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