Some people eat, sleep and chew gum, I do genealogy and write...

Sunday, October 6, 2024

Thoughts on the FamilySearch Research Wiki

 

https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Main_Page

The FamilySearch.org Research Wiki went online in 2007. Almost immediately, I began contributing content as part of the Wiki Support Team. For approximately, the next eight years or so, I worked with an ad hoc committee of contributors who mainly served at the Salt Lake City Family History Library (Now the FamilySearch Library). I continued to be actively involved until about 2019 when editing the wiki was taken internally by FamilySearch. At that time, it appeared that the Research Wiki had mostly been abandoned. Since then, my contributions have been sporadic because of my other responsibilities. On July 1, 2024, FamilySearch took the Wiki entirely internally and notified me that I could no longer add content or edit existing entries directly. Thus ended my direct involvement with the Research Wiki after 17 years. Oh, I might mention that after the Research Wiki appeared to have been abandoned, it revived somewhat a few years ago and began to be useful again. 

Here is the content of one of the notices I received about the Research Wiki.

We are standardizing specific types of pages on the Wiki to improve the Wiki experience for all users including those new to our website. The following is a list of pages affected and details and standardization regarding the information on that page.

Until further notice, all new pages in the Wiki must be coordinated with Wiki Administration.

I had one rude contact from someone at FamilySearch when I questioned the complete shutdown.  

Wikis can be open-edit, moderated or closed and only available by specific invitation. You might ask, how I know that the wiki has been abandoned and how do I know if it is working again? Until they purge me from the website, I am still registered and the wiki shows 500 of my most recent contributions. However, each of the pages that I worked on has a complete record of all the changes, so older pages will show my earlier contributions back to 2007. These histories are extremely valuable as a way to see when certain changes were made to each article (page). In addition, you can follow almost any of the pages of Research Wiki and be notified by email of any subsequent changes. This allows the pages to be monitored for content and accuracy. I know when the Research Wiki was abandoned because I follow 1,124 pages and when I stop getting notified of changes, I know the Research Wiki is dormant. By the way, since July 1, 2024, it has been mostly dormant but I see there have been 250 changes in the last 12 days, however, it appears that all the changes have been to broken links or adding links with a few content updates. 

I can go into a long, really long, discussion about the structure, the content, and the purpose of the Research Wiki, but I don't have the time to write about it right now. 

By the way, because most of the other regular contributors to the Research Wiki were older than I was at the time, I assume they have almost all died off or retired. 

Now the issues. 

From the very first, we were trying to establish standardized page designs for all the different categories. During all the early development of the Wiki, I frequently raised the issue of having the pages moderated with FamilySearch. I kept pointing out that an unmoderated wiki would get out of control quickly. FamilySearch never even wanted to discuss the issue. Today, despite this effort to "standardize specific pages of the Wiki" the effort will fail if there is no consistent moderation. FamilySearch has never allocated the resources necessary to maintain 100,000+ pages of the wiki with internal staff and Church Service Missionaries. I still watch a few hundred pages, and I can see that hardly any editing is going on. You could take me off of the wiki but what would that accomplish. The coordination and moderation of the Wiki does not need to be done in a "high handed" manner. Presently, you are discouraging the very people who have the knowledge to contribute accurate and consistently standardized content. For example, the English County Derbyshire page https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Derbyshire%2C_England_Genealogy is out of date, and I can only assume all the other 47 English counties are also out of date. Some or most of the pages are also out of date. The longer editing is on hold, more pages will be out of date. Here is an example of what has gone on in the last 100 years for English Counties. Cornwall, England has 213 civil parishes, with the exception of the unpopulated Wolf Rock, which is the only unparished area in the county. These parishes are governed by a variety of local councils, including: 168 parish councils, 28 town councils, A city council, A community council, and 15 parish meetings. This parish structure began changing more than 100 years ago and presently, all of the county boundaries have changed. Another example, Herefordshire. Administratively Herefordshire was merged with Worcestershire in 1974 to form the county of Hereford and Worcester. This administrative unit survived only until 1988, when the Unitary Authority of Herefordshire was formed, with much the same borders as the traditional county.

