On 02/07/16 22:11, Jason Quick wrote: > I just digitally copied Baker's History and Antiquities of Northampton Vol 1 and thought it best to share with SGM and will upload Vol 2 once I get that finished. I started this project after I saw Family Search digitized their copy of microfilm but can only access via a partner library. > > The PDF is 240MB vs the 6.5GB of JPEGS's from my camera. The 800+ .pdf pages are at 1600X2400 pixels (5.55"X8" at 300DPI) > > Please download and share.. > > Link https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw0V_1buxn-_Nk5WaWhPdTlLbkE/view > > Note... you can't preview the document just download due the the large size > > I am not sure of the bandwidth restrictions of Google so don't be surprised if the link gets blocked in a few days. Have you considered uploading them to archive.org? -- Hotmail is my spam bin. Real address is ianng at austonley org uk

On 02/07/16 22:09, D. Spencer Hines wrote: > D'accord. > > Another important issue is the writing of names in their native language, > insofar as possible. > And using the spelling current at the time at which the individuals were living. At some time - I'm not sure exactly how and when - my Goddards acquired the double d but they didn't start off with it. -- Hotmail is my spam bin. Real address is ianng at austonley org uk

On 30/06/16 11:02, WJH wrote: > I think we can all agree that most Wikis are rubbish in the medieval period, that this is due to poor "management" and too many "copiers without understanding and "importers of gedcoms". > > The question is whether the response is to create a new "pure" wiki project or to try and improve one or all of those already available (in which case there's the question of "which one?"). The first step to ensuring quality in any public genealogy project would be to decide to refuse under any circumstances to populate the database from Gedcoms. They make it far too easy to pump bad data round and round from project to project. There's no point it trying to clean up, Gedcoms allow entropy to grow at a rate you'd never catch up with. -- Hotmail is my spam bin. Real address is ianng at austonley org uk

On 01/07/16 18:18, Stewart Baldwin via wrote: > Some genealogists seem to form a sort of emotional attachment to their > newly found ancestors Years ago, before I started genealogy, I came across a John Goddard in a C18th diary who was fined for turning up late at his book club. A Goddard who was interested in books but not punctual: he must be an ancestor! He turned out to be my 5xggfather so that worked out OK ;) -- Hotmail is my spam bin. Real address is ianng at austonley org uk

On Saturday, July 2, 2016 at 11:13:23 AM UTC-6, John Higgins wrote: > It appears that the FHL’s Welsh Medieval Genealogy database is no longer available online. I just checked. The Welsh Medieval Genealogy database is still online at FamilySearch in the "Genealogies" section. Here's a link to Welsh-American Edward Foulke: https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/2:2:3W49-7N8 Nathan

On 02/07/16 16:30, Andrew Lancaster via wrote: > Ian Goddard wrote: > > >As I've suggested a couple of times in this discussion there's a need > to step back from assuming what tools to use and, indeed, what form of > governance to use until it's decided what, if anything, we want to do. > > A very good point. :) > > It might be a good idea for James or someone to list out some bullet > points of what the proposal must have, maybe should have, and definitely > should not have. > > I already understood that a focus on quality is one point (proper > sourcing etc), and I think I understood the idea was about manor histories? > > I raised a question very far back in the discussion about whether the > idea is therefore to make something like an improved VCH? (Which itself > is like an improved version of some of the great county histories that > we all still use so much.) How would it be different? > > But to be honest I am not even confident I understand the proposal that > well. The main thing I understood is that advice was being sought :) The original proposal, which was from Richard Carruthers, not James, was simply a list of family names listed against place and the times they occupied those places. However, everything has to start from sources so my suggestion would be to start with a list of source transcriptions indexed (and hence searchable) by names and places mentioned in them and not limited by status. There is a great deal of material online but scattered in many different places - digitised books of earlier transcriptions on archive.org etc, TNA, various modern transcription projects such as Vance's and Matthew's. This is the raw material for everything else but wouldn't it be a major help to be able to share the various nuggets we've unearthed in such a way that others would be able to use them easily? -- Hotmail is my spam bin. Real address is ianng at austonley org uk

