Artefacts pile up; questions give them a purpose. A question is the thing you are trying to find out - "Where was John Gray born?" - and it gathers the evidence, the people and the plan that go with it.

Questions and conjectures #

A question is something you want to answer. A conjecture is something you suspect and are testing. Both live on the Questions tab; the type is yours to set, and a conjecture that survives its evidence is simply a question you can answer.

Brick walls #

Set a question's status to stuck and it is a brick wall. There is no separate list to maintain - a brick wall is a question you have not cracked yet, and it returns to normal the moment it moves.

Evidence and people #

Attach artefacts to a question as evidence, and link the people the question concerns. Evidence is what makes promotion possible later, and it also protects those artefacts from being discarded by accident.

Plan steps and tasks #

A question can carry plan steps - "check the 1881 census for the Holt household", "order the marriage certificate". Steps appear on the Tasks tab as well, so you can work through everything outstanding in one place, and tick them off from either screen.