More real, less illusion

Alex it's not just further back, it's the gaps in the record, the whole Descent from Antiquity question. Classical Greek civilization's pedigrees I learned early on. But getting from there to here ... Dragons. :)

Hi gang, it has been a few hours since my last post but i am going to be rude and post again without hitting refresh to check for further responses from others! Apologies in advance.

William, in the other thread i tried to explain why i don't use the title cousin, i don't know how well i did but i think Justin has if not mis-represented me than at least used my comment as a jumping off point to diverge into one of his pet subjects. I was saying that Geni does well to illustrate that we are all cousins to some extent but that once you acknowledge this fact it becomes irrelevant because by default we are all cousins and it is just the path that is a mystery. I do not greet the local butcher as my cousin but i am sure if we could discover the path between us we would be 2*th cousins X times removed because basically everyone alive is.

Justin, I remember our previous discussion of Lakota genealogy verse my narrow anglo perspective although i dont recall the origin nor outcome. It not only illustrates my earlier point that a certain level of background knowledge is vital to producing good data but, i think, illustrates a major weakness in Geni which is that it is has an anglo based structure not suited to storing/displaying other structures.

Thinking about your Lakota descriptions made me consider my own narrow-mindedness and i can't help but wonder if my anti-"cousining" stance is a reflection not of my cultural upbringing but rather my personal circumstances. While i have a respectable number of first cousins, how then have a typical number of children and a large group of second cousins, etc people who typical anglo society would call my cousins(?) the unfortunate fact is that i have not seen any of these people in nearly 20 years. In the past decade i have been fortunate enough to be visited by two aunts and my father as well as living quite close to my mother before her death so despite being a member of a large family (and per Geni an enormous one!) i dont actually have many relatives around me (not counting in-laws) which perhaps makes me over sentimentalise the term? Or maybe christmas makes me a bit maudlin?

Which leads to my second thought about crass commercialism (on christmas morning no less!), i think it is in this thread that someone attributed on of Geni's strengths to it's crowd sourced nature. I think that was definitely the case in the start-up phase but that as corporate structure Geni is not focussed on building the tree further but rather getting more memberships. Early on the two targets were pretty inseparable but now with such a huge tree in place build it up more (best done by a big pool of volunteer labour, ie crowd source) has a diminishing effect on the revenue. Getting new members at this point seems to be affected a lot more by Geni's ability to connect new members to famous people already in the tree, so in one sense it is actually financially advantageous to Geni to have these obscure, hard to find, fantasy/fiction/fake pedigrees because it connects more potential punters to big name profiles. Making the tree more accurate actually makes it harder to link people to famous names and so actually in turn makes it harder to tap into that particular market.

Sorry, another two hour gap and i nearly forgot the final point i was going to touch on. I don't feel at all qualified regarding game theory to comment on Geni as a game but I think i am sufficiently qualified to state categorically that it is addictive :)

Oh drat, i can't resist :)

You are of course correct Erica, rather than a line in the sand instead a street sign, "Warning: Pot holes may contain dragons"?

You had me all excited about linking geology to genealogy :(
I think you will find that the physical event which was the germination of the Flood story is far older than Noah (without knowing when Noah was about i know that Adam was created about 6500 years ago meaning Noah must be younger than that!?!). If memory serves The Flood event was the breaching of the Bosporus and flooding of the Black Sea depression displacing neolithic(?) farmers ... or drowning some of them i suppose. Again from memory i think the "flood" was supposed to have taken several months to fill the basin and was actually a result of a release of a huge amount of water which had been trapped in the Great Lakes by a glacial dam, a lingering vestige of the Nth American ice sheet of the last ice age.

I have also heard a theory that the banishment from Eden is actually a memory of the crossing from Africa into the Arabian Peninsula by one of the (or the?) migrating homo sapiens groups that went on to settle... well everywhere :)
Of course no one (you know who you are!) needs to explain that the popularity of these types of theories wax and wane over time.

