Here they are:

I’m still not sure yet what I think of this idea. There are clear advantages in the flexibility department (along with integration with research pages), but there are a few unresolved issues.

In the first (John Smith), the info is pretty straightforward. (Does the right alignment for the source stuff make it feel less cluttered?) The second (Jeremiah Shanks) makes the advantages of this webpage-ish method more evident: you can include to-do lists (or any kind of checkbox lists) right in there with everything else on that person, including things like tables (as you see with the census stuff).

So now the question is this: does all that stuff belong in there? Even if we don’t do this on the individual detail pages, it’ll still be there in the research pages, so it’s not a life-or-death question. I’m torn. On the one hand, it’d be nice to have a to-do list and research log specific to each person, right there with the other information. You can take it all in with a single glance. On the other hand, should research be kept separate from the conclusions? I don’t know.

Another related issue is that of stuff you’re not sure about. For example, in my PAF file (which I inherited from several people, collated together into a hodgepodge mishmash of data with very few sources), I don’t know what’s real and what’s not. It’d be nice to mark it all as unsure until I can go through and check everything (and add sources in). I suppose not having a source (especially if the data was greyed out) would be equivalent to being unsure. And yet it’d be nice to be able to rank bits of evidence on more than just a binary yes/no scale. Something like the iTunes five stars…

That’s easy enough for data that doesn’t overlap with anything else in your pedigree, but what if you’ve got two possible mothers for your great grandfather? There has to be a good way to allow for alternate pasts, “what-ifs” if you will, and make it clear that you’re not sure which it is. I’ve got a few ideas on this but they’re still kind of fuzzy.

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