My commitment to you in this blog, is to deploy my training as an academic to do my best to ensure that what is published in this site is as accurate as possible. The specific ways I will do this are:

• Primarily publish material for which there are multiple sources of evidence.
• Provide links to the evidence so you can check this for yourself
• Sometimes even the experts (sources) don’t agree. When this  so I will try to:
  • be up front in plain English when there are differing views
  • explain why there are different views (when I can)
  • and present these differing views fairly
• When I am not sure, I will try to be explicit about not being sure, and try to be clear about what we do know with reasonable certainty.
• I will fix any issues with the text when found, and this will be visible for transparency sake in the version history. Major faux pas will be noted explicitly.

While I endeavour to ensure a post is accurate before publishing, inevitably there are times in which some things need changing. A summary of the various types of faux pas, and more detail on how they are addressed are provided below.

Additional Resources

Sometimes I will create additional resources (like a graphic or a map) which are meant to enhance, illustrate, or support what is already published (such as the word cloud I added to the blog on the origin and meaning of the name Furneaux). Sometimes I will come across additional information which will be added in where appropriate. Also, I am still learning blogging so I may find a way to include a new feature, or to present information in a different way (such as tables) which I add to the site. So these are not errors per se, but a change nonetheless. These are recorded in the list of revisions at the bottom of each page.

Responding to Comments

Corrections, challenges and comments are always welcome and I will always post these, and my responses. The exception is when something is written which is simply  derogatory, defamatory or offensive, and I will exercise my editorial prerogative to not subject readership to these. These sorts of communication are ‘wrong’ in another sense, but wrong nonetheless.

Minor Errata

Minor errata, such as spelling mistakes, typos, broken links, or corrected links are automatically picked up in the page version which is listed at the bottom of every page and blog.  You can track back through the history of the pages and click back to see previous versions. The latest version is always displayed.

Major Errata

Parts of this blog will deal with modern history, so there is often plenty of evidence from 19th Century onwards. As we go back in time, evidence becomes harder to find. When dealing with the Norman times, we are examining documents which go back nearly 1,000 years. As it happens, there are documents pertinent to our family, which go back to 1086.

Sometimes, despite the best care, a major error might be found.  Just to be very clear, at this stage I am not aware of any significant errors. What I have tried to do in each blog, is provide links back to the sources I am relying on.

Often I am reliant on other authorities, particularly in relation to Norman history, as there are academics who spend their whole lives looking at this period, and are very familiar with the texts and their interpretation. When I am not sure, I will try to find someone who has already written on an issue and formed a view. Having said that, even the experts are wrong at times, or there could simply be multiple perspectives on how to interpret various texts. I will try to be clear about when there is disagreement, what these are, and why they disagree.