Hmmm speaking of dragons (and now that i am speaking u may have trouble shutting me up) has me thinking of the sky which brings to mind clouds.

So genealogy is like the clear blue sky but things get obscured in places by clouds, some times they are light wispy things that barely conceal anything, others are white cotton balls that obscure completely a small section but can easily be seen around and yet other parts of history are cloud banks or storm fronts, obscuring everything in every direction until a change comes through and blue skies of knowledge and documented sources return.

So from crass cynicism to waxing lyrical in one day, christmas truly is a time of miracles.

Alex, if I didn't write so much maybe my point would be clearer ;)

It's not that I used your message as a jumping off point for one of my pet topics. Instead, I was talking about one of my pet topics and using part of your message as an example.

Nor was I implying you are narrow-minded for having a particular opinion. Instead, I was contrasting two different approaches to kinship. I think both of them are legitimate (that is, culturally sanctioned) in our society.some

So far, I've posted three broad ideas about why Geni users have such a difficult time organizing to eliminate fake genealogy. First, because some users think the old fakes are an important part of our cultural heritage. Second, because users have different styles of inclusion and exclusion. And third, because working with the old fakes requires specialized knowledge.

Behind this, you can see my basic idea that the problem with fake lines doesn't have anything to do with Geni or Geni's desire to get more users. Instead, it's a problem inherent in crowd-sourced genealogy. When a zillion people are working on the same lines and they have different goals there are going to be problems.

Re: First, because some users think the old fakes are an important part of our cultural heritage.

Ive seen this said before. But I havent actually "seen" it. More, it's like me:

- I have no idea whether it's true or not
- I have no idea how to understand whether true or not (no ews reference material)
- I have no idea how to fix it if untrue
- it's not upsetting to me, of course there are errors & fakes in trees

Alex, you were musing that maybe your anti-"cousining" stance might be a reflection your personal circumstances rather than your cultural upbringing.

I imagine it is. Ot at least the two elements have combined to give you your own perspective. Probably the same is true for most of us.

My dad was an enrolled member of the Lakota tribe but you won't find any Lakotas in my direct ancestry. Some ancestors just got caught up in a cultural vortex. I have Lakota cousins but I'm not Lakota. That cultural strand is just one piece that went into forming my own philosophy.

What matters much more, I think, is that I come from small-town Utah. Large Mormon families. Most people in town connected in an intricate network of cousins and in-laws. Annual family reunions of all descendants of a pioneer couple are routine.

Add to that, most of my adult life I've worked for small companies where I know how I'm connected, Geni-style, to many of my co-workers. Even transplanted to the big city and working in a bookstore, about once a month I discover that one my customers is some sort of cousin or in-law connection.

So, all of this relatedness is just always in the background for me. And, as a genealogist I'm predisposed to watch for it so it's self-validating.

> Ive seen this said before. But I havent actually "seen" it.

I hear it quite often when I get into long discussions about particular lines. Those discussions follow a very predictable path.

Someone wants a line restored or the "Fictitious" label removed from a profile. I say medieval monks made it up. They say the monks must have had access to sources that are now lost. I go into detail about why the line is suspicious on its own terms. Then they play the trump card -- it doesn't matter whether it's fake or not. If our ancestors believed it, then it's part of our history.

At that point the discussion is at a draw.

Perhaps I could argue that our ancestors believed lots of things we don't now believe, but that would miss the point. Someone who makes that kind of argument has a fundamentally different approach to genealogy.

They aren't wrong, It really is historically significant that our ancestors believed they were descended from Odin, or that Julius Caesar was descended from the goddess Venus. The only real dispute is about whether that kind of information belongs in the linked tree or whether it would be better to put it in the About Me.

Re: If our ancestors believed it, then it's part of our history.

Well, of course it is, but it's not evidence based genealogy. :).

Re: The only real dispute is about whether that kind of information belongs in the linked tree or whether it would be better to put it in the About Me.

