There was a car accident, in which many people from the family died. Is it better to add this fact as a single event with multiple people as “primary” subject, or to create a different “death” event for each person and then (how?) interlink them together?
When I think about a similar case for the twin birth I’m pretty sure it should be two separate event, but is my gut feeling correct?
Welcome!
I would create a single event each with the Primary role. Next to the role, each person would receive their own source/citation.
BTW: I do the same for multiple birth.
Agreed. My approach is share an “Other → Cause of Death” Event for the accident where they are all “Primary” role. That “Cause of Death” event also has the common Source/Citation and Note… typically a newspaper citation and the article transcription attached to that Citation. (Within the note, I might choose to “link” the persons mentioned.) I still prefer to add separate Death events for each person tho. (As the saying goes: ‘everyone dies alone’)
However, I do share a single “Birth” event for Twin/Triplets with the Description detailing it. (e.g. “triplets: Smith, John; Smith, Mary (stillborn); Smith, Jane.”) And all those siblings are assigned a “primary” role in that Shared Birth event. The biological mother obviously has an implicit role in any birth. As does the biological father approx. 9 months earlier. So the Event does not need to be shared with them.
Thanks, that clarifies things for me 
I’ll separate the death event itself from the (shared) cause of death.
I don’t feel at ease with an event of type Cause of Death as it is now part of the built-ins.
For me, a cause is not an event. It explains the event frequently without being one (a car accident is obviously an exception). I’d rather have the cause of death as a Note which can be shared among the various individual death events.
An event is in principle associated with more or less precise date. When you take the Other events, this can’t be done.
Regarding multiple births, I create independent events, eventually sharing the same citation if there is a single record (which is frequently the case in old parish books). The reason why I opted for this is the delay between deliveries (up to several hours) making possible crossing of midnight resulting in different birth dates for twins (or more).
While it is true that a Cause of Death may not be a Event, CAUS is a standard GEDCOM tag. So it was needed to preserve data exchange flexibility. The specification calls for it to be usable with any Event as a modifier or on its own.
It may not neatly slot into the narrow and strict definition of an Event. But it can be used to simulate a “FACT”… with (or without) dates and/or places.
And refusing to use a functionality because of denialism seems like a bit of self-sabotage.
Still, Gramps does not enforce singular “best practices”. That flexibilty has been a guiding principal of its design. So use whichever approach suits you.
While Cause of Death may be an event, and I understand the GEDCOM reason why, I have never used it as an event.
I always use the attribute Cause of Death in the death event record. I’ll use a note on the death record if a longer explanation is needed.
