On May 23, 7:52 am, Tom Wetmore <[email protected]> wrote: > > How should we store evidence in genealogical databases? I'm way behind in my reading, so please forgive me for butting in so late. I have a few comments. I don't think that building up conclusion-people by simply linking personas will be sufficient. I often find that the best conclusion for a birth, for example, might combine the date from one record with the place from another. Another problem is that not all evidence can be recorded as a persona. Sometimes the evidence is indirect; sometimes it is even negative. As a concrete example, consider my attempts to figure out where one of my gg-grandmothers, Henrietta Carroll, was born. Censuses say she was born in Maryland, which makes sense since that's where everyone else in the family is from. Her death certificate says she was born on the Eastern Shore. So far, so good, but where on the eastern shore? Her second husband's Civil War pension file contains that statement that he, the second husband, had known her since childhood. Unfortunately, that doesn't help much, since we don't know where he was from. However, we do know that the second husband's first wife was from Tobaccostick in Dorchester county. We also know that the second husband's brother's wife was from Dorchester county. A reasonable, if tentative, conclusion is that the second husband was also from Dorchester, and thus Henrietta was from Dorchester. But how would one indicate that if all one could do is link personas?

Breathing life into an old thread! I don't see combining the date from one persona with place from another to be a problem. When you decide that this is the right thing to do you have made a conclusion. The "higher level" person that "sits above" the linked personas is the perfect place to record this conclusion. In my view the higher level person record that links the lower persons should inherit the info from the lower persons whenever that is possible, but that any conflicts or ambiguities or negative evidence should be resolved explicitly by information that is added at the higher level. Here the lower level presents the evidence and available information, and the next higher interprets that information as necessary with the necessary conclusions to resolve any issues. Isn't that what "conclusion persons" are? Likewise, I believe you can solve the conundrum you have described for the gentleman from the Eastern Shore. You link together all the hard evidence you have, and in the records that hold those links, you give your conclusions and your explanations. You make the higher level person records hold the facts as you believe them to be, with whatever notes you need to add, and simply let those records link together the records that have the evidence that you have physically found.

On Jul 20, 7:27 pm, Tom Wetmore <[email protected]> wrote: > Breathing life into an old thread! It was a thought-provoking thread. > I don't see combining the date from one persona with place from another to be a problem. When you decide that this is the right thing to do you have made a conclusion. The "higher level" person that "sits > above" the linked personas is the perfect place to record this conclusion. In my view the higher level > person record that links the lower persons should inherit the info from the lower persons whenever > that is possible, but that any conflicts or ambiguities or negative evidence should be resolved > explicitly by information that is added at the higher level. Here the lower level presents the evidence > and available information, and the next higher interprets that information as necessary with the > necessary conclusions to resolve any issues. Isn't that what "conclusion persons" are? But if you do that, then you lost the ability to do automatic undos, which I thought was one of the specs. > Likewise, I believe you can solve the conundrum you have described for the gentleman from the Eastern > Shore. Hey! That's no way to talk about my gg-grandmother. > You link together all the hard evidence you have, and in the records that hold those links, you > give your conclusions and your explanations. You make the higher level person records hold the > facts as you believe them to be, with whatever notes you need to add, and simply let those records > link together the records that have the evidence that you have physically found. But doesn't that break the model of building conclusion-people out of evidence-people? What I mean is that not all of the evidence is people. Or perhaps I didn't understand your model. What you say here is, as I understand you, a better model, with the bedrock being the sources, the personas built on the sources, and the conclusions built on both. BTW, despite your disparaging comment earlier, I think LifeLines is great. It isn't perfect, but its flexibility, its principal asset in itself, allows work-arounds for most problems, and its use of Gedcom allows workarounds for the rest.