The perfect is the enemy of the good . . . and of the getting published

From my new talk, "Why We Don't Write and How We Can" (which is a larger first cousin of my 2012 blog post of similar title):

We genealogists are already trained to be more picky and more detail-minded than normal people, but this good habit can turn against us and strangle our own work if we're not careful. Eventually we have to learn that a "reasonably exhaustive search" that the Genealogical Proof Standard calls for is not the same as an [impossible] "exhaustive search." Similarly, a "soundly reasoned, coherently written conclusion" is not the same as an [impossible] "irrefutably reasoned, perfectly written conclusion." In both cases it can take a while, but we need to realize that we are looking for something that is good enough to meet standards, as opposed to perfect.

If you want to hear the rest, show up at the Monroe County Public Library in Bloomington, Indiana, tomorrow afternoon, or at the New England Regional Genealogy Consortium in Providence, Rhode Island, Friday, April 17, 2015. (And if you're wondering, yes, it was proposed for NGS in May 2015, but not accepted.)



Harold Henderson, "The perfect is the enemy of the good...and of the getting published," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 14 October 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Most Viewed MWM Posts December 2012

Once again it's time for the monthly popularity contest, listing the most-viewed blog posts made here during December.

And once again the top finisher ran well ahead of the pack: "We still need to understand that no single record is automatically correct or even trustworthy; they all need corroboration from other independently created records if we can possibly find them. We still need to understand how to analyze a single record and correlate it with other types. From this point of view 2013 looks very much like 1993 -- or, for that matter, 1893."

1. What Does It Mean to Be "Out of Date"? (December 13)

2. Perfectionism: Is The Best the Enemy? (December 31)

3. Overcommitted and Underperforming (December 7)

4.  Don't Ask Your 1820s Ancestor What His "Job" Was (December 27)

5.  Was That a Deadline I Just Missed? (December 28)


Least viewed:

Gems from New England (December 18)



Harold Henderson, "Most Viewed MWM Posts December 2012," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 4 February 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Perfectionism: Is the Best the Enemy?

Ideally, every genealogical article would cite every assertion of fact (that is not common knowledge) to an original source or to a proof argument resting on original-source clues. And as our perspective on genealogy broadens into family history and microhistory, the number of possible facts to add in and enrich the story grows exponentially. If you're a perfectionist, those two things alone may keep you from ever finishing any piece of writing, let alone publishing it.

Obviously a top-ranked genealogy periodical should insist on this, and several do. But most genealogy publications are not in the top 1%. And not all genealogy articles need to hold to this standard.

It's not easy to say this without appearing to give license to those who sneer at standards in the first place. I do not believe that genealogists should just publish anything they feel like because they feel like it. We should all try to do the best we can -- but not to the point of doing nothing at all (which is where perfectionism is headed).

My notion of how to resolve this paradox is to insist on transparency. Know the standards; know when and where you're short of them; and let your readers know that you know. Cite the sources you have and explain their shortcomings and where better ones might be found. Don't publish unsourced stuff without some kind of explanation, for instance: "This is a systematic account of what Grandma said about the family, for future reference; I do not claim she was right about everything and my readers should not either." (My own grandma was a saint but she was also way wrong about certain genealogical facts.)

It would of course be nice to do the article that thoroughly tests Grandma's assertions (actually I'm working on one of those right now). But getting those assertions out there, properly qualified, for future evaluation, would also be one step toward that desirable end point. And of course good editors play an important role in promoting standards (when possible) and transparency (in all cases).




Harold Henderson, "Perfectionism: Is the Best the Enemy?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 31 December 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]