Talk:Margaret II, Countess of Flanders

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Moved because there was a Margaret I in the XIIth century Muriel 13:05, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

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deleted ancestry table
For further consideration by me or anyone else interested here is the ancestry of Margaret which was recently deleted in two steps by User:Surtsicna. I am concerned that Margaret is someone whose historical importance is in fact closely linked to her "genealogy".--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:08, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Half of that table is wrong. Margaret's mother was not the daughter of Louis VII or Eleanor. Also, Margaret derives no notability from her descent from William X of Aquitaine or Sibylla of Anjou or many others. Margaret's genealogy is important but not these relationships; the people essential to her story are her sister, uncle, brother-in-law, husbands, sons, and grandson, not the great-great-grandparents who are never discussed in the context of Margaret. Surtsicna (talk) 20:01, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
 * As discussed at the template talk, it is important to keep these two concerns (verification and due weight) separate. It is very difficult for a WP editor to convincingly claim that something has never been mentioned in "the right way" in any source WP:OR, at least if it is verifiable, which does not seem to be the real concern here. The burden of proof thus has to work differently for the two types of concern, at least when working with reference tables, maps etc WP:NPOV. Note that the two policies I cite are core content policies.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:34, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Upon review then, you did not actually believe this was "complete nonsense" when you deleted this table (as per your edsum), because the mistake you found is essentially a daughter being mixed up with her mother, and easily fixed? Do you see any problems with this version?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:55, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Some more corrections done to the above after posting it. Concerning notability of relationships, the current article contains no monographs specifically about Marguerite, and honestly I therefore do not believe any WP has even attempted to check whether there is no mention of these ancestors (putting aside the question of whether we really need to do that). Here is a book about Marguerite and her sister. There is discussion of her mother's family, including her mother's maternal grandparents (numbers 30 and 31) on p.18.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:10, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
 * It really need not be a monograph. Any comprehensive study of the subject will do. I can certainly see how Louis VII and Eleanor might be discussed in a study of the sisters; if for no other reason, then to explain their connection to Philip II, who played a major part in their childhoods. But Godfrey I of Namur? I think that's a bit of a stretch. Surtsicna (talk) 22:10, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes I think we've established that it does not need to be a monograph. My point was that, having seen a note posted that the information is irrelevant, it was easy to find an RS with the topic of this article, mentioning back to 5 generations on the maternal side. These "not relevant" remarks verge on OR, and are not being made based on research into what reliable sources say, so they should be discussed. Not sure why you pick on Godfried in this case, because I think it is an interesting/notable/verifiable fact that Margaret was the conduit of the inheritance of the county of Namur from that specific ancestor to her son Guy de Dampierre. I suppose it could be argued that cutting back to 4 generations does not make it impossible to trace this, because Baldwin V is also in that line of transmission, but we are not showing him as a count of Namur. Anyway, I don't want to be awkward about the choice between 4 and 5 generations, or a custom-made ancestry, I just think the deletion of the whole section was not appropriate in this specific case where inheritances and powerful cousins are such a big issue. All works about Margaret discuss her genealogy and it is one of the hardest things to follow about her without diagrams?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:28, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
 * And BTW I do not want to downplay the good work you do making custom trees sometimes, but of course these are not 5 minute jobs, and so if we do not have one, a direct ancestry table is a good neutral way to provide a map with links so that a reader can trace things themselves.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:47, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree, but in that case, four generations are sufficient in nearly every case, don't you think? And thank you for the appreciation. I'll create a custom one for this article in the coming days as well. I think it's especially useful in the cases of collateral and disputed successions such as Margaret II's. Surtsicna (talk) 11:27, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I still don't like the idea of general rules for every type of person or family group who might have an article. My focus right now on a period with lots of family disputes has clearly made me careful about that. But yes 4 generations is often "good enough". On the other hand as we've seen in several examples so far there are typically two or three lines which are important out to 5 or even more generations. I don't want to be telling you or any other Wikipedian to be making trees all the time, so I still tend to see 5 generations as reasonable thing to leave in if we have no other option available, and if the article needs more work in a general way anyway. It seems to me like due weight discussions about something like links to other articles is a bit perfectionist in such cases, and not urgent. Anyway, at the moment this article shows zero generations. 4 would be better.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:08, 1 August 2019 (UTC)