Ian Goddard wrote: >As I've suggested a couple of times in this discussion there's a need to step back from assuming what tools to use and, indeed, what form of governance to use until it's decided what, if anything, we want to do. A very good point. :) It might be a good idea for James or someone to list out some bullet points of what the proposal must have, maybe should have, and definitely should not have. I already understood that a focus on quality is one point (proper sourcing etc), and I think I understood the idea was about manor histories? I raised a question very far back in the discussion about whether the idea is therefore to make something like an improved VCH? (Which itself is like an improved version of some of the great county histories that we all still use so much.) How would it be different? But to be honest I am not even confident I understand the proposal that well. The main thing I understood is that advice was being sought :) Regards Andrew

On Friday, July 1, 2016 at 8:02:21 AM UTC-7, ravinma...@yahoo.com wrote: > If you go back far enough on the _Miscellanea genealogica et heraldica_ pedigree, you'll notice that the Andrew Bures-Alice Roydon marriage is placed there as belonging several generations earlier. > > Also, this Poynings account in _Sussex Archaeological Collections_ shows the descent from Poynings to Bures as I gave it, while showing Hawise Poynings (m. Roydon) as a daughter of Sir Nicholas Poynings and his wife Jane Talbot: > > https://books.google.com/books?id=jDcGAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA15&dq=%22andrew+bures%22+poynings&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQ7Yz2wtLNAhXJSSYKHRRGAAoQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=%22andrew%20bures%22%20poynings&f=false > > Anyway ... something for the descendants of Judith King Aylmer to straighten out (or disprove). https://books.google.ca/books?id=inFEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA340&dq=Andrew+Bures-Alice+Roydon&hl=en&sa=X&ved see lynk

On Saturday, July 2, 2016 at 3:45:37 PM UTC-7, Jason Quick wrote: > On Saturday, July 2, 2016 at 4:37:03 PM UTC-6, Jason Quick wrote: > > Good Call Ian. I am uploading the file now. > > This is the new link that will work from Archive.org > > https://archive.org/details/HistoryAndAntiquitiesOfTheCountyOfNorthamptonBakerVol1 Thanks for making this available....looking forward to volume 2.

On Saturday, July 2, 2016 at 12:34:03 PM UTC-7, joe...@gmail.com wrote: > On Saturday, July 2, 2016 at 1:13:23 PM UTC-4, John Higgins wrote: > > The Welsh Medieval Genealogy database has been a very useful research tool and finding aid for unraveling the complexities of Welsh genealogy. After the considerable effort that was invested by the FHL in organizing this data, it would be quite a loss if it were no longer available. > > Agreed, keeping the pile of 1980s user submitted gedcoms but discarding this seems like a priority inversion issue indeed I've been exchanging emails with the customer-service staff at Family Search on this issue of the Welsh database - with disappointing results so far. Although the staff no doubt are well-meaning, they don't seem to be sufficiently informed to answer more detailed technical questions. They just refer me to websites that are now outdated. I recall that someone from the FHL staff has been posting here occasionally in the past few weeks - Nathan, maybe? Perhaps you could cut through the bureaucracy and determine if Family Search really did intend to make the Welsh database unavailable, along the rest of Community Trees. As Joe suggests, this would be a strange and unfortunate ordering of priorities - to keep the Ancestral File and the Pedigree Resource File while discarding all the effort that's been expended on the Welsh database.

In Volume 1 page 373, is the Carta of William de Say. It begins with: Isti sunt milites William de Say de veteri feffamento: my attempt to translate: (these are the knights of William de Say of the old feffamento). This is followed by a list of knights. On the following page it says: De noviter feodatis de domnio meo: (The new feodatis of my lord) The first name is: Willelmus de Say avunculus meus j militem de Witehurst: ( William de Say, my uncle, one knight's fee ) other knights names then Willelmus filius, quintam parem militis in Kembolton. ( William son 1/5 knights fee Kimbolton). The date is 1166. In Medieval Lands, William de Say of Kimbolton was the s/o William de Say and Beatrix de Mandeville. Does the first part of the Carta refer to the elder William who according to Medieval Lands died about 1155? Who is being referred to as My Lord in the beginning of the second part. And who is calling William de Say my uncle? Does the William de Say of the Carta have an Uncle named William and a son named William? Or do I have this completely wrong. Hoping someone is bored this Saturday morning and can help. Jeanie

On Saturday, July 2, 2016 at 4:37:03 PM UTC-6, Jason Quick wrote: > Good Call Ian. I am uploading the file now. This is the new link that will work from Archive.org https://archive.org/details/HistoryAndAntiquitiesOfTheCountyOfNorthamptonBakerVol1

Good Call Ian. I am uploading the file now.

