Yay! Fornjot is #36 on the Top 100!

Started by Harald Tveit Alvestrand on Wednesday, September 22, 2010
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You He is my 38th great grandfather
→ Edmund Burk
your father → Josephine Burk
his mother → Isaac Price
her father → Othey Price
his father → Nancy Price
his mother → Millicent Price
her mother → Edith Vaughan
her mother → Richard Gist
her father → Capt. Christopher Cist
his father → Christopher Gist, Sr.
his father → William Guise
his father → William Gyse, Esq.
his father → John Guise, of Elmore Court
his father → Agnes de Berkeley
his mother → Elizabeth le Despenser, Baroness Berkeley
her mother → Eleanor de Clare, Baroness Despenser
her mother → Joan of Acre, Countess of Gloucester & Hertford
her mother → Eleanor of Castile, Queen consort of England
her mother → Fernando III el Santo, rey de Castilla
her father → Alfonso IX el Baboso, rey de León y Galicia
his father → Fernando II, rey de León
his father → Alfonso VII el Emperador, rey de Castilla y León
his father → Raimundo de Borgoña, conde de Galicia
his father → Etiennette de Longwy
his mother → William V, Duke of Aquitaine
her father → Guillaume 'Fier-à-Bras' de Poitiers, IV Duc d'Aquitaine et II Comte de Poitou
his father → Adelene of Normandy
his mother → Gange-Hrólfr 'Rollo' Ragnvaldsson de Normandie
her father → Ragnvald Oysteinsson, Mørejarl
his father → Eystein Ivarsson «the Noisy» Glumra
his father → Ivar Halfdansson, Opplendingejarl
his father → Halfdan Milldi Eysteinsson
his father → Sveidi Heytirsson, Norse King, c. 650
his father → Heytir Gorrsson, King in Kvenland
his father → Gorr Thorrasson, Alfheim
his father → Thorri Snaersson, King in Kvenland
his father → Snaer Jokulsson, King in Kvenland
his father → Frosti / Jøkull Karasson, king in Kvenland
his father → Kari Fornjotsson, King in Kvenland
his father → Fornjot, King in Kvenland
his father

Men can have children as late as 80 years old, and many did, so it is hard to figure average generations by using today's thinking.

All the relationships need to be sourced. For the 1100s and earlier, just about all we have are sagas - so we need to put saga name, chapter and verse of the relevant source onto each piece of relationship.

Unfortunately, some genealogists, especially in the 1800s, have used a bit more imagination than they should have when drawing up trees for their clients, and the results of that have been copied many times indeed, so not all profiles on Geni live up to that high standard of sourcing.

Do help with finding the real sources and referencing them!

@ Remi Trygve Pedersen

I'd like to second your opinion and comment, which I'm referring to below. You've got some good points when stating that:

"We have to keep our trees as correct as possible. Every link has to be more than a 50% (preferrably 66-75%) chance to be correct. If not the link should be severed.

Genealogy is not about having the most people in your database, it's not about getting as far back in time as possible, it's not about beeing related to various famous people."

"[...] If you're in doubt about a relationship, please investigate it further, before putting it out on a world wide genealogy site as Geni. If you're in doubt about a realtionship, please keep it on your own private database until you're not in doubt anymore. And do not ever ad a gedcom-file that you have downloaded from some internet-site, wether it beeing Ancestry.com, Rootsweb, Familysearch, or some other website. If you haven't researched the data yourself, and are able to say "I am pretty sure this data is correct, and I have checked most of the primary sources myself", please leave it out of the Geni-site. We have enough garbage here as it is.

Our most important goal is to get a correct worldwide tree."

Question:

Why isn't it mandatory on Geni.com to add sources when adding or editing a profile?

That's about my 2 cents at the moment...

Best regards,
Peder Dahlman

@ Remi Trygve Pedersen

"GENEALOGY IS ABOUT TRACKING YOUR ANCESTRY, PEDIGREE AND FAMILYRELATION AND GETTING IT AS CORRECT AS POSSIBLE (excuse my shouting)."

You are excused. ;-)

@Peder I don't agree with Remi on the formulation, although we often agree in practice on the part of the tree where a reasonable amount of sources exists (for Norway, basically from the 1700s and later).

In the fragmented-source areas of the tree before that, and especially in the saga times where *all* we have is history-dressed-up-as-myth or myth-dressed-up-as-history (and not knowing which), I prefer to enter what the sources we have say. It has a little bit of value, because it documents the few sources we have, and provides a little bit of joy to the people who enjoy seeing that "according to the stories", they are deeply connected to the world's history.

The work needed to get all the sources in for the stuff already there is, unfortunately, rather massive. And very few people are working on it.

This is a classic problem in historiography (the study of how history is written). I think it is not easily understood by genealogists.

Every scholar who studies the sagas can agree that they are a mix of fact and fiction, but no two scholars ever agree about which parts are which. Also, academic fashions change so that what scholars believed a generation ago is different from what they believe now, and different from what they will believe a generation from now.