Of course in the "about me.". I'm hoping that can get done and stay done.

I'll try to work, in my mind, with the King Arthur stories. I believe it was originally "real" but we don't (yet) know the "real" Arthur (if I have it right). So it becomes a self enclosed camelotian kingdom.

If i found I had a connection to it I would laugh and not be terribly upset at the error. But it would hamper the search for a better truth.

> I believe it was originally "real" but we don't (yet) know the "real" Arthur (if I have it right). So it becomes a self enclosed camelotian kingdom.

My goal for this area is to isolate the Arthur of legend from the old genealogies that link a possibly real Arthur from old Welsh genealogies. I put in a few hundred hours on it last go-around, but it's a losing battle until we get relationship locking.

Ideally, we should have the legendary profiles on Geni for reference but they should be isolated into a little "island" where they aren't connected to the World Family Tree. Then we will be able to put hyper-linked text in the About Mes of real people so someone who is interested can explore the old legends if they want to.

Alex, you brought up a point we've talked about many times:

> There is a suggestion which comes up now and again that Geni should draw a line in the sand, "Beyond this point be dragons!", that genealogy (in the anglo sense as originally envisioned by Geni and it's ilk) should be limited to a specific date in history forward.

It would be nice if there were some sort of warning or caution.

There NO proven lines from Europe before about 700. Not a single one.

There are no lines that go back to Rome or Troy. No lines that go back to the Bible. No lines back to Cleopatra or the Pharaohs. Don't even think about it ;)

The experts have hammered away for two generations to find something. Anything. But nothing. There are some tantalizing possibilities. Some of the experts have proposed speculative lines that could be true, but it's worth noticing that not a single one of them aligns with old traditions.

For Europeans, everything goes back to Charlemagne, then a few generations further back, then it all just stops. Some people think the old Welsh lines and old Irish lines might be reliable just a little further back, but if so it's not much. Maybe, if you suspend disbelief just a bit, you can get back to the 600s.

Re: There NO proven lines from Europe before about 700. Not a single one.

See, this bald fact I didn't know. It's not surprising me, but I don't think I've ever seen it on a genealogy site. Interesting. Maybe that gets to one of William Arthur Allen's point.

Erica Howton -- it a lovely and wonderful thing to be allowed to be a medievalist. It's fascinating, difficult, contentious, and absorbing work.

Nope. No proven lines. Many many stories, and manuscripts that give lines back and back and back. But in terms of scholarly proof, nope.

Our Geni Arthur is fictitious -- yay -- but even so he makes my teeth hurt: http://www.geni.com/family-tree/index/6000000007329382612 -- many various profiles have gotten glommed onto this line.

I note, to my satisfaction, that I am not, according to our database, descended from King Arthur Pendragon. However, I'm apparently directly descended from Morgan la Fay's husband Urien. Hmmm.

Or perhaps Arthur is not fictitious at all, and based on a real person -- Athrwys ap Tewdrig, King of Glywyssing & Gwent The About Section now states with certainty that THIS IS THE REAL KING ARTHUR. I'm not descended from him either, even though he is Welsh, so there is some hope here.

Another fictitious person that makes my teeth hurt is Robin Hood. Let's go check this out.

Oh, look, here he is! Sir Fulk III FitzWarin -- well, not necessarily, though here in Geni we state pretty clearly that Fulk is the basis of the legend. This is in no way agreed upon or clear.

Also, we have some duplicates, which I don't think I'll mess with at the moment,

AND this whole line: Bold Robin Hood which looks like it must be made up but I think isn't.

Here is another contender: John Conyers -- why not. We could have a lot more.

(Not to mention the fictitious Robin Hood profiles that are based on Robin Hood stories, rather than purporting to be an historical Robin Hood.)

We can't actually get genealogical profiles back to a Robin Hood, any more than we can get them back to Piers Plowman, or an Arthur, or the Wife of Bath. Even if these characters actually existed, there's no evidence of line. But boy, that doesn't stop us from trying.

