How to indicate speculative relations?

This is probably one of the most important questions anyone on Geni can ask.

I don't see Geni adding a feature to mark unreliable and speculative relationships any time soon. The idea surfaces every few months. I imagine they'll do it someday, when it makes sense for the development schedule, but in the meantime we need to have a solution that doesn't rely on something that might happen someday.

My thought is that we should not ever link speculative relationships. It leads people astray.

Instead, it's better to disconnect the relationship and put a note in the About section of the profile. It's easy enough to add a discussion of the sources and problems in the About, then use hyperlinked text for the names of the speculative parents. That way, users who are working on the line can easily navigate the line.

Thankyou for response. All Nordic kings from before 950 are mythological since no paper documents exist from that time, but only rune stones and later saga literature. And many medieval relations are based on speculations. However, people would not accept us to start deleting most medeival profiles if they have sources.

In your own tree, I see several legendary nordic kings and gods. For example to Ragnar "Lodbrok" Sigurdsson , Odin, {Norse God} and Fornjot "the Ancient Giant", King of Kvenland . See also Jesus Christ and Julius Ceasar. What is your suggestion in your own tree?

I suggest we add {myth} or {fict} in the name suffix to legendary and semi-legendary rulers, and {speculative} to connections that are likely but only based on assumptions. Ok? However many profiles for legendary kings are locked and I can not change name.

See Wikipedia for an extensive list of what kings and rulers that are consideredmythological and legendary or semi-legendary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mythological_kings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Legendary_rulers

Magnus, it sounds like you missed out on the dozens of discussions about this subject over the years. It's well-known across Geni that the ancient Norse kings and heroes are legendary. Many of these profiles are locked by Geni's curators in order to ensure that any changes are in line with current academic thinking.

Julius Caesar and Jesus are considered by the majority of experts to be real people. There is an idea, not yet academically respectable, that Jesus might not. That too has been debated at length on Geni.

I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say "your own tree". The Geni tree is a shared tree. I don't have my own tree. I'm just a participant in managing Geni's World Family Tree (WFT).

For this reason, you should not begin adding (Speculative) to name fields until we have general agreement to keep the connections intact rather than severing them as we have been doing.

Magnus wrote"All Nordic kings from before 950 are mythological since no paper documents exist from that time, but only rune stones and later saga literature."

But that doesn't mean that we should spread the suffix "Myth or Fict" just all over them all. For example, we might actually have different interpretations of those words and meanings between different Europeans countries.

In Sweden we use the word "Sagokungar" for kings that lived long before theirs stories was written down, that word ARE NOT interchangeable with the english words "Fairy-kings", neither with "Fictional Kings". I found out that the only reasonable word actually would be Literary kings, but that word does not seem to be very much in use because they use fictional kings regardless if the king are invented or not for them all.

Nordic people makes a sharper distinction between pure fiction and literary figures, maybe even when it comes to legendary and mythological ditto, but none of this is obvious apparently for people in general, so a literary king is based on someone who supposedly has existed, a fictional king is based on free fantasy but can or not, contain elements or traces of a real person, but it's a big difference.

> Nordic people makes a sharper distinction between pure fiction and literary figures, maybe even when it comes to legendary and mythological ditto

I don't know whether I agree. It seems to me English is a bit harsher in its judgment. They are all just fictional, whether we admit it or not. English Wikipedia calls them mythological, which is just a polite way of saying they are fictional but have cultural meaning.

There are undoubtedly some nuances of meaning between different languages. In English, a "saga king" is someone who appears in the sagas, whether or not historical. A "fairy king" is someone who is king of the fairies. A "literary king" is someone who is a master of writing stories.

In any event, we have different language name fields where we can accommodate the differences in language.

A "literary king" is Stephen King.

Personally I prefer not adding these sorts of tags to name fields (not even display name) as they can be interpreted differently from person to person and not necessarily just because someone is not a native English speaker.

My preference is for severing links and adding explanations and hyperlinks to the About (also Curator Note if it can be short enough) until Geni offers a "speculative relationship function".

Does that mean you prefer not to put Fictional?

Lol, Stephen the literary King :-)
Some good thoughts, Magnus.

'Fictional' in the Naming field is indispendible, to my mind. Even after you sever links to the world tree, those profiles need to be identifiable as fictional as clearly as possible. Curator notes don't show up in merge windows, so it's good for people to be able to see right away If others try to merge them in later on.

I'm thinking that Magnus' point about using 'speculative' might soften the indignation of me adding 'fictional' into the profiles of the ancestors of Mary, who are possibly inventions of the church fathers. Hmmm - the can of worms once opened, can't be unseen :-/ :-/ :-)

There is a distinction, I suppose, to be made between speculative relationships between possibly real people, and fictional people. ..
How that plays out with Mary's ancestry .... ?

