Welcome to WeRelate, your virtual genealogical community. We're glad you have joined us. At WeRelate you can easily create ancestor web pages, connect with cousins and other genealogists, and find new information. To get started:
If you need any help, I will be glad to answer your questions. Just click on my signature link below and then click on the “Leave a message” link under my name in the upper left corner of my profile page. Thanks for participating and see you around!--Beth 17:06, 3 April 2008 (EDT)
I'm ashamed to admit, that I often start with information that comes from source I don't particularly trust. Or at least, sources that can't be reviewed (one-world tree, etc.). When I go through and tidy up such pages, I jettison such useless stuff so there will be no pretext that I know anything with any certainty.
If you have sources that tell a different story than the one that appears there, you should absolutely feel free to indicate them, quote them as appropriate, change the page generally, etc.--Jrm03063 00:09, 7 September 2008 (EDT)
Merging/removal of duplicates is important. And diversity of interests is what makes a collaborative effort like WeRelate potentially valuable. My remark in this regard was hasty.
But bad data is like a spinning road sign: many people will waste time going down the wrong road a la Elizabeth Kendall, previously mentioned. Hence, my obsession with sources. I believe everybody can be in possession of the right answer, but in collaboration you have to be willing to prove it to others who may not have access to the same sources, or be emotionally vested in other answers, or just not sensitive to the complexities of some cases.
Assertion is not proof. If you are inputting data with no sources, or based on websites that have no sources, then you are merely asserting your answer, as if your word should be all the proof needed. There are already plenty of websites that do that. There are already mechanisms for searching through ancestral files and OneWorldTree, etc. What is needed to go beyond this is a place to collect source citations and have discussions leading to a concensus on the most likely answer.
I have no problem with "wrong" data, if justification is given. Perhaps it shows that I need to find more evidence for my "right" data. Perhaps I have overlooked something. Perhaps those that say Thomas Skillin was born 1624 in Topsfield, MA actually mean Topsfield, England and there is evidence to support this? Then I want to find out because my data is wrong. Tracing immigrants across the pond is where most errors occur and hence documentation is needed the most.
--Jrich 10:13, 10 September 2008 (EDT)
Bad data that continually re-surfaces is a real problem. I try to deal with it by treating it as "real" data, that should be explicitly acknowledged and then refuted (ideally with a concrete source). My practice has been to put a section at the end of the narrative body called "Disputed Lineages" where I describe the problem/discrepancy/known error, the pages that were incorrectly connected, etc.
To my mind, improving our data base is a bit of a two-step. Of course I don't want to proliferate bad data, but I'm generally not loading new stuff. I approach the merge from the point of view that someone somewhere thinks that what I see in front of me is right. I try then to move werelate in the direction of representing the same thing but without the duplicates. The next step, which I sometimes get into if there are mutually exclusive facts (simultaneous marriages for example), is to start piling up the source material proof.
In a perfect world, folks wouldn't upload unsourced information. But we're awash in such pages. If I can at least boil that down to a set that is closer to the unique set, then added sources will be that much more beneficial.--Jrm03063 10:36, 10 September 2008 (EDT)