When I get far enough along, after cleaning things up, I intend to make sure that at least in the Master Profiles we have explanations as to what the sources mean, and where they come from.

That's what the "line in the sand" would be -- a curator's note, perhaps, saying, beyond this person, the line is speculative. And then information in the "About" explaining.

But you know, there will be contention. There is even among the scholars. Of course there is contention amongst the users who are delighted to find that they are descended from Robin Hood and Arthur. And Noah and Adam.

I may tackle that Arthur family.

Nah, maybe not....

:)

I can do the TH White version of the Arthur family, would that help?

:)

Ha!

Really, we should have them all, if we're going to be fair. Not jus tGeoffrey of Monmouth, but Chretien de Troyes, and the Y Gododdin, and Marie de France, and Thomas Malory, and Tennyson, and William Morris, and Mark Twain, and Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Monty Python....

I do like that T.H. White version. He's trying to make sense of Malory. Who was trying to make sense of his inherited sources.

Ha, Justin i was calling myself narrow minded I know you are far too much of a gentleman to say such a thing!

It is interesting you mention your small town up bringing, as i touched on yesterday i had very much the opposite experience but one of the thoughts floating around yesterday which i failed to convey is that i think until very recently even in anglo culture your experience would be very much more the "normal". Of course when i say recent i am talking pre-industrial revolution. I glimpse it a lot when working on my own family that the same names keep popping up as families intertwine over generations, with a world limited by the distance you could walk in a day then most of the people you came across would (i imagine) be a relation to some extent and it would be not unreasonable i think to imagine that even when not particularly closely related there would be awareness of kin-ship.

On a completely unrelated matter i recently read a description of social interaction between contemporary tribesmen in the high lands of Paupa New Guinea. When two hunters come across each other in the forest they will sit down and recite, for want of a better term, genealogies to each other. The purpose is to find a common link to determine a relationship bond, the reason being that if the two men cannot find a connection to each other they are instead required to fight to claim the right to be hunting in that area. Even in this day and age a wound can easily lead to death (assuming the fight itself doesnt result in a death) so all parties prefer not to fight and put big efforts into finding a connection so that both can acknowledge a mutual right to be hunting there.

On re-reading that i just had a mental image of two tribesmen sitting in the forest each with an iPhone6 using the Geni app to check their relationship path! LOL

Alex I related to what you were saying. I'm from a small family who lived at a distance from their origin families & in an enormous city, so kinship / proximity has been more theoretical for me than actually experiential. So it's comforting to know "everyone is connected" even if we're not really. :). A meme gathering momentum, I think, is DNA cousin (we have DNA in common but haven't figured out the who / what / where yet). It's getting to be an "oh, poo, no DNA? Need a better tool to detect it!"

Alex don't laugh - it's true already in Iceland !

Having communicated with a few Icelanders here on Geni i imagine the fights are always deadly!

Off topic, so I'll be brief.

Last time we talked about a development plan we were going to separate out the early Welsh material as one tree, then do separate versions for the different groups -- Chretien, Eschenbach, and Malory -- and see if we could put Vulgate / Post Vulgate versions into a single tree. We talked about the later versions, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence that they entered the genealogical tradition so there wasn't much enthusiasm for them.

All subject to ongoing negotiations, of course.

The Arthurian projects are here:

Historical King Arthur: http://www.geni.com/projects/Historical-King-Arthur/25646

Arthurian Fiction: http://www.geni.com/projects/Arthurian-Fiction/8905

Alex, you said:

> imagine that even when not particularly closely related there would be awareness of kin-ship

That's certainly my experience. I start with the assumption that I'm probably related to everyone around me. I loved your Papua New Guinea story. That's essentially what we genealogists do, although the stakes are different. If we like someone we take the time to figure out how we're related. When we find a connection it serves to reinforce the relationship. Now we're not just chums, we're also distant cousins.

Oh, Geni. I was very sure that I would never be sucked in to the fictional profile trees.