On the matter of oral histories - ie no paper documentation - if I think about my lines for the Zulu and Xhosa Kings, I can see why you're raising this. Neither of these peoples were literate until colonisation, so the names of the Kings were kept in the heads of specially designated historians - There is no reason to assume that most of them - except the very early ones weren't actual people. ie they're not fictional. They date back to the 1700s, though - so it's about a hundred years without written documentation.

Yes Justin, I don't like Fictional or any other such. I can already imagine the howls of indignation If we added "Fictional" to Ragnar's name, and that would just be from Ulf!

Sharon, Curator Notes certainly do show up in the side-by-side merge screen. Was that a typo or are you using a different OS system which might be displaying differently?
I run Chrome on my PC but also have an Android phone and both show me CNs when in side-by-side.

In the lines around Jesus, eg Hannah / Anna - I've been using documentation within a hundred years as a rough rule of thumb for minimum historical validity.

No, Alex - I'm referring to the stacking screen in tree view - sorry to be so vague

Also, they don't show up in the 'are these two profiles the same ' screen where the merge back into the big tree is likely to be initiated.

Ragnar, however, is pretty much certain to have been a real person, though - so, he, like Jesus, isn't Fictional. The fact that their stories have been embellished and aporopriated in contradictory or unlikely ways, doesn't make the people themselves fictional.

Appropriated - predictive text on my tablet can't spell! !

Let's start with the sons of the god Odin, {Norse God}. No scientist would call them "kings" but "saga kings". But geni calls them "king of Denmark"; "king in Gardarike", etc in the name suffix. Why? WHy not call them "saga king of Denmark" or "myth king of Denmark" or "legendary king of Denmark"? (Which is the best translation of swedish "sagokung"?)

I did not understand your arguments against this proposal. My arguments for my suggestion:
- People question the reliability of Geni because myth kings show up in their search paths, and are presented in the same way as historical kings in the paths.
- People do not open every single profile, but they would see name suffixes like (saga king), (myth), (legendary), (speculative) in their search paths and in the trees.
- Geni is today considered less reliable than Wikipedia and many other geneaological sites. Many geneologists warn people about Geni because of these things.
- This is a viable compromise since it would not be accepted to delete mythological persons.
- I see no other suggestions here on how to achieve a more sceptical culture at Geni.

Justin Swanström gave good definitions of related terms. Thankyou. Are there any sources providing the definitions? We should add these distinctions to the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythological_king.

Wikipedia talks about semi-legendary nordic kings. What is that?

Historians like Dick Harisson think the Nordic saga kings that supposedly should have lived before the viking age never existed. Many amateur geneaologists are angry with him because of that, and think it is likely that they existed. The latter group has a lot of infuence at geni, which makes geni appear unreliable.

I don't care about the probability of if the saga kings existed or not, that is not my point. The important thing is that there is a clear line between historical kings and kings not supported in contemporary sources. It is pretty easy to identify the latter and indicate them as "saga kings" or "legendary kings" or "myth". Ragnar Loodbrook is from the viking age and likely existed, but the information on him and his family is highly unreliable since the only sources are tails. And he is a saga king according to scientists.

Once again: Jesus was a historical and not mythological according to established scientists. It is not him I question, but my path to him as it is presented by Geni. There are several alternative genealogical paths to him and several assumptions regarding their relations. However, identifying which parts of the path to Jesus and Ceasar that should be indicated as speculative is a more complicated task than marking the saga kings. So let's start with discussing them.

Mrs. Sharon Doubell, words as 'academic validity' etc are usually not used in the bible ! Someone at geni recently told me, he wouldn't touch profiles he had no academic background in !!! I suppose you're not academical formed in this area as an atheist(read on your "about me") ! Pls. read first the following link about (non)canonical stuff: https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/tools/bible-basics/what-are-noncano...

An important citatation in this link:
"Scholars nowadays, by contrast, recognize that even Christian documents that are not part of the New Testament have a great deal to tell us about early Christianity, particularly in terms of how people understood Jesus and what it meant to be Christian".

My contribution is not meant to be a (permanent) member in these kind of discussions ! I wrote it because you have to be more careful, it's not so simple as you put it!

I've been avoiding putting "Speculative" in name fields because in tree view it's not clear what it is that is speculative. Is it the name? The child relationship? The parent relationship? Some of the parent relationships?

On the other hand, adding "Fictional" clearly tells me this line should not be followed. In fact, if I am a direct descendant of someone who is fictional, there is a problem that needs to be fixed.

