[OHM] Mapping what's on the ground and other good practices

[Sean Gillies]

On Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 3:08 PM, Richard Welty <rwelty at averillpark.net> wrote:
> On 3/1/13 4:54 PM, Ed Dykhuizen wrote:
>>
>> I can probably throw in some input here. I don't know if you'll be able to
>> construct standards for acceptability beforehand. Maybe there can be some
>> -- no Atlantises, for example -- but I imagine that there are going to be
>> a
>> ton of disputes that won't get resolved, and in order to show something
>> coherent, you'll have to rely on the judgments of a bunch of qualified
>> editors. Sometimes you'll want to show both sides, like the possible
>> routes
>> of Hannibal or the Kashmir dispute. Sometimes you'll have to just ignore
>> theories that have less traction in historical discourse. You could set up
>> methods for resolving disagreements beforehand, but probably can't start
>> out with many specific standards of what constitutes historical accuracy.
>>
> +1
>
> even in the history of the American Civil War, which is only 150 years past,
> there are both known and unknown problems in historic knowledge, and
> erroneous conventional wisdom that is in some cases being detected and
> fixed, and in other cases, well, not being fixed.
>
> the further in the past you go, the worse it's going to be.
>
> richard

Agreed with both of you. I'm comfortable with multiple and possibly
competing hypotheses. I just wanted to raise the issue and suggest
that evidence cited might serve us where ground truthing cannot.

-- 
Sean Gillies