I just digitally copied Baker's History and Antiquities of Northampton Vol 1 and thought it best to share with SGM and will upload Vol 2 once I get that finished. I started this project after I saw Family Search digitized their copy of microfilm but can only access via a partner library. The PDF is 240MB vs the 6.5GB of JPEGS's from my camera. The 800+ .pdf pages are at 1600X2400 pixels (5.55"X8" at 300DPI) Please download and share.. Link https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw0V_1buxn-_Nk5WaWhPdTlLbkE/view Note... you can't preview the document just download due the the large size I am not sure of the bandwidth restrictions of Google so don't be surprised if the link gets blocked in a few days. Regards Jason J Quick

On 7/2/2016 1:05 AM, Andrew Lancaster via wrote: > ... > > In my opinion Stewart's position on larger scale online collaboration > boils down to this: "In my opinion, it is unlikely that the second route > will ever lead to anything better than "not quite as bad as it used to > be." Even if it were possible (which would require a method that > corrects errors faster than they are being introduced), the labor > involved in cleaning up these messes would be much more than just > starting from scratch." > > In other words Stewart accepts that large scale collaborations possibly > get slowly better sometimes but insists that he is sure that worsening > edits will always inevitably come faster overall. I have pointed out > that this is a statement which can be tested against reality, but the > only empirical evidence being given to "prove" the statement is a static > observation of bad articles on wikis. If edits remain open to those lacking the necessary expertise, then I believe that the chances of overall improvement are slim. And, as I pointed out above, even if the quality of a bad database does increase to something acceptable, that is likely to take longer than what would result from just starting over and doing it right in the first place. Also, any increase in quality will almost certainly be slower in the more difficult cases. Even if a database "improves" to the point where 90% of the pages are reasonable and 10% of the pages are nonsense, that is still pretty bad, especially when claims of "accuracy" are badly overstated. > On wikitree, just to take that example again, I have not seen any > article that anyone worked on properly ever revert or worsen in any > significant way, at least since editing in the medieval sections was > changed. If that observation holds, then Stewart's model of how large > scale wikis inevitably have to be fails, because his model is basically > stating that this can absolutely never be true. > > In other words I am saying that if you fix 10 articles on wikitree they > will almost certainly remain fixed as far as I have seen, at least for > pre-1500 articles. Could you point out some examples of high quality wikitree pages? I have yet to see one (in any time period) that was any better than mediocre, but perhaps I have been looking in the wrong place (mainly my own ancestors and various early medieval pages). > None of this is intended to accept the opposite argument that we might > as well all work on large scale collaboration because these are > inevitably the future. Small focused collaborations can achieve things > more quickly, and with far more attention to quality from the first > moment. As people get more used to the idea that a quality publication > does not need to be paper, some online collaborations are increasingly > seen as equivalent to quality publications on paper. (Whereas largescale > wikis typically see themselves as places to collect and collate > information from more focused but un-linked sources.) And one of the major problems is that the typical large scale genealogy wiki page writers show so little discrimination between good and bad sources, often citing the good and bad side-by-side without any discrimination. One example is the wikitree page on Charlemagne (given "Carolingian" as an apparent surname), which does not even cite the most obvious source, La préhistoire des Capétiens, by Christian Settipani and Patrick van Kerrebrouck (although one citation suggests