But I can truly see myself working on the Arthurian Fictional Tree Variations.

All your fault, Justin Durand.

Go for it, Anne. It would a major advance for all of us.

Oh yeah. I see it now. Then, later, Robin Hood.

Colour Coding as a Way of Cautioning about Dragon Potholes:

Oh, Anne - you wonderfully competent medievalist, please work on the "Arthurian Fictional Tree Variations". You can really help me since my middle name is Arthur and I am having an identity crisis about which Arthur character (virtual or real) is my true most direct "relative".

When I tried the first link that you provided yesterday at 5PM at http://www.geni.com/family-tree/index/6000000007329382612 I got a profile for which Geni reported "Arthur Pendragon (Fictitious Person) is your 22nd great uncle's first cousin twice removed's wife's husband."
(I love the Pendragon name because of the metaphor of the dragon within). Hmmm, this Arthur Pendragon is on my father's side of the family tree. And I can't claim, as you do Anne, the satisfaction that I am not, according to our database, descended from King Arthur Pendragon. Apparently I am related! Why else would Geni's Master Profile report, "Arthur Pendragon (Fictitious Person) is your 22nd great uncle's first cousin twice removed's wife's husband." But what kind of relationship do I have to this nominee as the great Arthur to the exclusion of all others?

But, Anne, when I tried the second link which you provided in the same posting yesterday at Athrwys ap Tewdrig, King of Glywyssing & Gwent I got a second profile for in which Geni reported a different message that "Arthwys (Arthur) ap Meurig, King; St. Armel is your first cousin 8 times removed's husband's 18th great grandfather." Hmmmm, this person is on my mother's side of the family.

So I feel as if I am playing that old Ralph Edward's radio and TV quiz show, "Truth or Consequences". "Will the real King Arthur please stand up?" This truly has become a game for me and I am amused no end. But I ask myself, "Is there truth to any of this?" And I also ask, "Are there any consequences" for Geni and its users whenever we track back to an ancestor who competes with another ancestor as the most likely "Imagined Ancestor", if he is an ancestor at all?

A benefit of both of the above Geni master profiles is the lovely colour coding in both profiles. In Geni's relationship report about the first profile I am in blue print as is my father and a string of 25 names in blue print. Geni codes the next 7 names in brown (maybe potential or actual dragon pothole names?). The second last name is printed in green and the old Arthur appears at the end in an emphatic 4th colour.

In the second profile the print is in only 2 colours. I am in blue, as is my mother and a string of 12 people before the colour changes to brown for the next 21 names ending with the fabled Arthur.

Will someone please explain why Geni uses colour coding for some profiles but not others and what each of the various colours mean? How consistently do Curators use colour and why do they do so. In any given Master Profile, if there is a watershed between historically accurate nodes and nodes influenced by dragon potholes, the colour coding seems to have potential as a highly helpful strategy of resolving some of the differing opinions about truth and fantasy.- in the Geni database.

The colors are automatically applied by Geni. Each color group is a different bloodline.

Justin,
Thanks for the simple explanation. The colour coding is a helpful feature of Geni which I now will apply as I walk through the family jungle.

Arnfred Nilsen,
Welcome to the first discussion in Project 30589 "Geni as Illusion?" We look forward to your comments.
William Arthur Allen

Susan Frost, welcome as collaborator for Project 30589 "Geni as Illusion?" at http://www.geni.com/projects/Geni-as-Illusion/30589. Thanks, Anne, for your quick acceptance of Susan's request to join us.

Susan, we already have two related vigorous discussions under way, one initiated by Justin and one initiated by Sharon. Based on reactions of follwers to date we likely are ready for another couple of discussions in the coming days. There is particular interest in the role and significance of "Story" (especailly from Anne) and also expressed interest in "Phenomenology". I invite you to refine our project profile to accommodate your interest and focus, to participate in each of the existing discussions, and to initiate a related new Discussion on a relevant theme that may enrich our understanding.