A genealogist who wants an easy answer is going to be disappointed. You either have to take it all, or take none of it. If you try to take bits and pieces, the only way to do it is to make an arbitrary decision based on someone's opinion.

@ Harald Tveit Alvestrand

I do see you got a good point concerning people out of reach of good and reliable sources. I also think you formulate it pretty good when saying we should use the sources we got (those available).

What I've previously asked for, and still is asking for, is a kind of scientific honesty, i.e. when the sources are doubtful or not truly reliable we should make people very aware about those profiles that aren't reliable or simply not trustworthy.

As it is today, I believe many users on Geni.com don't care about whether there's not only the smallest feeling of uncertainty, but also when profiles are obviously totally way off and based on a total absence of scientific substance or any truth at all.

Why not do it like this instead - a few suggestions:

1. Make it clear that any profile that is uncertain and/or when the sources used are doubtful and questionable. I suggest the one who creates or edits a profile should make it clear and obvious to all users. I do believe all of us will gain from such an approach, being as true to the sources as possible.

2. Even if we feel certain we found the correct data or good sources, we should always add them, to make it possible for other genealogists to falsify a thesis or a suggested 'true source', for instance in a suggested genealogical line, ancestry or parentage.

3. Let all users know when it is a saga and when it is genealogy based on facts and good sources, when creating or editing a profile.

4. Get rid of that ridiculous setting about private profiles for obviously dead persons profiles.

I know I haven't added sources to all of "my" profiles. I will, but please bare with me since I got a limited amount of time and an awful lot of other commitments I need to see to. I will personally try my best to show that I'm willing to do whatever I can to make things better. I hope other users on Geni.com feel the same.

Most respectfully,
Peder Dahlman

@ Justin Swanström

True, very true. As usual you got it right, but still we need to add sources to what we claim (imo).

Respectfully yours,
Peder Dahlman

Peder, yes. You and Harald are absolutely right. We need source citations to the sagas or we won't be able to verify whether it is something they actually said or something someone made up hundreds of years later.

Dr. Peder Dahlman (Kjørl) Why it isn't mandatory to add sources on Geni? Well, a few answers could be:

1) A lot of people using Geni doesn't know what a source is.

2) The terms primary, secondary and tertiary sources and how to differentiate between them is hard for a lot of Geni users.

3) The way to add sources to Geni.com is to cumbersome, which makes a lot of people, included me, not wanting to add sources, since it takes to much time and way to work for the gain.

Because of the method Geni.com has chosed to add sources, I am not adding sources. It is just to much work and takes to much time. Instead I hope that people will ask me where that information came from, because I will have the sources in my own offline genealogical software which ofcourse is my main genealogical database.

Geni is suffering from the same plague as most other online genealogical software is, to many people is using information from other online trees and adding them to Geni without checking the correctness of these trees. That is also why many of my genealogist colleagues in Norway is calling Geni and other online trees for genealogical viruses because they are spreading nonproven and disproved trees, and they are correct. Most of the work I do on Geni is to disconnect unproven and disproven connections, but they still keep showing up, even with curator-notices explaining that the connectiona are wrong.

I agree with your points, but it is hard to get those that doesn't know how historians and genealogists think and work, to understand the same points.

I'm trying to tell people what modern historians how found out while studying the old sources and sagas, and what they in collaboration have agreed to. Some, though, prefer to believe the old texts even when modern scholars are saying the are only good fictional stories.

There is a more understandable reason why people add sources: They are other web sites, and we have had hard reactions on citing those as sources.

Personally my argument is that any source is better than none, and our experience will over time tell which is reliable.

I find, when I am "on a roll", ie: adding a line, I am so focused about that first, some are complicated and the structure needs to be in place correctly.

Then, I add sources that I have, but not on every profile, often the "Father" is just a name given, important to retain that info, but, there are not dates or anything.

My experience in web design and marketing is 8 years, intensive.
SEO, search engine optimization:
(PS. Erica do not laugh:)

Search engines, especially google love unique content, in an index page, it is also good to have 2 links that link deeper in to the site.

When I can, I link to other profiles in the "about section", ones that may not be related.

This makes it important to keep that profile number the same in merging tho, and maybe this is not good?

If you copy some text, it needs to be made unique, I have a "spinner" software I give away on one of my sites, I will find it and add it here.

Spinner software is a database of synonims, and, it replaces words and sentences to make the article unique, and then checks for uniqueness on the web.

All the relative links may be working against Geni, if they are on an index pafe, but I think they are in an iframe which search engines often ignore or do not rate.

I think at least something should be on every profile, so, that they are seen by the search engines, this will help families find their reletives, and, us find if a profile already exists (often hard).

Shaz

PS. If the relative links are on an index, the search engines will see that as "spammy" too many internal links.

My 28th great grandpa

41st grandfather...
But I am norwegian...;)

Taking all this at face value, this would be my Maternal 41st Great Grandfather. And I thought I was only 1/8 Norwegian from my Paternal side!

A 41th great-grandfather contributes only 1/17592186044416 of your DNA, so the difference isn't *that* great :-)

Yay! Fornjot is #36 on the Top 100!

Showing 31-49 of 49 posts

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