GenoPro Home
GenoPro Home  |  Get Started With My Genealogy Tree  |  Buy  |  Login  |  Privacy  |  Search  |  Site Map
 

GenoPro Support Forum




The Uncertainty Principle

Click to view RSS...
Author I think it can be said that no family tree will ever contain the whole truth, but it should as far as possible contain all discovered facts about the ancestors and ideally the sources of those facts.
Posted Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - Post #35255
Legendary Master

Legendary MasterLegendary MasterLegendary MasterLegendary MasterLegendary MasterLegendary MasterLegendary MasterLegendary MasterLegendary Master

Administrators
Customers
Important Contributors
FamilyTrees.GenoPro.com
GenoPro version: 3.1.0.1

Last Login: 12 hours ago
Posts: 3,426, Visits: 26,507
I think it can be said that no family tree will ever contain the whole truth, but it should as far as possible contain all discovered facts about the ancestors and ideally the sources of those facts. 

As appleshaw and others have pointed out, the facts can vary depending on the source of the information, memories fade, errors creep in on transcription, different censuses record the same family member differently, people may deliberated obscure their past. etc.

Therefore we should be able to record all variations in the data discovered.  I suggest the following for GenoProX:

  1. Individuals can have multiple names, not just the 'Alternative Name' available currently but multiple sets for all name fields (forenames, last names, nicknames etc).
    As well as coping with the variations in sources this will also help for example in cases where immigrants from places like Russia and Poland to the UK changed their names to 'Anglicised' versions, also where people have different names in other languages e.g. Hebrew and English.

  2. Similarly dates and places of birth and death can also be recorded differently depending on the source, and so multiple sets of the data associated with birth and death events should be possible.

  3. Sometimes there appears to be more than one possibility in the records for the a parent of a child. I suggest a child can 'belong' to more than one family or alternatively more than one father or mother can be attached to a family unit.

  4. In all the above there should be a way of expressing a 'level of certainty' against each item in the multiple set. In the case of point 3 above this could be indicated visually in the pedigree link by moving from a solid line to a more and more dashed then dotted line as the level of uncertainty rises.



'lego audio video erro ergo disco' or "I read, I listen, I watch, I make mistakes, therefore I learn"


Edited: Tuesday, September 29, 2015 by GenoProSupport



Similar Topics

Click to view RSS...
Expand / Collapse

Reading This Topic

Expand / Collapse
Active: 4 - 1 guest, 2 members, 0 anonymous.
Refresh