that one contributor used some written by Settipani indirectly). > And just to make it clear, fixing an article also means making sure it > has proper sourcing. I have never heard an argument against that. I find > the comments on why sourcing is important in this discussion pretty weak > to be honest. Sourcing is important not because people "own" facts, and > that they can be "stolen". This seems a misapplication of a legal term. > Owning and stealing are defined in written laws, that can be changed by > politicians, and vary between countries. I do get the point that some > bad people on the internet have no respect for what is important, and we > want to use words that show we feel strongly, but I am not sure this > helps us make the world better. I have no problem with "pride in work", > but it is more a description of why we find quality generally important > in the first place, a comment on human nature, not why sourcing is > itself part of quality. I think you are misinterpreting the comments made by Denis. I interpreted "stealing" in this context as referring to the plagiarism which is so common on the Internet. I don't think that anyone in THIS discussion was claiming that facts can be "owned" (although some commercial operations seem to have a position close to that). > I believe that if we are talking about why sourcing is important for > quality in good writing of articles about most things, perhaps > especially genealogy, it is because a good article should distinguish > what is known from primary sources, and what has been suggested by > secondary sources including ourselves. If we do not set-out where we got > our information, mistakes will multiply. That is why I believe the > standardized formatting for any lasting online collaboration for good > medieval genealogy will (like the Henry project) include a policy on how > to set-out and explain the sources, and indeed the debates possible > about them. Standardized formatting works OK in routine situations, but it can get in the way in more difficult cases. For example, the silly "Charlemagne Carolingian" mentioned above is probably due to the careless use of a surname field. In addition, "documentation" includes more than just listing where the information came from (ideally with enough details that anyone wanting to check the information can find it). Good documentation also includes a discussion of the logic behind any interpretation of the evidence that is anything more than routine, and the best documentation makes it clear where the proof of each individual "fact" can be found, not just a list of stuff at the end where we have to check a bunch of sources to find proof of the individual fact of interest. I can't count the number of times that I have checked somebody's work which they clearly believed that they had documented, only to find several supposed facts (dates, places, middle names, etc.) for which the cited sources supplied no evidence. All of the standardized formats I have seen are far too rigid to deal with complicated cases. For example, a statement in a medieval sources that two individuals were cousins might lead to several different partly overlapping scenarios in the scholarly literature attempting to explain the relationship, with varying degrees of probability. Different interpretations of evidence on one particular relationship can have a "cascade effect" which affects other relationships in a complicated way. Two examples of this can be found in the Henry Project pages for Geoffroy, viscount of Châteaudun and Gerberge, mother of Otte-Guillaume of Burgundy: http://sbaldw.home.mindspring.com/hproject/prov/geoff004.htm http://sbaldw.home.mindspring.com/hproject/prov/gerbe002.htm As can be seen, both of these individuals involve complicated discussions which spill over to the pages involving other individuals. The organization of such complicated discussions generally involves some sort of creative process, and often cannot be coherently outlined in the brief "author A says X, author B says Y" form that amateurs writing such outlines seem to prefer. It would be interesting to see a standardized format that is flexible enough to deal with such situations. Stewart Baldwin

