Do We Include "Above" Bishops?

Hi,
Technically most Cardinals are Bishops see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_(Catholicism)], however, I think that the individual should be included in a project according to the highest appointment attained. A Cardinal would be included in the Roman Catholic Cardinals project, while a Bishop would be included in the Roman Catholic Bishops project. What do you think?
Noelle

Well, personally I included all people who are or were, at some point, bishops or archbishops. For instance, the Popes are bishops of Rome (and they were probably all bishops in their countries at some point), for me it's most accurate (no problem if one person is in few Projects, i.e. Popes, Cardinals, Bishops - if it's his certain path of 'career').
But of course I'll do whatever the majority thinks is most accurate. :)

Thanks Karol, that makes sense too.

Private User, we need your guidance. What was your intention when you created this project?

About who should be included as profiles for this project, there are two schools of thoughts:

'''A. Include all bishops, even those who were promoted to a higher rank'''

'''B. Include only profiles whose last rank was, or currently are, bishops'''

The pros of A is that this project could grow into an authoritative list of anyone who ever were catholic bishops, all profiles in one place.

The cons of A is that there would be huge amount of redundancy. Take a pope, he would be in the pope project, the cardinal project and the bishop project. The value of maintaining such redundancy is unclear.

Let's use a military analogy: if we follow the "A" concept, General Patton would go in a "generals" project, a "colonels" project, a "majors" project, a "captain" project and a "lieutenant" project. Would this redundancy add additional meaningful information about Patton? (There are exceptions of course, historically, some noblemen could purchase a higher commission directly.)

Still, if we decide to go with School A, we can give this bishop project a boost and lodge a ticket with the Geni engineers where we ask them to run a script to add in this project all the profiles from the popes and the cardinals projects. In one sweep we could have an injection of nearly 100 profiles to this project.

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If we elect School B, we could write in the description a narrative about the ranks in the catholic church with links to the projects of higher ranks, explaining that all the profiles in the higher ranks were bishops at some points (If there are exceptions we can list them there.)

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Ultimately, both schools are valid. What is important I think is that one school is selected and documented to be consistent and to help Geni users to determine if a profile belongs here or not.

Your thoughts?

Hmm... as for the Generals, Colonels etc. it's a nice analogy - however I still think it's quite different. I wouldn't compare military ranks to religious positions, because:

1) for genealogists, historians etc. that doesn't make too much difference whether General Patton was a Lieutenant at some point of his military career - and in this case his highest rank is of major importance (because it's connected directly to him, it's not a unique title etc.),

2) and if I were to start "Bishops of Krakow" project, I'd certainly need to include Pope John Paul II, who was, at some point, Bishop of Krakow, before becoming Cardinal, Pope and Blessed. The Project wouldn't be complete without him. And bishops are certain titles connected to certain areas, therefore the titles are unique. My first project in Geni was "Bishops of Chełmno", mainly because three of the previous Bishops were my relatives. Some of the Bishops of Chełmno were also Cardinals (I added them there), and I think one or two were later Primates of Poland (I added them there, too, it's another project I started).

I personally don't see a big problem having one profile in several projects. :) It's easier to maintain, even to current profiles - if one Bishop from the project becomes a Cardinal, should we erase him from the Bishop project? Having them all in the project doesn't create this issue.

As I say, I'm not opposed to another idea very much, it's just my subjective opinion. :) Would be nice to read some opinions of the others.

morel
My intention was to relate only those who only reached the rank of Bishops. That is, school B.

But I'm open to other ideas.