Dear Stewart I think the most important thing to note in this discussion is that as far as I can tell, Charles has in fact long been struggling with ideas about how to delegate properly to a bigger team without making the quality worse. In other words, although the project is different in many ways from the Henry project, it is a similar dilemma which it faces. To me it is interesting that the Henry project and MEDLANDS both apparently suffer from issues to do with the time consumed by trying to keep all the files in order, and to me this seems in both cases to be connected to the old style media being used - essentially in both cases just documents turned into webpages. (I can talk. That is also what my website looks like. But then again who looks at that? For small scale work this is ok.) That is why I wonder if a sort of controlled wiki is the solution. That could automate many tasks, and allow tasks to be delegated in a controlled way using log-ins with different permissions. I know I am getting repetitive but I repeat the point now in this interesting context, because maybe it helps someone in the community find a way. A moderated medieval genealogy wiki could allow articles/pages for not only individuals but also manors and titles. It could have projects with it such as Henry II ancestry, Manors of Cambridgeshire, Carolingians, Dal Riada, CP plus corrections, registering Domesday folk, Magna Carta descents or whatever. Key profiles could be locked up and require special permissions to change from specific people or groups even. I suppose someone might now say that this could all be done within an existing wiki like wikitree, if enough good people were allowed to have enough authority and that is also true, but I see big wikis scare everyone off for obvious reasons of larger scale negotiation and politics. But the good news for genealogy is also that within wikitree, the more good sources exist online, the more it can be dragged by its better editors to follow those leads. Does anyone know a university or something with a bit of server space and interest in making a quality-controlled medieval wiki project? Regards Andrew Stewart Baldwin wrote: >Unfortunately, in my opinion, Charles Cawley's "Medieval Lands" is a sad example of how NOT to do a medieval genealogy database. I say "sad" for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that Mr. Cawley is apparently unwilling to admit to himself the extent to which he is in far over his head, despite his apparent original good intentions.

On 16/06/2016 3:01 AM, Andrew Lancaster via wrote: > Dear Stewart > > I think the most important thing to note in this discussion is that as > far as I can tell, Charles has in fact long been struggling with ideas > about how to delegate properly to a bigger team without making the > quality worse. In other words, although the project is different in many > ways from the Henry project, it is a similar dilemma which it faces. > > To me it is interesting that the Henry project and MEDLANDS both > apparently suffer from issues to do with the time consumed by trying to > keep all the files in order, and to me this seems in both cases to be > connected to the old style media being used - essentially in both cases > just documents turned into webpages. (I can talk. That is also what my > website looks like. But then again who looks at that? For small scale > work this is ok.) > > That is why I wonder if a sort of controlled wiki is the solution. That > could automate many tasks, and allow tasks to be delegated in a > controlled way using log-ins with different permissions. I know I am > getting repetitive but I repeat the point now in this interesting > context, because maybe it helps someone in the community find a way. I don't understand what you are getting at - tasks can be delegated in writing with a quill on parchment, you don't need a digital medium in order to keep control over input on a collaborative project. As for tasks that can be automated, I don't follow how these would be matters of substance rather than merely of style. The main value of IT in genealogical scholarship seems to me in providing access and in the speed and comprehensiveness of data analysis. Can you explain with specific instances how the wiki process would add value to the old-fashioned scholarly ways of researching sources and assembling information? For my purposes as a reader, a document is a document is a document, whatever the format or novelty of its presentation. Peter Stewart