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Sorry - we didn't mean to scare you by mentioning "Research Standards". Yes, it's true that we're all just a bunch of amateur genealogists, so what's this "standards" business anyway?
Well, even though we are a group of "amateurs", that doesn't mean that the quality of our work must necessarily be "amateur". Remember, we said that our goal is to collect and share the entire Boschee lineage. This will never be attained if we are sloppy - nobody would be able to trust the quality of our data!
So we ask that you conform to this simple standard: Always specify the source of your information! Ideally, we would like to have source data recorded for every fact and tidbit submitted (every date, every birth, every marriage, etc.). If you have a bunch of information all coming from the same source then you can specify the source for the entire batch (no need to specify sources for each fact).
There are many possible kinds of sources: church records, cemetery records, birth/death/marriage certificates, census records, etc. Even family folklore is okay - if an interview with grandma was your source then it's okay, just say so. Genealogists consider the best sources to be those closest to the actual event. A marriage certificate is a direct source; a compilation of marriage records printed in a book is a secondary source, which is not quite as good since transcription errors do happen. But nobody expects every detail to be substantiated by direct sources. After all, we're all amateurs in this group and none of us have the time to trace down every church record (even if that were possible). Realistically, we all work mostly with printed secondary sources.
There are very good reasons why we ask for source information. First of all, it will make our data much more trustworthy and therefore much more useful to others (and to generations to come). But just as important: if a conflict arises (and they always do), we must have a way to "break the tie" and determine which facts are more reliable. For example, suppose you tell us that your great-great grandfather August was born on April 5, 1875, but then later somebody else submits August with a birth date of September 5, 1875. How will we (or anybody) determine which date is correct? The very best way to break conflicts like this is to return to the source documents! We might then find that (in this example) your date was correct, but the other person misinterpreted a poorly-written "4" in the handwritten source document and recorded it as a "9" (September). Or just as possible, maybe you made a transcription error (it happens to the best of us) and the other person's date is actually the correct one (and wouldn't you prefer to know about this?).
Without sources specified for each fact of data, we will have to treat the submission essentially as "hearsay" or "speculation". That doesn't mean that your data isn't good and useful, it's just that, in a tie, somebody else with good source records will be more believable. But, please don't be afraid to contribute whatever you've got - we'd rather have information without source documentation rather than have no data at all!
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