Putting information online may not be for everyone, and there are some sites and ways of doing it that I would never use, but it is one way of allowing others to check how good your research is. We all make mistakes, and where evidence is poor or contradictory there may always be differing interpretations; sometimes it just isn't possible to reach a definitive answer.
Like all evidence, online information, whether our own or other people's, needs to be checked out carefully rather than simply accepted. It's not just a case of "lots of people say this so it must be true". Ideas spread round the internet like wildfire, but if they are based on a mistake, the fact that dozens of people are saying them doesn't make them true. Equally, the situation mentioned by Guy can have its dangers:
I share with B, B shares with C, C shares with D until eventually someone shares with me.
Sometimes, when you track back through the route a piece of information has taken, you find that you were actually the source of it in the first place. So rather than being a confirmation of your own research, it's a circular argument that proves nothing. As always, care is needed.
But interesting though this is, I'm not sure how helpful it is to Rodc, and I wonder if his/her silence over the past couple of days might be because we've drifted away from the original query.
Arthur
