On 02/06/16 08:02, Richard Carruthers via wrote: > The List or Index to the Landed, Manorial, or Gentry Families (LMGF) > is the first thing I think needs to be established. What purpose do you see this list or index having? I am to some extent playing Devil's Advocate here, but it is a key point to which to have agreement. I see several possible purposes: 1. To provide information on the demographics of the upper levels of mediaeval society. 2. As an index to help researchers locate primary sources on particular families or individuals. 3. As the index to a large-scale collaborative genealogy (and/or biographical dictionary) of the mediaeval landed gentry. Probably there are other possibilities I've not considered. These could all be worthwhile possible aims, but preparation is needed if they are to happen. The last thing we want is for lots of effort to be put into a list, only to find some important piece of information has been omitted, or it's been done in a format (or using a technology) that cannot readily be converted for use in these roles. I don't think the first possible purpose (demographic information) is sufficiently important to justify the immense amount of work that the list's production will require. It's a worthwhile additional benefit of the list, but not as its primary purpose. I don't think you're suggesting otherwise. However I'm not sure which, if either, of the latter two suggested purposes you intended. I initially thought it was a collaborative genealogy, but now I'm not wondering whether you are more focused on the second. Either way, I'm not sure the list, as per your mock up, is doing it. If the aim is as a source locator list, then surely the list should be of people not families; sources mention individuals, not families, and it's not always clear which family those individuals belong to. When it comes to genealogical details, I think either you need a much clearer policy on what you want and how, or you should drop it entirely until such time as you do. I think your suggestion, if I've understood it correctly, that you should allow users to do pretty much what they want on the family's page is a recipe for poor quality and inconsistent information. It's the WikiTree problem. Without guidelines on what is required it's unreasonable to suppose that angst can be avoided if everyone approaches it in a collegiate spirit; few people like it when content they've invest a lot of time in writing gets reworked without (what the original author considers to be) a very good reason. > To qualify for coverage by the List, I think it would be necessary > to be the holder of one manor, and to be of gentle status, at least, > when such descriptions still held water. That sounds an excellent threshold. > There could be sub-categories for debatable families. If someone > wanted to create an ancillary list of families of, say, franklins and > yeomen, who didn't make the cut, I think that ought to be allowed, > though it would not be the objective of the LMGF List. I don't think you should allow this. By all means allow the odd exception, for example if a particular family of yeomen forms a genealogical link between two qualifying families, or is important in some way (perhaps for having a Member of Parliament in the family). Richard

On 02/06/2016, Richard Smith via <gen-medieval@rootsweb.com> wrote: > On 02/06/16 08:02, Richard Carruthers via wrote: > >> The List or Index to the Landed, Manorial, or Gentry Families (LMGF) >> is the first thing I think needs to be established. > > What purpose do you see this list or index having? I am to some extent > playing Devil's Advocate here, but it is a key point to which to have > agreement. > > I see several possible purposes: > > 1. To provide information on the demographics of the upper levels > of mediaeval society. > > 2. As an index to help researchers locate primary sources on > particular families or individuals. > > 3. As the index to a large-scale collaborative genealogy (and/or > biographical dictionary) of the mediaeval landed gentry. > > Probably there are other possibilities I've not considered. primarily 2 with a possibility of 3, but closer to 4. To provide a List of LMG Families to enable researchers to locate individual families in the catchment area and discover other parties interested in a given family to facilitate research, and, if desired, engage in solo or collaborative research into LGM Families in a scholarly manner, with evidence-based and peer-reviewed findings available online through a potential series of linked pages, but at least one Master List page for each county showing the details I listed in my first mock-up. > > These could all be worthwhile possible aims, but preparation is needed > if they are to happen. The last thing we want is for lots of effort to > be put into a list, only to find some important piece of information has > been omitted, or it's been done in a format (or using a technology) that > cannot readily be converted for use in these roles. I think another column or other columns could probably be added to the Master List w/o much difficulty if at some future point that were found to be desired and/or required. > > I don't think the first possible purpose (demographic information) is > sufficiently important to justify the immense amount of work that the > list's production will require. It's a worthwhile additional benefit of > the list, but not as its primary