Reconcile WikiTree and Wikipedia source preferences

Question

I recently became aware of Wikipedia's preference for reliable secondary sources article, which says that it is better in WP  articles to filter primary sources as secondary sources and the rationale for this preference being defendable.

In genealogical terms this is equivalent to preferring a relable expert transcription of an ancient hand-written baptism record than the original hand-written baptism record itself. Such a  view would seem to be at odds with mainstream genealogical thinking.

How can these two opposiing sourcing policies be reconciled?

Comments

Totally different animals - no need to reconcile them. 90% of genealogy is disproving cockeyed secondary sources, so Wikipedia's approach would be impossible.

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Maybe my baptism deed analogy is not the best one to single out.

There is an important case to be made where Wikipedia and WikiTree mesh and this has to do with ancient books or such 'digested' references which were originally when publish considered as secondary sources but which over the years and centuries (ei, ohsolescence) become primary sources as more recent replacement published material becomes available, this new material then becoming treated as secondary sources.

That is, through obsolescence, the older published sources migrate from being secondary sources to becoming primary sources as better published material becomes available.

Confusing but true!

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Primary/secondary isn't about the accuracy, it's about the relationship to the event.

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According to Wikipedia, secondary sources are documents that relate to " information originally presented elsewhere"; that is, secondary sources are filtered from primary information. This way of looking at sources is somewhat different than understood by WikiTree policy.

According to Wikipedia, obselete published books such as Tanquay's dictionary volumes are considered primary sources because by definition more recent secondary source information is available.

For this special case of published documents, Wikipedia and WikiTree preferences are the same. Both WP & WT prefer sources that are not obsolete.

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Obsolete?  Well genealogical documents do not go Obsolete - they get harder to understand sometimes - we use language differently now - the dates have to be adjusted if you go back far enough - you have to know the history if the place name has changed or even the country name, but a source is Primary if it is made at the time of the event - so and so was born Tuesday to Mom Doe and Dad Smith and is baptized today - that is current with the event - secondary sources may read better - and be much easier to use - so what is the problem? They are gathering together Primary sources to get them - BUT errors can be made in transcription - assumptions can be made without solid evidence - so they are not as sure as the Primary

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This issue is worth dwell upon because the impact of being wrong about certain sources is far-reaching. And genealogy spans many aspects in terms of not only ancestors' vital statistics but also place names, ethnicity, DNA and so on and so forth.

An issue that is close to me further illustrates eligibility for published source obsolescence. I happen to own an engineering handbook published in 1949 in the 8th edition of the handbook which is now available in its 17th edition published last year. I still refer to this 8th edition handbook including in terms of citing significantly in WP articles..

So I agree with you Navarro that part of my 8th edition out of print handbook is not obsolete but it is also clear that large part of my 8th edition handbook is 'obsolete' compared to the current 17th edition handbook.

All to say that I can cite my 8th edition handbook but doing so I run the risk to  my citation might from the ohsolete part of the old handbook. The faster technology changes, such as, for example, in the case of DNA, the more this obsolescence issue becomes.

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D, I think you are still confusing secondary sources like your engineering handbook which particularly because it is on a technical subject is going to become obsolete as knowledge about engineering changes.

A branch of my family originated in a a village/town in Cornwall called Lanivet, the parish records of the baptisms, marriages and burials are a primary source for the genealogy of that parish, and those records will never become obsolete. They are virtually the only record for those people from about 1600-1835 and it would be impossible to do any research without them.

How I access those records might have changed, I've not seen the originals only scans from the FamilySearch website, as well as some transcriptions but not the fact that they are essential and aren't going to be surpassed by anything else.

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I am not confused, As I say: 

• And genealogy spans many aspects in terms of not only ancestors' vital statistics but also place names, ethnicity, DNA and so on and so forth.

What if you are citing a published DNA-related source trying to prove or disprove Cornwall ancestor(s)?

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Roberta Estes's DNAXplained series of articles is collectively a good example of secondary sources that might be preferred instead of 'older' DNA material that may be undecipherable / unreliable, obsolescent, etc. But I agree, that generally-speaking primary sources are genealogically preferred.