On Saturday, July 2, 2016 at 1:13:23 PM UTC-4, John Higgins wrote: > The Welsh Medieval Genealogy database has been a very useful research tool and finding aid for unraveling the complexities of Welsh genealogy. After the considerable effort that was invested by the FHL in organizing this data, it would be quite a loss if it were no longer available. Agreed, keeping the pile of 1980s user submitted gedcoms but discarding this seems like a priority inversion issue indeed

On 21/06/16 11:22, WJH wrote: > Essentially I was making a similar point about the difference between familysearch (which I would say is essentially a wiki since it shares a single view of "the truth" to which all members contribute) and ancestry.com (which is more of a collection of individuals' work). I am certain that the familysearch platform could be improved in many ways, and its reasons for wanting such a unified view of history may not be shared by everyone including me, but that doesn't stop it being a useful tool... You keep using that word (wiki). I do not think it means what you think it means. A wiki is a file (or collection of files) using a simplified text mark-up language which can be easily editied by online tools and converted into HTML for display by a browser. Whether editing is a free-for all or not is a completely different matter. It is /not/ a general term for online collaboration. Familysearch is not a wiki. It is a database for structured data, which can be accessed by HTML. Using the term too broadly simply serves to sow confusion. As I've suggested a couple of times in this discussion there's a need to step back from assuming what tools to use and, indeed, what form of governance to use until it's decided what, if anything, we want to do. In particular I suggest looking at how the open-source software movement goes about using the net. This has proven, rigorous techniques for successfully handling vast amounts of material (in this case computer source) to achieve complex products that work extremely well. Handling vast amounts of material to achieve a complex product that works extremely well ought to be an objective for any collaborative genealogical undertaking. There are a few characteristics to consider. Firstly, from an organisational point of view the material is curated by a /maintainer/ or hierarchy or team of maintainers. /Contributors/ can offer material or changes, but it is the maintainers who have the access to /commit/ those changes to the body of material. Secondly, the material is held in a /source code management system/ accessible online. This tracks changes so that any given past configuration of the material can be retrieved and the specific update that made a given change can be identified. Modern usage favours /distributed/ SCMSs such as Git or Mercurial. In these a user can download the material or a subset. The user can then work on it offline, extract the changes, either additions or modifications as a /patch/. This is a small file which can be applied to the main body of code to bring it into line with the user's changed version. This can then be submitted to the maintainer(s) who can decide whether to apply it. Users with their own copies can periodically refresh their copies to keep current. Thirdly the project's material is under a copyright licence that affords individuals the right to copy and distribute the material - the conditions attached to such licences vary and are, indeed, the subject of sectarian disputes but all adhere to the principle that the material is a form of commons. Taken together with the distributed nature of the SCMS this means that it's possible to take a version at some point in time and establish a new maintainer-ship to curate it separately from the original. This is called a /fork/. It might appear that this could lead to chaos but is, in fact, quite unusual. It could happen with single maintainer projects if the original maintainer becomes inactive for whatever reason. It also happens sometimes if a sufficient body of contributors become dissatisfied with the existing governance. The most striking example of this is the fork of LibreOffice from OpenOffice. In practice a fork is only practicable if a sufficient body of contributors support it. A characteristic of this is that the quality of the product is usually paramount. Governance is minimal. There are a few instances in which foundations with boards of directors form a protective shell around the project; for instance the Linux Foundation has been one of a number which have established and controlled trademarks around a project to protect it from predators. Such foundations also raise finance to fund hosting and pay professional developers. From observation ISTM that in some cases they also provide a platform for individuals to play politics unrelated to the matter at hand. A foundation should necessarily be at arm's length from the project it supports; it can't survive without the project but usually the project survived without the foundation and should be able to continue to do so if necessary. An interesting point to emerge is that companies which are in competition with each other still find it advantageous to collaborate with each other in such projects. This again might be contrary to the expectations of some views discussed here. Finally, it's worth looking at the tools being used. SCMSs I've mentioned. Communication is often by mailing lists, especially as a means of submitting patches. Some projects make the mailing lists completely open, in others maintainers might communicate with each other privately. However, bug-trackers are another means of discussion about corrections and this might well be a tool to consider for a genealogical project. Wikis are also used by some projects but usually, from what I've seen, as documentation of the product. -- Hotmail is my spam bin. Real address is ianng at austonley org uk

It appears that the FHL’s Welsh Medieval Genealogy database is no longer available online. About a week ago, there was an announcement at the Family Search website that there would be a major site update on 6/27. Since that update occurred, the information in the Welsh database has not been accessible through family Search. I made a call yesterday to the customer-service number for Family Search (1-866-406-1830) to inquire about this problem. I’ve now received an email message in response saying that the Community Trees project (which includes the Welsh genealogy database) has been discontinued. This is what I received: “According to the research I have done on this question, it appears the community trees project has been discontinued. This wiki page will explain the circumstances for this: https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/Community_Trees_Project The FamilySearch blog also has an article on the discontinuance of the project and how to access the records that are there. https://familysearch.org/blog/en/whats-familysearchorgmay-2015-part-2/.” I’m somewhat skeptical about this, as the information on these two websites was last updated in 2015, and I’m not sure that the customer-service folks, while well-intended, fully understand the technical aspects of this. In addition, the “search genealogies” function at Family Search still says it includes the Community Trees, but it’s not clear what is now encompassed in that term. I will follow up with Family Search after the holiday weekend to try to find out more. Perhaps someone else in this group who has more direct access to the FHL staff could shed more light on exactly what’s going on here. The Welsh Medieval Genealogy database has been a very useful research tool and finding aid for unraveling the complexities of Welsh genealogy. After the considerable effort that was invested by the FHL in organizing this data, it would be quite a loss if it were no longer available.

