Q: The What, Why & How of Gleanings pages.
In our family research we come across a wide variety of information from a huge range of sources. These documents will often mention multiple individuals, not all of whom can we immediately link to our own Reeves family.
If the information relates to an ancestor, it might seem tempting to directly enter that information on that individual's person page. But since such documents often mention multiple individuals, the same information needs to be repeated on a second, third, fourth, etc individual's page. And the analysis subsequently added to one individual's page concerning the document may not get reflected on the person pages of all the referenced individuals.
The better approach encouraged within TRP is to create a wiki page for the information gleaned from the source record, in TRP speak a "gleanings page". That gleanings page can then be wiki linked to the person page of each named individual and each individual page can link to the gleanings page whilst only including within the individuals page the pertinent information.
Gleanings may come from a variety of sources, not all of which will be primary. We encourage the addition of all information (subject to copyright considerations), but insist that the source is clearly identified so that other community members may make their own judgement as to the reliability of the information presented in the gleaning.
A gleaning page may contain either a verbatim transcript of the source record, a précis or a combination of both, depending on the original records. For further guidance on the content and composition of a gleanings page, please see FAQ Content of a Gleanings Page. The posting of image files of source documents within TRP without a transcript or précis is not helpful, since our search capabilities are "blind" to the content of such attached files and information will therefore be unavailable.
To squeeze maximum benefit from each gleaning, we name the gleanings pages by date, see FAQ Naming a Gleanings Page and also link the page within a structure, where it is given an alias.
Most gleanings come from church, civil or legal records. Such records tend to be tied to places and for the most part, we organise gleanings within TRP in location based structures. These are currently US State and UK County based, but will embrace additional countries as TRP grows geographically. For examples, please see pages US_State_NC and GB_County_HAM, where you will see how gleanings are first organised under Counties (US) and Parishes (GB) before breaking down into more specific record classes. Browsing the existing structures is the best way to gain an understanding.
Manipulating wiki structures is an acquired art and your mentor team will initially assist you in this. But everybody is encouraged to add new gleanings as soon as they are confident in creating new wiki pages.
See also FAQ Naming a Gleanings Page
and FAQ Content of a Gleanings Page