GEDCOM was developed by the Mormons and was not really designed to encompass the rich diversity of human relationships. You can seriously overload the notes fields!

Genealogy is really hard but it is important to not get too bogged down with formality and get the data stashed in one form or another. Genealogy "facts" decay with a horribly short half life. It is also important to accept all "facts" as is and not try to interpret them too much - that's something else.

I'm 55 years old and have memories dealing with my grandad on my mother's side who was born in 1901. So, within reason, I can record some second hand facts going back to very early C20. My parents were born 1942/3. etc etc. However, the gold standard is written evidence of a fact.

I think that genealogy really needs to discover systems like Elastic/Open Search and not try to coerce the data to a fixed schema.

Everyone thinks their family tree is a tree. No it really isn't - it's a thicket!

I have a relative that my uncle found from Padstow in Cornwall in C16 - her first born was probably a bastard fathered by the local squire's son. There's a soldier from WWI whom the family "knowledge" from around two generations ago was convinced he was a deserter. It turns out he was honorably discharged and emigrated to Canada. On of my G^5 dad died from septicemia after punching a window in a drunken pub brawl.

All of the above has documentary evidence, expect for the desertion thing, which turned out to be bollocks. Oh there is a good chance of a mass-murderer back in C18 near Devizes, Wiltshire!

This is where IT gets really interesting. How on earth do you go about genealogy data? You are sure to piss off someone(s) who want to wear the rose tinted specs and if you think modern politics are a bit challenging, why not try to deal with politics across centuries and the random weirdness that is your own family 8)

> How on earth do you go about genealogy data?

My extremely naive approach would a scheme where you have a header containing a list of used types of information fields, then a list of entries for people, then relationships (genealogical descendants, familial relationships with a start and end date (optional, YMD format, that you only fill in with as far as you know, so if you only know the year, you just set that.)) then a list of various events, then a list of supporting documents with a confidence value, where each document has a list of people and a list of events they are relevant to. then a list of basically freeform fields, that can link to events, documents, people, etc. where the types are defined in the header.

typing this out at 2 in the morning, so sorry for the incoherence.