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Right, except in the case of DNA, as that is a new tool for us, otherwise Primary is best for research

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The exception is generally many published documents, not only DNA published documents, that become obsolete over time. For example, Tanquay's genealogical dictionary volumes published in the late 1800s are more obsolete than more recent Jette and Langlois genealogical dictionaries.

Answer 1

The main reason for Wikipedia's preference here is, as they say, "to avoid original research." That's one of Wikipedia's basic rules.

Here on WikiTree, on the other hand, original research is not only allowed, but highly recommended.

Comments

This first sentence: Wikipedia "must not contain original research" is unreconcilable with WikiTree's policy of "whenever possible, deliver the original source".

In fact, I personally always prefer reading an original source to a summary that someone has written. For example when I read an article that gives a summary of a scientifical study and links to it, in 99% of the cases you will see me click the link to the study that I can read it myself. That doesn't mean that I always understand completely what is said in it, either because the language is too difficult for me or I don't have and don't get a clue of the subject, but I can get an impression myself...

Answer 2

Transcriptions are notoriously worse than anyone could conceive.

Comments

We are talking here of expert transcripts, I being among many neophytes who have a hard time decyphering ancient hand-written religious deeds.

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The major problem with transcripts is that you really can't judge their quality until you've read and understood the original. And even the most "expert" transcripts will contain errors.They can give hints for further research, and are great for quick lookups. But there's really no substitute for reading the original documents.

Answer 3

It's about what constitutes knowledge.

In science, the experimenter's lab book contains authentic data, but no knowledge worth having.  The experimenter might write up the experiment and publish it, with his conclusions.  But original research papers are often flawed.  The conclusions turn out not to be fully justified, one way or another.  The papers often report the latest original research on health, diet etc, and contradict themselves weekly.  Not good Wikipedia material.

Then you get review papers, where somebody does no original research, but they assess previous published work and try to figure out what can really be learned from it all.  These are "secondary" sources.  There you might find some knowledge.

On Wikipedia, you aren't supposed to publish your own research, or do your own review.  You're supposed to base articles on published reviews, or textbooks etc, which are even further downstream.  Then you know the claims being made have stood up to examination.

In genealogy, it's easy to use scanned images of registers and go wrong.  The registered data might be inaccurate, or you might be looking at the wrong person, or you might be misunderstanding the implications.

What should be better in principle is a compiled pedigree - say a journal article - where somebody has already collected several pieces of interlocking data and put them together into a story that appears to makes sense, though they might have had to put an interpretation on the raw data that isn't the most obvious.  Hopefully somebody who knows what they're doing and is honest, but nobody's perfect.

We'd tend to call that a secondary source, but in Wikipedia terms, that would be original research.  Those articles are often flawed.

You're on safer ground when the published work has been around a bit and has been re-examined critically.  This doesn't mean that a royal descent given by Browning becomes solid when a few people have copied it into their Great Bloggins Family books.

Books like Complete Peerage and the Richardson books are built on top of previous work.  They've assessed the value of it, discovered the contradictions between versions, discounted the obvious handwaving.  What gets through should have the best chance of being right.  Those are the kind of sources that Wikipedia wants you to use.

But of course there's only a small fraction of WikiTree where we can do that.  Most of the genealogy hasn't been done yet, not properly, and there isn't a big body of accepted knowledge out there to build an encyclopedia-type resource on.  Most of WikiTree is about posting your own original research in the primary data, and would be banned on Wikipedia.

Comments

Right- and it all comes down to apples and oranges - the two goals are not the same so you are not going to get alignment on these two things -

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Goals are an interesting question.  Why do so many people want to post their genealogy without thinking it matters whether it's any use to anybody?

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gee, that's an interesting question, RJ! The only reason i post it is in case it can help some other family historian.  I feel like i am paying forward, and hope to benefit from others' research myself.   

Otherwise, i can just have the fun of doing the puzzle in private...

Although i must say that WikiTree is the BEST for calculating relationships, so i might have posted for just that reason, even without my main reason.

Answer 4

I have a quick question, why do the two sites need to be reconciled?   Two different sites, two different sets of Styles and Standards....what am I missing?

Comments

It's my question. Source issues should be internationally similar to understand, if not to interpret, so WP should not be wildly different than WT in terms of understanding. The expectation with sources is that we are not dealing with Babei at the undertanding level.