purpose. I don't think you're > suggesting otherwise. Agreed > > However I'm not sure which, if either, of the latter two suggested > purposes you intended. I initially thought it was a collaborative > genealogy, but now I'm not wondering whether you are more focused on the > second. Either way, I'm not sure the list, as per your mock up, is > doing it. How would you suggest its deficiencies ought to be made up? If the aim is as a source locator list, then surely the list > should be of people not families; sources mention individuals, not > families, and it's not always clear which family those individuals > belong to. Yes, and no. Individuals are normally the sourced basis of the creation of List entries, with the proviso that often we are looking for individual members of known families, though, theoretically, research for inclusion of families for inclusion in the List could turn up hitherto unconsidered family names or names of individuals who otherwise meet the criteria. It's rather a chicken and egg question, families being composed of individuals, with the caveat that individuals can become separated from their family, particularly in the mediaeval period when naming customs did not necessarily always indicate that a given individual belonged to any particular family. In some instances, as with the Waleys of Glynde Place, Sussex, there are ancestors who probably qualify for inclusion in the List who do not have any surname. There would need to be a way of dealing with such folk, possibly be see and see also references in the List. > > When it comes to genealogical details, I think either you need a much > clearer policy on what you want and how, or you should drop it entirely > until such time as you do. What sort of genealogical details do you think it desirable that such a List lead to on deeper linked pages? I think your suggestion, if I've understood > it correctly, that you should allow users to do pretty much what they > want on the family's page is a recipe for poor quality and inconsistent > information. It's the WikiTree problem. Here I was not thinking of the quality of the material provided, but rather the scope for additional types of linked pages, because I may not have an exhaustive inventory of possible page types in mind, yet some or all of those possibilities may add to the value of the List's linkage capacity. Without guidelines on what is > required it's unreasonable to suppose that angst can be avoided if > everyone approaches it in a collegiate spirit; few people like it when > content they've invest a lot of time in writing gets reworked without > (what the original author considers to be) a very good reason. I too am in favour of guidelines. I think, however, that such a List and linked pages should provide facilities for comment areas linked to all pages, and, if desired, and/or merited, linked pages where registered users can submit their findings as alternate entries with an explanation of why this is deemed necessary in their view. This would, for example, allow one to critique an entry that cobbled together findings in such a way that a given entry amounted to something erroneous. In the end, this could be a could way of providing consistent scholarly criticism for otherwise unreviewed information of the "Fab Pedigree" kind. > It is not that I want to encourage a lot of random or disparate article types or formats; instead I am open to suggestion. I shall attempt to work up what I think to be a worthwhile List-linked fuller entry on a given family for consideration. >> To qualify for coverage by the List, I think it would be necessary >> to be the holder of one manor, and to be of gentle status, at least, >> when such descriptions still held water. > > That sounds an excellent threshold. > I am glad that will serve, then. >> There could be sub-categories for debatable families. If someone >> wanted to create an ancillary list of families of, say, franklins and >> yeomen, who didn't make the cut, I think that ought to be allowed, >> though it would not be the objective of the LMGF List. > > I don't think you should allow this. By all means allow the odd > exception, for example if a particular family of yeomen forms a > genealogical link between two qualifying families, or is important in > some way (perhaps for having a Member of Parliament in the family). > > Richard > I should have added that what I mean here is to provide a separate place for families that don't make the cut so that research into them is not wasted. Moreover, there is value in a negative result, inasmuch as a) proving that a family should be excluded from the List helps to shore up the boundaries of the List (rather like the disclaimers used in Heraldic Visitations to denote the ignoble, i.e. those who were not qualified to bear a coat-of-arms, and were, hence, "no gent."), and b) keeping a separate List of such findings can be useful in terms of going through all the possible families to be considered for inclusion or exclusion from the List, and c) having those excluded names on file to ensure that one does not keep going over the same territory and d) seeing at what point a family previously excluded eventually made the cut (which sometimes happened a generation or more down the line). This is all part of the Verified Genealogy idea I referred to earlier. Thank you, once again, for taking the time to reply to my suggestions with useful comments. All the best, Richard:)