I mainly use Gramps Web, but this seems to me to be fundamentally a Gramps data model / evidence modeling question rather than only a UI question.
While reading the earlier discussions around assertions and personas (this post), I realized that several situations I encounter during genealogy research seem closely related to those ideas.
One issue I run into is that many sources do not directly establish facts, but instead contain partial, ambiguous, or indirect evidence that I would like to preserve separately from my final conclusions.
Examples include:
- census ages implying approximate birth years,
- uncertain handwriting/transcriptions,
- variant spellings of names,
- tentative identification of persons,
- inferred residences or relationships.
Currently I mostly store these things in citation notes, but that has several limitations:
- difficult to compare assertions across citations,
- difficult to revise interpretations later,
- not queryable,
- and the distinction between observation, interpretation, and conclusion becomes blurred.
One workflow I encounter occasionally:
A record contains a difficult-to-read name. Initially I may only be comfortable transcribing it as something like:
“Niels Jenss.”
At that stage I do not yet know exactly which Person object this refers to.
Later, after finding additional records, I may conclude that this is actually “Niels Jensen” and link the assertion to a specific person.
What I would ideally like to preserve is:
- the original transcription/observation,
- my interpreted reading,
- the confidence level,
- and the eventual person linkage,
without losing the uncertainty or research history.
Similarly for dates:
- a census age may imply birth year 1837/1838,
- a marriage record may imply 1838/1839,
- a death record may state 1836,
- while a baptism gives a direct date.
I would like all of these source-derived assertions to remain visible and structured, while still allowing one preferred genealogical conclusion.
One thing that especially interests me in the earlier “persona” discussions is the idea of representing source-level or provisional entities before linking them to a final genealogical conclusion.
Sometimes a record clearly refers to a person or event, but I am not yet confident enough to connect it to an existing Person or Event object in my tree.
In those situations, it would be useful to preserve:
- the source-specific representation,
- the associated assertions,
- and the uncertainty,
before deciding whether it matches an existing person/event or represents a different one.
I am curious:
- do others encounter similar workflows?
- are there existing Gramps practices/plugins for this?