Ok, so what is my point? The Research Wiki is a wiki and maintenance requires extensive cooperation and contribution. I cannot understand why FamilySearch etc. are so certain that they all know what will "improve the wiki experience for all" when the information is becoming dated as I write this. We have a wonderful resource contributed by hundreds (if not thousands) of people. Keeping the Research Wiki a useful tool involves much more than dumbing it down to include those who are new to the website. We now have AI to help. Maybe the needs of the new users is better addressed by a section of the wiki devoted to new users. There are a lot of possible improvements that could be made but closing out experienced users is not one of them. 

Last question, how many of the people in FamilySearch's group can read and edit HTML? I can.



Saturday, October 5, 2024

Epic file enrichment using Kindex.org


 https://youtu.be/C8sItU7IYm0?si=7KYVTV5JctIso695

Enriching your digitized documents comes about when the handwriting is transcribed, the photos identified, and the text indexed. All this can be done with Kindex.org. Kindex has an enhancement for every type of document. All of this is achieved through a helpful interface. Yes, is a freemium program, many of the useful services such as handwriting recognition and complete document indexing are fee based but the product cost outweighs the cost and time of manual transcription or indexing. Watch the video to see how this website may resolve many of the issues you have as a genealogist or family historian with a pile of paper stored somewhere in your house, garage, or storage unit.


https://www.heredis.com/en/announcement/heredis-2025/

Heredis 2025 is the version marking the 30th anniversary of the software with more than 30 innovations! Heredis 2025 is, by far, the most extensive upgrade we’ve ever released for our genealogy software. The 2025 version includes more than 30 innovations. Almost every section of the application has been significantly improved. 

You may not have heard about the desktop genealogy program called Heredis, but as you can see, the program has been around for 30 years. What you may not know, is that with access to FamilySearch, you can search its universal Family Tree and access many digital documents to further your research into your ancestors. Compare relatives in your tree with those in FamilySearch and potentially find additional ancestors from their historical records. You can also import descendants and ancestors from FamilySearch’s universal Family Tree to your Heredis tree.

See Heredis.com Be careful how you spell Heredis.







Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Watch an Instant Handwritten Journal Transcription

 

https://youtu.be/MD702cXUOm4?si=w14CpdtH-WMXNby2

This video is remarkable as I am shown how Kindex.org can transcribe a handwritten journal from the 1930s in a very short time. One page is almost instantaneous, 200+ pages takes just a few minutes. You do need the explanation about how and why this works from the beginning of the video. This is worth the time. 


RootsTech 2025 Registration Now Open

 

Thursday, September 12, 2024

Early Bird Registration for RootsTech 2025 begins 25 September


 Yes, it is that time of year again when you begin thinking about the new year. Coming on March 6-8, 2025 is RootsTech.org. Yes, it will be online and in person. Yes, you will get a lot more out of the conference by being there in person. Yes, it is cold and may be windy or stormy in Salt Lake City, Utah in March. Yes, I am planning on being there with The Family History Guide, MyHeritage.com, and all the rest. Yes, I am teaching one class on research in Latin America which is what I do the most of lately for people with questions. Yes, I would be glad to talk to anyone who will be there also. If you are planning on staying in Salt Lake City, most of the downtown hotels are already starting to fill up. There is an alternative: https://www.rideuta.com/Services/TRAX. This is a free or inexpensive way to travel around the city. It also goes to the airport. You probably also need to know that there is a lot of construction going on in downtown Salt Lake City and we all have to adapt to closed streets etc. It is not too early to plan, in fact, it is getting close to being late. We will be staying in Salt Lake and taking the FrontRunner train to and from Salt Lake from Provo. Hope to see you there. 

Upcoming Webtember Webinars from MyHeritage and Legacy Family Tree Webinars


 

Upcoming Webtember Webinars


Take your genealogy skills to the next level with this online genealogy conference, held each Friday in September: 20 live webinars in all. I know this is a little late in being posted but there is still time to see some outstanding webinars.