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m0smith edited this page Mar 13, 2013 · 10 revisions

Contrary to many software systems, Topoged uses a source as the foundation for storing genealogy data. This mean that all data is required to have a a source cited. Data will not be allowed into the system without a source. Since a source is required for all data, the reliablity of the source needs to be known. For example, a birth certificate will be considered more trust worthy than hearsay. This will be used in the inference engine. Data needs to be entered exactly as it appears in the source document. Once the data is entered it can then be standardized. All the data contained in the source document should be entered into the system.

Source Based

Sources exist independent of the research. What is entered into the system needs to reflect as close as possible the data as it exists source material. All misspellings, abbreviations, typos and "wrong" information needs to be entered as it appears on the document. IT has happened more than once that this so-called "wrong" data has lead to more information. Avoiding the temptation to correct the data as it is entered into the system will give the system a great ability to provide reasonable and trustworthy results.

All data being entered into the system must be attached to a source. The source may be a government document, a newspaper article, a family bible, or Aunt Sally who remembers her grandmother. The reasons for requiring sources include verification of data and reasoning about conflicts

All data in the system should be able to be verifiable, if possible. For every name, date, location it should be possible to trace it back to a repository where a new researcher can find the same data. That repository might be a library, web site or Aunt Sally's address.

Of course people pass on, libraries close and web sites come and go. Therefore it is important to be able to store representations of sources as well as the data they contain. This might be a scanned copy of a page from a book, the content of a web page or even a recording as an mp3 of Aunt Sally's life story.

In every research there is conflicting data; names don't match, misspellings, wrong dates, etc. By having the exact source of all the information, it is possible for a researcher to make informed decisions about the information. All the sources are always available but some of the information can be marked as preferred. The preferred information will be shown on reports like pedigree charts and family group sheets.
This will allow the software to consider all available information on a person while keeping a clean subset of the data for display.

Another reason for having a source based system is in collaborating with other researches or passing the data along.

Trust System

Sources are tagged as to how trustworthy they are. Sources may be trusted, suspect, forged, etc.

Even if a source is found to be wrong, false or forged, it still exists. Rather than delete it from the system, all data that is dependent on that source can then be flagged as suspect and can be cleaned up. Also, by keeping the bad source, it will prevent the researcher from re-discovering it because it will already by shown as being bad. Otherwise, the data might be re-added by a different researchers.

Exact Data

Data entered from a source should be as faithful a representation as possible. Too often, a researcher will make some "correction" of the data when it is entered, making it match known data. One problem this introduces is that it is impossible to verify the data. Looking at the source document will make show the discrepancy. Instead, enter the data as it exists then justify the correction.

The search engine uses all variations to try and find matches. If another researcher has found the same source but entered the data with different corrections, then the automated searching will be thwarted.

Complete Data

There is a tendency to only enter the data we want, rather than the complete data from the source. This again limits the ability to really understand the data. What is unimportant now may be relevant years into the future when access to the source may be impossible.

Research Suggestions

Another benefit of careful recording of sources is an ability to propose research suggestions. This means the system can look at things like birth and death information of other people in the system and see where that information as found. It can then suggest places to look based on people who were born or died in similar times and places.

Citations

Attachments

A Source can have one or more attachments. These documents can contain a copy of the source itself. For a headstone, it might be a picture. For a GEDCOM it might be the GEDCOM itself. Other attachments might be photocopies, videos, sound bytes, etc.

References

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