@ James - I do not agree with your generalistic view on "these" Facebook sites. The Facebook sites that I like to use (to corroborate data) are the sites that are coupled to genealogy (historical and also including where possible DNA research) projects and institutions such as https://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/ and Delia Robertson's The First Fifty Years Project. http://www.e-family.co.za/ffy/. They understand perfectly well that genealogy is part of family history and go hand in hand with the bigger picture of history (I have in the past even corrected some research findings with data algorithmically generated from WikiTree ... and it was gratefully accepted by learned historians).
The example above (the novel I was speaking of that this Gordon is a character in), is about the life and events in the main character's lifetime; he has a profile on WikiTree: Baron Willem Ferdinand van Rheede van Oudshoorn (1755 - 1822) - I spent two hours restructuring the bio to make sense of the basics, and what narrative there is now is in 3 languages and sorted under headings as facts or "bodies" of text that were GEDCOM (given a tweak or two). Not ideal, but a start.
The bio is now ready for further enhancement (meaning careful structuring into a more coherent and cohesive integral body of narrative, whilst still keeping to the [inline, named] referencing system. The profile has been primarily validated with a baptism record, and has therefore been locked down. It therefore has the template {{Dutch_Cape_Colony}} and the [[Category:Cape of Good Hope Ready]] (which means the profile is now ready for further validation with well cited & referenced marital records, death records etc.). There are still some issues (with the children - from collating the data of the various GEDCOM and manual duplicates, it is not clear who three of them are). Further research is still needed.
Now the novel (written by a South African historian who has also worked internationally with Dutch Archives, collaborating on international websites sharing databases and other fora), gives through it's genre (fiction) a much more personal account of the main character, that we might relate to. Such as that William was very unhappy in his second marriage, that he had filed for divorce, that he and his wife were living separately (just one interesting "fact" out of hundreds of others). This is not in the biography yet. Also - there are many clues in the novel to what certain occupations (time-space related) 250 years ago exactly entailed (such as "sherriff" or "bailiff") and how people's lives were different from now ... for example what their stressors were and which obstacles they were facing daily.
WikiTree in my opinion rocks because it has the potential to combine the genealogical aspect with the historical facts, and both are personal in the life and times of individual people.
The key to it's success in my humble opinion lies in the coherent validating structuring of the narrative of every single bio, in such a way that the narratives are not fiction, but they might contain those elements that often we only read about in fiction, and that everyone who contributes with integrity, is acknowledged. As they say - real life can be stranger than fiction many times.
Loads of work in progress ...:-)