Thank you Alex, for taking the time to respond, I think you’re response is more to my point regarding Wikipedia, and your assessment of Wikipedia, it’s strengths, weaknesses and features identify with mine. I doubt very many curators actually check into the bibliography, rather taking the position that if “it’s good enough for Wikipedia then it’s good enough for me”..., which is one of my concerns.
The redundancy you see in multiple version of Wikipedia and MEDLANDS, I believe, comes from users who know only the internet art of copy and paste. Even MEDLANDS is a living breathing work in progress, however I too am guilty. I was assigned two mentors when I became a curator, they told me that part of my responsibility was to teach!, so I copy, paste AND edit the Wikipedia articles into the overview for historical context, because for the most part they are well written and lite reading. Users won’t take the time to follow a link or peruse a foreign language, so it necessary to follow the KISS principle in the profiles.
I don’t think that the work of Jean de Jaurgain is itself considered speculative, as he, like all good writers, footnotes throughout, and while I don’t know of the sources he makes reference, it is clear that some are primary (Codex...). Some also are by other Basque historians and history cannot be overlooked in Geneaology. The speculative nature of this area of this area our tree comes about only because two sources that have been used historically, and btw, are referenced in MEDLANDS, have been called out as spurious or probably spurious by leading scholars, and some, like Christian Settipani have developed alternatives. These alternatives are not spurious and should not be overlooked. A work that makes reference to a spurious document is not necessarily spurious in and of itself. Cawley does not call Jaurgain’s work spurious, only saying that Jaurgain “cites no sources” for a particular claim of connection. He said essentially the same about Mondriere and his research on d’Estouteville, that the ancients should be viewed with caution, then proceeded to use that information.
Sharon,
A couple of points...
I too almost always start with Cawley because primary sourcing is always the place to start. There are several important elements of this however:
1. Cawley ONLY deals in primary documents and it has become clear to me that wives and siblings for example who do exist are not always shown in MEDLANDS because they don’t show in primary documents. This forces me to bring additional sourcing into my research.
2. And Cawley does use uncorroborated information (which makes its way into Geni as gospel), but he identifies this by enclosing it in square brackets, again forcing additional research in other than primary sources.
3. But if there is no primary source, do we just stop building a genealogical tree with people that we know from history exist? I think not.
Secondly, if you look back at my effort on d’Estouteville I shared my approach with curators in advance and provided the bibliography I used. While I did start from a single source, Gabriel de la Mondriere who is “a” recognized expert on this family, as is Jaurgain’s for Gascony, so much so that his work is considered of national historic value by France, my “single” source changed over time, likely because the more recent the person the more available became information. It became clear at generation 3 that Etienne Pattou had the French line nailed and the English line source became the Yorkshire Charters.
My reference to single sourcing applies mostly to the “ancients” so at least there is a tree that has a beginning which can then be discussed, and essentially means around which I use other sources to supplement (I have btw received a message from an interested user discussing Robert II d’Estouteville and asking how I arrived at my conclusions because they are different from the established preponderance of evidence).
Finally, my interest here has been pique because the area in my own work on MyHeritage is in such a state that I’m no longer confident in the accuracy of my own work there. I began looking around to find a way to clean up my own mess, which meant to me a single source that would help me build the outline of a basic tree (more later on this). I’ve come to the conclusion that French do a better job of researching French history. Spaniards do a better job of researching Spanish history. And blogs are a good source for leads to other more legitimate sources. I’m interested because it’s hard, because it very complicated (we’re talking Loup, Loup-Centule, Centule-Loup and Loup de Loup! I’m learning a lot about ancient Spanish naming conventions!).
Victar is the curator on many of these Gascogne profiles and I don’t like stepping on someone else’s work, Gascony is his call, but I would be happy to contribute with his approval. I’m not sure what a Gascony Project would do.
My mind is like a detective, I always “need” to know what’s “right”, and whether it is “right”, and while distractions occur (I once had to look at Google maps and the mouth of the Guadalquivir River that runs through Saville because a historical novel I was reading said that a battle with the Dutch took place on a sandbar at the mouth of the river!). I also, for reasons I can’t explain, am able to see “through” the use of words and find different meaning, refer back to the original discussion and my reading of a summary of reasons why the Alarcon documents were spurious and noting that they did not include reference to the Geneaology of Gascony itself, only to the fact that it was being erroneously connected to the Merovingian kings. If you look at the alternative work by Settipani you will see that he only works within the top few generations and their connections up, not down. Observations like this allow me to assess that Jaurgain is IMO a legitimate source.
And Cawley himself says “A small part of the genealogical information in the Alarcon documentation is corroborated by other primary sources, including the Annales Metenses and the Continuator of Fredegar. Other parts of the information are clearly incorrect, for example the statement that Boggis Duke of Aquitaine was the son of Charibert II King of the Franks in Aquitaine, the younger half-brother of the Merovingian King Dagobert I. There remains a large part of information in the documents which is uncorroborated elsewhere and whose accuracy cannot be judged definitively.”
Uncorroborated and spurious do not have the same meaning.
More on this...
Full disclosure, despite my railings against copy and paste from community trees, I do use them, HOWEVER...
ONLY on Geneanet I’ve found a number of individual trees built by single persons who have seeming expertise or local interest, many do good work that aligns with the preponderance of evidence we all use. Some list sources, some do not, that’s a option of the software. One I have communicated with does not saying that “we all know what the sources are by now”. He happens to be a former “magician” (curator) on Roglo, the World tree of France! So he is in my “trust but verify” pool of resources.
I use these because they frequently have “missing information” such as dates (that work) and locations more in depth (including French zip code to pinpoint locations), and where I use these I tag the link to Geni using the built in attachment tool. They are also a source for wives and siblings not found in MEDLANDS, mentioned earlier, not verbatim copy and paste, but from the standpoint that they become someone else to research before making them legitimate.
My interest is in building a better tree.
Anyone,
Is there a way to move this discussion into a curator discussion? I started the discussion there but apparently that doesn’t default (so I guess I dont know how yet to access the curator discussion platform).
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