> Ragnar, however, is pretty much certain to have been a real person, though

I disagree. Academic opinion ranges from completely fictional to perhaps formed around a historical core that can't be identified.

> I can already imagine the howls of indignation If we added "Fictional" to Ragnar's name

Yes, and that's why we haven't taken the obvious step of conforming Geni to the opinion of historians. Yet.

I agree with Justin that should be defined what's meant with "Speculative", what's quite normal in commnications. If is agreed upon a set of "agreements" there remain parts to investigate and to discuss! I found an interesting book regarding the genealogy of Jesus! It's very technical and not based on irrelevant assumtions etc. It forms a solid basis to go further. I know there are several people who already know the book. I can see this because of the tree-buildings in geni. The internet/text-link is: https://books.google.be/books?id=l-VpCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT90&lpg=P...

> On the matter of oral histories [...] it's about a hundred years without written documentation.

That seems reasonable to me, but I seem to be in the minority among the rigorists.

When I first started doing genealogy, I was able to get names and some dates mostly back to my 3rd great grandparents and on one line back to my 4th great grandparents, all just by asking relatives. In my case, that's back to 1800-1830 and one line back to a couple who were born the year of the American Revolution.

That is, my living grandparents and their siblings knew their own parents, grandparents, and usually great grandparents. That's not such an astounding feat of memory.

However, there was also an interesting cultural dimension. I'm a "Westerner", where pride in pioneer ancestors is common. It isn't just that my living relatives remembered a few generations of ancestors. In every case their knowledge went back to the pioneer couple then stopped. What happened before that was mostly a blank. (They didn't do anything important, they didn't come West, so why would anyone care about them? They're probably a bunch of thieves or layabouts.)

> I suppose you're not academical formed in this area as an atheist

But I'm not ;)

Both Sharon and I have a solid academic grounding in the question of Jesus' historicity. No worries there.

I would love to go off on this subject, one of my favorites, but I hope to keep us on topic. If you want a respectable, academic opinion read or watch on YouTube some of the material by Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier. Ehrman is mainstream. Carrier the challenger. They disagree, but both are presenting sound, scholarly arguments.

> WHy not call them "saga king of Denmark" or "myth king of Denmark" or "legendary king of Denmark"?

I would like this solution quite a bit. We experimented with "legendary king of Denmark" in the beginning, but got caught up in all the uproar over applying actual history to people's favorite ancestors.

> how to achieve a more sceptical culture at Geni.

That's the real issue here. Most of Geni's users are not academically formed. That will never change but it should be possible to help them develop an inquiring attitude.

O.k. I will look at the youtubes! The part about the Westerner 'Oral Crawl-back Family-members' may be true in "your" family and it might indeed be the thruth, but in other families it may be different, so it's not a "law of Medes and Persians we say (translated) in Holland" !
About your reaction on canonical stuff: it's not just about 'oral', it's also about "written" that never came in the 'headlines of the media' i.c. the Bible ! There's made a selection to be published, from which we cannot conclude that the rest is not true!

The topic is still the same, no matter if it is about person A or B or J.C. ! When now is not precisely agreed upon quite soon, the world-tree will be 'Chaos' where so many millions of profiles are hanging not at the tree or hanging somewhere in another wood ! With the interest of people right now for now and the technical poosibilities it is going so fast ! Suddenly I can drink a beer with my geni cousin Mick Jagger or whatever. But I also noted that i.e. Noah is my 111th g.g.f. and a person I'm cooperating with at geni is a much closer family-member at geni, the 76th!!!! There are often a lot of people "in the garden where just 1 little plant is trying to survive" In the end all failures can survive in the profiles because no one looks permanently to the plant and it will be dead. This is the final thing I want to say on this matters!

No that was the second-last thing from me: I feel sorry for the 'Blessed Virgin Mary' that she lost her 'parents' yesterday, unannounced and without knowing the Cause! It must have something to do with these discussions!

> may be true in "your" family and it might indeed be the thruth, but in other families it may be different

Of course. Every family is different. My point is not that it is a general rule but that it is easily possible to preserve oral information for a number of generations. It would, of course, depend on the culture. I belong to a regional culture that values the information. Other people might not.

> But I also noted that i.e. Noah is my 111th g.g.f. and a person I'm cooperating with at geni is a much closer family-member at geni, the 76th!!!

In the world we want there should be no modern descents from Noah because there is no proof. Each path needs to be cleaned up to break the fictitious links.

It's not a surprise he is 100 generations back for you and 70 generations back for a relative of yours. Many of the fake lines are far too short. That's the result of early medieval monks not thinking through the problem when they were making up stories ;)