I sent Adrian Benjamin Burke and Joe Cooke a rather large file and I wonder if they have arrived.

James and Stewart James: "The whole point of a Wiki is that it is essentially self-managing, although one of the interesting things about familysearch is that it's a wiki with an invisible big brother overseeing it, which does set rules on some things, even if they're hidden in the algorithms employed e.g. for identifying possible duplicates." Being self-managing is not part of what what makes something a wiki. There are many wikis which are moderated and have oversight from individuals or committees. I have no idea how many wikis exist but many are within private companies etc. (Maybe of interest: On wikipedia itself, in its sourcing policy, a distinction is made between moderated and non-moderated wikis and online collaborations. Non moderated wikis such as wikipedia itself are not considered reliable sources according to wikipedia editing policy. The aim of wikipedia is to collect and present information that was checked and published. As part of that aim, also, the policy is clear that the sources should be named: "say where you got it".) You are also still insisting on using the word wiki to mean any online collaboration, and honestly this is going to confuse the issues, because I think most people do not use the term this way. Ironically the way you are using the term makes it very difficult to see how the Henry project is not a wiki though, making Stewart's absolutism about "all" wikis being bad all the more difficult to justify. Presumably you and Stewart are seeing the distinction has having to do with scale. But again, scale is obviously not part of what makes something a wiki. In my opinion Stewart's position on larger scale online collaboration boils down to this: "In my opinion, it is unlikely that the second route will ever lead to anything better than "not quite as bad as it used to be." Even if it were possible (which would require a method that corrects errors faster than they are being introduced), the labor involved in cleaning up these messes would be much more than just starting from scratch." In other words Stewart accepts that large scale collaborations possibly get slowly better sometimes but insists that he is sure that worsening edits will always inevitably come faster overall. I have pointed out that this is a statement which can be tested against reality, but the only empirical evidence being given to "prove" the statement is a static observation of bad articles on wikis. On wikitree, just to take that example again, I have not seen any article that anyone worked on properly ever revert or worsen in any significant way, at least since editing in the medieval sections was changed. If that observation holds, then Stewart's model of how large scale wikis inevitably have to be fails, because his model is basically stating that this can absolutely never be true. In other words I am saying that if you fix 10 articles on wikitree they will almost certainly remain fixed as far as I have seen, at least for pre-1500 articles. None of this is intended to accept the opposite argument that we might as well all work on large scale collaboration because these are inevitably the future. Small focused collaborations can achieve things more quickly, and with far more attention to quality from the first moment. As people get more used to the idea that a quality publication does not need to be paper, some online collaborations are increasingly seen as equivalent to quality publications on paper. (Whereas largescale wikis typically see themselves as places to collect and collate information from more focused but un-linked sources.) And just to make it clear, fixing an article also means making sure it has proper sourcing. I have never heard an argument against that. I find the comments on why sourcing is important in this discussion pretty weak to be honest. Sourcing is important not because people "own" facts, and that they can be "stolen". This seems a misapplication of a legal term. Owning and stealing are defined in written laws, that can be changed by politicians, and vary between countries. I do get the point that some bad people on the internet have no respect for what is important, and we want to use words that show we feel strongly, but I am not sure this helps us make the world better. I have no problem with "pride in work", but it is more a description of why we find quality generally important in the first place, a comment on human nature, not why sourcing is itself part of quality. I believe that if we are talking about why sourcing is important for quality in good writing of articles about most things, perhaps especially genealogy, it is because a good article should distinguish what is known from primary sources, and what has been suggested by secondary sources including ourselves. If we do not set-out where we got our information, mistakes will multiply. That is why I believe the standardized formatting for any lasting online collaboration for good medieval genealogy will (like the Henry project) include a policy on how to set-out and explain the sources, and indeed the debates possible about them. I think it is a point not often enough made that in some way genealogy is a sort of predecessor to the internet. Before internet genealogy existed, and even going back to the 19th century, the dangers (and perhaps some benefits) of massive uncontrolled "copy paste" information dispersal were shown in genealogy. No wonder that the internet quickly attracted genealogists, and genealogy quickly became one of the main things done on the internet. Best Regards Andrew