Fennec Foxen wrote:
On Sun, 25 Jul 2004 11:16:16 -0400, Frank Pinter francis.pinter@gmail.com wrote:
I've long wished there were a genealogical database of European monarchs etc,
Yes, that is a good idea. However, it should not be on Wikipedia, according to [[Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not]]. Maybe if some big Wikimedia person (like Jimbo, maybe) sees this a consideration for a project may be started.
The problem with this is that, while the monarchy/etc information may be available, the project would be prone to insertion of nonfamous, nonnotable peoples' geneologies. These are liable to be extremely unverifiable. Also, there is a fair population of people who think they are royalty but are not: c.f. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Vernon_John_De_Duckmanton (and the associated talk page).
How would you overcome this sort of problem?
Including some genealogical data on royalty pages should be no big deal. Extrapolating that to the genealogies of non-famous people requires a great leap of credibility. That there would be people who would mistakenly believe that they were royalty comes as no surprises. Royal fertilization techniques were bound to grow a few bananas on the apple tree.
It does appear that John the Duck is straight out of Monty Python; and with his adversary confessing that his family has taken itself seriously since the time of King John, the result is bound to be hilarious.
Ec