Proving hypotheses to level of Genealogical Proof and similar standards?

Question

As I understand it, the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) is the backbone of Genealogy today, and yet it has not been mentioned in a question asked here for over three years, and only in 20 questions and answers total.

At the same time the number of questions per day asked here continues to usually be around or slightly more than 1 per day, and rarely has it touched 2 per day, so I think we need some new ideas for how to increase that.

For a long time I have been wanting to become better at routinely applying the GPS to my own amateur research, and have been wondering how I can use the time I spend here to do that.

Although I will talk about the GPS, @ColeValleyGirl has pointed out that the GPS is not the only way to perform rigorous genealogical research so anything I say about the GPS can be read as applying equally to UK Society of Genealogists' formulation of Standards and Good Practice.

I think a lot of our users start researching their family history by wondering who their ancestors are, then start to quickly flesh out a family tree using hints from Ancestry.com etc, and come up with some elaborate and romantic hypotheses for where they came from. The one thing that is usually lacking in these trees, and lacking in a big way, is evidence to support the many hypotheses that each tree depends on if it is to be considered more than a shadow of reality.

It is here that I think we can help those users and ourselves to become more rigorous in our genealogical approach by endorsing the asking of a new "style" of question.

This new "style" is in no way intended to become the norm for questions here - because that would certainly alienate many of our potential users - it is intended as just another style of question and might offer a path to a form of Peer Review.

As an example of the Q&A style that I am thinking could lead to conclusions that might meet the Genealogical Proof Standard, or at least to the level of something that might be considered an early/advanced draft of something that could, I have now posted this self-answered question, and invite other answers to it:

Proving parents of Thomas Morgan of Tre-bryn, Pencoed, Coychurch, Glamorgan, Wales about 1808 were Thomas and Ann? .

Does this idea have any merit? Would asking some questions in this way help/hinder our efforts to build a site with more and better Q&As to attract the best genealogists and family historians that we can to our site?

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Having recently viewed (at @JanMurphy's suggestion) a webinar by Warren Bittner called "Proof Arguments - How to write them and why they matter", I am thinking that a question could perhaps be structured along the lines of:

This is my proof argument tying Thomas Morgan to his birth family written "Bittner-style", have I made my case sufficiently?

<insert proof argument here>

with "Yes" being indicated by votes on the question and/or answers to that effect, with other answers being "No, because ..."

Answer 1

I'm all in favour of improving the quality of genealogical research, but believe strongly this approach won't achieve that objective, nor the objective of improving the question volume around here.

You run the risks of:

1. alienating beginners, if they perceive such a stringent approach is the norm here;
2. alienating those who don't follow the US-based BGG GPS (the UK Society of Genealogists has a different formulation of Standards and Good Practice which overlaps with but is not the same as the GPS)

I think that providing subtle and well-targeted guidance/editing for individual questions matched to the apparent experience-level of the OP is a much better way to go... which doesn't preclude a very experienced OP providing the level of rigour you're proposing. In some ways, it's veering towards the 'peer review' we were discussing here 3 years ago: https://genealogy.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1417/104

Answer 2

I support this idea as long as the questions and proofs are difficult and interesting.

If we are not careful, I think we risk ending up with lots of questions about random ancestors that are not really useful to anyone except the OP.

What I would propose is that if one posts such a proof, it utilises a unique or interesting resource, or newly published database, or is a very difficult problem you've solved, or contains something else that could inspire someone else's research. We don't need lots of questions about people browsing exhaustively through BMD indexes and censuses, because (hopefully) most people on this site know how to do that already. What might be useful is a proof using an underutilised resource, such as (thinking of your recent post, @PolyGeo) settlement examinations.

For your example, getting the birth certificate of Grace Martin Wills would probably be 99% of the proof to the question given. I could be wrong, but I don't really see what more to the proof there would be unless you suspect the birth certificate either intentionally or accidentally contains false information. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but for this reason I don't think that is a particularly good example of a proof Q&A that would be useful to the community.

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I also don't think the structure of having people vote up short answers like "I agree with your proof" is particularly useful. I think it would be better structured if in your question you can explain the dilemma or problem you are trying to solve, and then self-answer with the proof as an answer. The question itself need not be long but ought to include the relevant background information. People with substantial suggestions (more than just a comment on the proof) could add that as another answer, or could be encouraged to expand and rework the proof as a separate answer. Upvotes of the proof answer(s) are implicitly community endorsements of that proof, and after a reasonable time of voting the OP could decide whether to accept their own proof or the suggestions/proof contributed by someone else.

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I do not purposefully and routinely use the Genealogical Proof Standard, although in the course of my research I end up (consciously or not) covering all the components. As long as the relevant parts of GPS are all there I don't think there is a need for the proof to be structured too much as a "template", because that tends to get boring to read. We don't want boring questions and answers because that certainly will not encourage people to participate. As you mentioned, I think it would be fine to include citations throughout, or at the bottom of the post, rather than listing them right in the middle as Step 2.

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Questions in this format could perhaps be given a new tag such as genealogical-proof.

Answer 3

I think that outlining all five elements of the BCG's Genealogical Proof Standard is a huge ask for a single question.

To recap, the elements are:

• reasonably exhaustive research;
• complete, accurate citations to the source or sources of each information item;
• tests—through processes of analysis and correlation—of all sources, information items, and evidence;
• resolution of conflicts among evidence items; and
• a soundly reasoned, coherently written conclusion.

Existing questions on the site are likely to address one of these elements. The most obvious example is one of my own examples where I asked: How can I ensure that I am making a reasonably exhaustive search? but with a little digging we could find examples for all the other elements.

As a thought-experiment, imagine if there were tags for each element:

• exhaustive-search
• source-citations
• analysis-correlation
• resolving-conflicts
• proof-statement

I'm not saying that we need to run out and make these tags right this moment. But these are important concepts that we need to think about -- something that is also true of the principles of good practice put forth by the Society of Genealogists. I don't see the principles of the SoG and the BCG's GPS as competing standards -- both are helpful guides of the issues we should be thinking about.

In a future, more mature version of the site, can we imagine a scenario where it might make sense to have questions focused on these topics, or any of the other elements in other standards? Again, I stress that I'm not proposing we rush out and make tags for each of these principles -- the psuedo-tags were a suggestion to look at the problem in a fresh way.

Rather than trying to cram all five elements of the GPS in one question, it might be more helpful to focus on which one we're having difficulty with.

As far as proof statements go, a reminder: a proof statement doesn't have to be long -- sometimes a paragraph is sufficient. For simple cases, a clear, succinct statement of how you arrived at your conclusion will be sufficient.

In general, I wonder if some of us (myself included) aren't getting a bit stuck on the "let's find this record!" approach and not looking at other parts of the research process.