Re: So What Is The Purpose Of This Newsgroup?


"Anniel" <als296@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:94dec97a-9cc3-4a0c-8c1d-7e8e1c76cc3b@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I subscribe to the group and skin through it daily to pick up any
tips
and to see what others have to say. I have not posted recently as I
feel far too self conscious and insufficiently experienced to ask
mundane questions that may be below the level of interest and
expertise of people here.

I must admit that when I did ask a question Don Moody did offer me
some help and I would like to acknowledge that. However, I am now
reluctant to ask questions in case they reflect my ignorance,
laziness
etc.

Some of us who are retired do not have the hours to spend learning
all
the ins and outs of family research. I subscribe to Ancestry, Genes
Reunited and all the various newsgroups in the UK. Some of us have
many other interests such as travel, music, film and theatre and
ofcourse families which keep us busy.

I honestly thought that a newsgroup called British genealogy was
there
so that subscribers could ask for advice without fearing that their
enquiry would be considered pathetic or naive or even worse, lazy.

Surely, it is a worry to the group that there are many like me who
subscribe but are insufficiently brave enough to ask questions
regularly in case they get shot down in flames.

Unless the group shows a friendly face it is in danger of becoming
an
inward looking place where experts swap information or where members
insult others with impunity.

These are my personal observations, but I would imagine there are
others like me perusing the posts daily but not really joining in.

Thanks for reading.

If you want to belong to a chatty social group in order to lighten the
tedium, then do so. It is a perfectly sensible thing to want to do,
there's no disgrace in doing so, and there always have been plenty of
places - since long before newsgroups - for doing that very human
thing.

But it isn't what any -ology exists for, nor how any -ology can
conduct itself with any degree of utility. All -ologies necessarily
exist on the true-false axis and are attempting to advance towards the
true end as far as that can be ascertained.

The like-dislike axis on which social chat exists simply does not
intersect with any -ology. In any -ology the truth is pursued whether
anybody likes it or not. Whereas a certain amount of sloppiness
occurs. is desirable, and sometimes is necessary in social chat, there
is no room for that approach in an -ology. Over millennia there has
been slowly worked out a general set of procedures for pursuing
any -ology.

One, which is attributed to Socrates but is actually much older, is
summarised as 'Go and count the horse's teeth.' In other words don't
sit on your arse pontificating about observable phenomena. Go and
observe and get solid facts. There's an obvious parallel in genealogy.

Another is about questions. It was realised long ago that there are
unanswerable questions and. worse, there are questions so sloppily
worded that they have multiple meanings and can thus engender 'wrong'
answers when the questioner is thinking of one thing and the answerer
is thinking of another. It has been said repeatedly in all -ologies
that often the greater difficulty is finding the right question than
finding the answer thereto. There is a skill in asking answerable
questions. It takes work to learn. If you're not prepared to do the
work, get out of all -ologies. They are not compulsory.

You seem to regard this group as a panel of experts whose sole purpose
is to answer your questions. It isn't. It is a collective and if you
want to be in it then you accept the duty to contribute as and when
you can. There is no complete expert, that is someone who has learned
everything about an -ology. The first day there is such an expert then
that is the end of that -ology. Every -ology is an search for new
knowledge. If somebody already has all the possible knowledge then
there is nothing left to search for. Since knowledge appears to be
infinite there is no prospect of there ever being a complete expert.
So everybody can contribute. Not all at the same time or to the same
extent, but all-take and no-give is not a recipe for being a member of
a collective.

I have written before about DUITA. The Department of Useless
Information Triumphs Again. Everybody has a DUI consisting of all the
odds and sods they've come across in their life and which wouldn't
appear on a formal CV or, nowadays, anywhere on the Net. The DUI of
each person is different to that of every else. In my view, this
collective does not exist for the exchange of any information which
could be easily accessed by the enquirer from the keyboard from which
they send a question to this group. That is laziness. Why the hell
should anybody be bothered to keep doing look-ups for persistent
enquirers when the enquirer could do the same look-up for themselves?
If the enquirer is that idle they won't ever be a contributor and are
therefore useless to the collective. So in my view what we are really
here for is the exchange of DUI, what can't be found from the keyboard
by any enquiry of any accessible database., what exists in our heads
and nowhere else until we spit it out.

In addition to fact, all -ologies are concerned with what can be
validly deuced from assembled facts. There have been millennia of
study on logic and argument. For those who can be bothered to get up
to speed, there are plenty of expositions of common falsities in
logical deduction. There is no need to carry on making them. Those who
produce sloppy deductions and argument are announcing loud and clear
that they don't have the mindset or the willingness to do the study
work involved in any -ology. That's OK - if they go off and play
tiddlywinks or whatever else amuses them. They merely clutter up the
workspace and sow confusion in any -ology they purport to enter.
Advancing knowledge is hard enough without being impeded by trash.

Now there will step forward all the whingers about treating newbies
kindly. Bull***. If anybody is a newbie in any -ology their correct
procedure is to start by reading simple. widely available, published
guides on that -ology. They may decide it is not for them. Or they
may decide it is something about which they want to learn more. So
they can get books out of their local library or in some other way
start self-teaching. In genealogy, newbies have a racing start
provided courtesy of Roy Stockdill on the genuki website. There is
not, and never will be, any excuse for not doing the groundwork,
including a bit of lurking, before putting questions or answers on
this newsgroup. This is not a pattern restricted to the immature. If I
need to 'bone up' on a subject with which I am unfamiliar then I go
through the newbie stage in that subject just like everybody else.
Since there is no end of subjects, I'm actually permanently in that
stage in respect of something or other. Trouble is that most subjects
at which I'm a newbie don't seem to have a resident Roy Stockdill to
make the newbie stage easy.

You will find that anybody who is a serious researcher knows that they
are a learner. It is to be expected that older learners help younger
learners more than they get help. But in the words of one of my
Nobellist tutors 'I'm not a proud man. I don't care who I steal ideas
from. So long as they work.' The panjandrums at that award ceremony
collapsed in a heap. The young tigers present roared with laughter.
Our research group was indeed a collective. Everybody 'poached' off
everybody else. The one crime was not to contribute. It used to be
said of that lab that you were out in less than 6 weeks or you were in
for life. More than 50 years ago it was recognised and practised that
if in the beginning you showed you couldn't 'cut it' in our -ology,
you were better off kicked out and directed to wherever it was you
could cut it. A high proportion of those who were kicked out become
very successful and honoured people in lines to which they were
suited. But they weren't -ologies.

In summary it is quite simple. If you want to get the maximum use out
of, and give the maximum contribution to, this newsgroup then become
an -ologist. It is that easy, and that immensely hard.

Don


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