People are very conscious these days of the vandalism that can be done to lovely old buildings by careless repair and remodelling. It’s time genealogists woke up to a similar menace. Once people start mangling primary sources, through careless copying and editing, they’re doing permanent damage, and future generations won’t thank them. Unfortunately, accuracy and faithfulness to the original are hardly guiding principles of some of the big, commercial genealogy sites.

An organisation promoting good practice in building conservation sets out principles of ‘conservative repair’ which, we thought, read across nicely to genealogical transcription projects:

The retention of genuine historic fabric and the avoidance of misleading restoration will allow present and future generations to interpret the significance for themselves in their own way and on the basis of physical evidence.

It says it all!

Do you try to verify them against primary sources, or at least against reliable transcriptions?

Do you allow other people to add their own data to your website? If so do you perform any checks, or do you just give them a free run?

One of us recently googled an 18th-century person she was researching, and was gratified to find several references to him, all of them including a piece about the circumstances of his sudden death. What was the origin of this snippet, she wondered? She contacted all the sites that quoted the story, all of them in exactly the same words. None of them knew where it came from. One, whose website looks admirably researched and presented, said ‘The entire branch data came to me electronically… I have no clue as to the source’.

We are left wondering if the snippet was authentic or not. And, more to the point, we’re flabbergasted that people would allow strangers just to add data wholesale to their own websites.

It sounds almost as bad as people pirating data wholesale from other people’s websites – which is where the Genealogy Quality Code started.

Someone stand up for clean, properly-checked data!

So we we’re delighted that the June 2012 edition of the Society of Genealogists Magazine  carries a letter from us, summarising what the project’s about.

It is already bringing in quite a bit of feedback, all of it positive so far – though we want to hear all opinions, supportive or otherwise.

The main thing is that the Code is starting to get a much wider audience among the serious genealogical community.

We’re loath to make the Code any more complicated. But, as more and more databases come forward for registration, we’ve needed to say something about those that go beyond the basic Category 1, but stop short of a large amount of original editorial input (as in the old Category 2).

Often, for example, compilers have negotiated special access to data which the public wouldn’t otherwise see. They may have entered into agreements on what was to be transcribed, or on precautions to be taken against unauthorised copying. We’re now calling these Category 2 databases, and re-numbering the value-added databases Category 3.

The dividing lines aren’t always sharp. Some databases will straddle boundaries. But from here on, we have a self-imposed ordinance against further refinements! We aren’t attempting to lay down hard-and-fast rules for every situation – just trying to get people to THINK before they copy.

The Code itself remains, we hope, a clear distillation of commonsense.

We were pleased, for example, to get a mention in Nu? What’s New? an E-zine produced by Avotaynu, who publish books of interest to those researching their Jewish roots.

We believe the code is important to all researchers and webmasters across the whole spectrum of genealogy so if you run a newsletter or blog of your own, why not give us a mention? Help turn this rumble-in-the-jungle into a clamour!

In our own direct experience, some big genealogy outfits are more than happy to lift the entire contents of printed databases. We’re not sure whether they do it using wage-slaves copying manually, or by technical fixes like OCR. But never doubt that they’ll take the whole lot if they think it’s worth their while. Your statement of copyright and your own interest in the work will mean nothing to them.

There is no easy answer to this – other than to create a climate of intolerance towards that sort of practice. Step forward, Genealogy Quality Code!

Elsewhere on this site (Why have a Code?), we predict that, over time, there is going to be less and less access to primary sources. This will make it ever more important that secondary sources on the web are reliable. But if some of the best secondary sources are going to be kept off the web altogether, where does this leave us?  A diminishing pool of reliable sources online?

This would be the saddest of fates. The web is a fabulous resource: let’s try to keep it that way.

Crudely speaking, a PRIMARY source is the original document or record or other artefact that underlies whatever event you are recording. A SECONDARY source is one that draws on the primary source, eg interpreting it, or in other ways building on it. A GRO death certificate, a Will, or a gravestone might be considered a primary source; and a bare listing of the death on someone’s website as a secondary source.  But, of course, as with any broad-brush explanation, there are degrees of safety and reliability within these two categories. However, in the case of the Zutphen “Bigamist”  the publisher of the Dutch tree had a wealth of good PRIMARY source data to back her assertions whilst the publisher of the Ohio tree had only the flimsiest of  “proof”, based on uncorroborated, lowgrade. SECONDARY sources, to support hers.

The further you go back in time, the harder it is within some social, ethnic or religious groups to obtain Primary source  material.  In the UK, there is a patchwork of possible primary sources on births, marriages and deaths before the introduction of national registration in the 19th century.  English parish registers offer fairly abundant material on the majority of the population who belonged to the Church of England, but for others – Nonconformists, Catholics, Jews and others – the pre-19th century sources are more hit-and-miss. Newly arrived immigrants and those with nomadic lives such as Roma and Travellers,might also remain “unrecorded”. Anyone without at least one unsourced event in their tree can consider themselves very lucky indeed!

It is important, therefore, when publishing your Tree or Family History to make quite clear which facts can be supported by PRIMARY sources; which facts are based on good SECONDARY sources; and which are based purely on SUPPOSITION or HEARSAY.  It is no crime to include such conjectural material in your tree, but it is misleading and unhelpful not to distinguish between the relative reliability of the data you offer.

The GENEALOGY QUALITY CODE won’t fill those aggravating blanks in your tree. Nor will it sprinkle your ancestors with fairy dust and turn the poor tailor into the scion of a wealthy family.  And, as has been pointed out by some critics, it will carry no legal weight. But we hope it will bring a greater awareness of the need for honesty and reliability in the otherwise unmoderated world of Internet Genealogy Websites and Social Media and that, by signing up to its codes of practice, you will be advancing the cause of serious research, whilst limiting the scope and influence of the purveyors of  “stolen” or genealogically untrustworthy material.

Another argument we’ve heard is that we need to get some big national/international genealogical bodies on board.  But we don’t see much chance. Any broad-based genealogical society has to represent a range of viewpoints, and not everyone sees things the way we do. Some people sincerely believe it’s more productive to hoover up data uncritically: if this produces reliable data only 90 per cent of the time, the thinking goes, over a long-enough timescale the genealogical community will clean up the rest. That seems to be the rationale behind a lot of the big genealogical websites, and they obviously have a lot of support.

But if, like us, you don’t believe indiscriminate copying serves the long-term interests of genealogy, spread the word about this Code!

I provided all the source information I had, copies of all the Births, marriages and deaths, photo of the tombstone all proving that my ancestor was not the same as hers.The reply came back that a database she uses had ‘made a suggestion’ that they were the same person, because she trusted the database she believed the information and that was that.

To this day her tree continues to show my ancestor, born Zutphen Holland as being married and having children in Ohio, USA.