August 2016]

I went wandering through our lists of English and Scottish royals this morning and, of course, came across numerous usages of our template {{CohabitationWithoutFormalities}} and the less common but not unknown {{Speculative child?}}. Both are printed in jaundice yellow and jump out from the page, making it difficult to concentrate on other facts that might be more of interest.

Could we tone down the colour or remove it altogether, and quietly face the fact that adultery, bigamy and illegitimacy have always happened. We are not here to judge people of past times. --Goldenoldie 10:17, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't think the colour was meant to be judgemental -- it's the same colour used on all the family assertion templates, including the adoption templates and speculative spouse templates. I'll admit it is a bit garish -- I think it's meant to stand out so that it's hard to ignore when someone else wants to edit the page. Gayel --GayelKnott 14:31, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Use of the Fact Assertion templates can be helpful, but is not mandatory. WeRelate:Suggestions/Assertions provides a good overview as to why they were created, if you'd like a refresher. I agree with Goldenoldie that they do not render well, so I don't use them very often myself. I have often wondered if anyone has found them beneficial for GEDCOM export. Can anyone comment on that? Regards, --cos1776 15:30, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

The color was used on the original assertion templates like Template:RefutedParents where it was believed to be very important to call attention to the fact. For instance, if a couple is commonly said to be the parents of a person but evidence shows that they are definitely not the parents, it is important to call attention to that fact so that readers are aware of that fact (and don't try to add the wrong "parents").

For the Cohabitation template (which probably just copied the code), I see no reason that the cohabitation fact needs to be shouted out. Unless there are objections, I'll remove the colored background in a day or two. --robert.shaw 15:35, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

It is annoying that these facts are made to stand out prominently on the page. Consider for example, Refuted Parents. When you think about how refuted parents come about, it is the mistake of people like us that do poor research. The person whose page it is (and whose page should honor, or at least, represent their subject) clearly knew who their correct parents were and played no part in having the mistake made about their parents. So it seems disrespectful to make the most eyecatching item be a statement that we made a mistake about them.

Second, if it is important to call attention to fact like these, it is probably necessary to provide something of an explanation. For example, how it is known there was no marriage? Or how the genealogical community was fooled into assigning the wrong parents and how do we now know that this identification was an error. This usually requires a note, since a simple source citation would require tracking down the source and reading it, which very well may not be something a reader can do in a timely manner. So if one thinks the fact is so important to be flagged with a special fact, it is important enough that an effort should be made to make the explanation easily accessible to the reader, i.e., by providing an analysis that explains why an apparently non-intuitive fact is true. If this is done, it then seems like the presence of the note itself then provides the notification that readers to be aware of this fact. Thus it seems like these tags serve no purpose, in my opinion. --Jrich 16:04, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm pleased to see that others also feel that the colourful nature of Template:CohabitationWithoutFormalities was unnecessary. I wasn't aware of Template:RefutedParents, so did not know that the style of the former came from the latter. The two situations are so different. Template:RefutedParents deals with genealogists' errors which might be fixable; Template:CohabitationWithoutFormalities deals with facts which more than likely did occur.

I agree with JRich. The Text Area is there for explanations. Let's use it. --Goldenoldie 14:17, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Based on the consensus discussed here I've removed the Jaundice Yellow color in the template result and modified the wording in the resulting fact line of a Family Page to reflect only the single word "Cohabitation" rather than the more lengthy "Cohabitation Without Marriage Formalities." I believe the longer term is redundant, in that cohabitation literally means two unmarried people living together without legally or formally registering their relationship (for the most part, I suppose). Hopefully that addresses the perceived judgment concern.

I agree that notices of genealogical errors or challenges to established fact events should be highlighted as something needing to be fixed, investigated further, or visually brought up as a challenge, therefore the bolded jaundice yellow color seems appropriate in those "Refuted Cases." --BobC 15:56, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. Although the single word "Cohabitation" might be altered to "Cohabitation. No marriage found." just to inform the visiting reader. -- Goldenoldie 09:21, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

"No marriage found" is not always the same thing. A person may have multiple concurrent partners and associated children. There may be a record of them declaring one of the partnerships is not a legal marriage, and there are other possible ways of reasonably deducing that a liaison was not under a formal marriage. "No marriage found" in fact is a common state of genealogical knowledge for cases where one can generally presume that in fact there was a marriage but a record, if one exists, has not yet been found. --robert.shaw 20:06, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Robert's statement and would expand that by saying that we shouldn't use the term "Cohabitation" solely because a marriage record has not been found or the actual marriage ceremony has not been identified. Also, adding the wording of "No marriage found" to the template wording would once again limit the scope of the much more broad meaning and use of "Cohabitation." Users should be encouraged to add such defining terms and relationship characteristics to the description field in freeform style following the template to further characterize what was known about the relationship rather than have it included in the actual template terminology.

I've created a graphic below to show the varied usage of the template term, while not changing the template itself.

You might notice my use of certain cohabitation terms. Rather than delving into the specific definitions here, I'll include these in the template page. Many of these terms are relatively new creations, so probably would apply to more contemporary relationships (which would imply involving living people). So they should be seen for use of free style wording, rather than as limiting terms.

I might also add that I don't feel it appropriate to use the template under the "Marriage" event on the Family Page, because it is not a marriage, it is a relationship event OUTSIDE marriage, therefore should be included as an "Other" event (as shown above). Marriage events should be reserved for relationships that were known or presumed to be legally or religiously formalized. (That's my common-sense analysis, although I'm not certain how that would reflect in a GEDCOM export.) --BobC 14:31, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

The originally intended purpose of the template, was to flag relationships for which marriage formalities had occurred. I can now see that use of the term cohabitation had some unintended consequences - since people seem to think it means that the couple resided together for some extended period (extended that is, beyond basic biological requirements...). If there is cause for only one such template, then perhaps a different name is called for. If people think different categories of non-marriage are called for - that's great - let's hear them! --jrm03063 16:20, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

This conversation is now begging another question: Is there an easy was to find a list of this type of template? Or, putting it another way, have our templates been properly categorized? In the light of the discussion of categories of about a month ago, I can see some people saying "not that again" but, being an analytical type of person, what I just found in a browse of templates does not look good. Category:Communications templates has everything in it--kitchen sink of unwashed dishes included! -- Goldenoldie 09:21, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't know about other people, but I usually use the Template search and enter my best guess at the template name in the key word field. Seems to work reasonably well for me. There is also a category called Assertion templates. I use the speculative templates a fair bit, and have also used the refuted templates on occasion where there seems to be an internet-wide belief in a given relationship that is unsupported by documentation and/or that has been disproven. Gayel --GayelKnott 14:55, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

You can find templates "of this type" at Category:Assertion templates. (An overview is at WeRelate:Suggestions/Assertions and the help text associated with the templates is at Help:Assertions.)

By the way, there is a pretty diagram of how templates are categorized at Category:Templates, but it probably hasn't been updated since 2011. Personally, I usually find a template by a Google search of WR for "template" and some possible keyword(s). --robert.shaw 20:06, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

The documentation can also be reached by drilling down through the help system.

I suppose someone could dream up a cute interface for fact creation. Maybe - for any fact type where a template is potentially appropriate in the description field - there would be a secondary pull-down of the different templates created for use in that spot. Selection could drop them into the description field in very much the way that some wiki type-in fields allow header specifications to be dropped in. If we're really smart - then maybe the software can learn that information by looking for categories of templates... --jrm03063 16:20, 30 August 2016 (UTC)