Evidence standards

How this archive decides what it will and will not state.

The five labels

Labels attach to individual claims, not to whole profiles.

Label	Meaning
Documented	Stated directly by an original record we can cite and show.
Corroborated	Supported by two or more independent records that agree.
Probable	The weight of evidence favours it, but no record states it outright.
Research Hypothesis	A working idea being tested. Not a conclusion.
Disputed	Records conflict, or the claim is contested. Both sides are shown.

Rules the archive follows

• Nothing is invented. No person, relationship, date, quotation, source or link is published unless a record supports it.
• Not found is not the same as does not exist. A search that returns nothing is recorded as a search that returned nothing.
• An index is not the original. Indexes, transcriptions and other people’s family trees are treated as finding aids, not as evidence.
• Repetition is not corroboration. Several websites carrying the same record still amount to one record.
• Original wording is preserved. Spellings and historical classifications stay attached to the record that used them. Normalisation happens for searching only.
• Conflicts are shown, not resolved silently. Where records disagree, both readings are published with their evidence.