Diving into the FamilySearch Research Wiki

The Wiki.FamilySearch.org website has been incorporated as part of the newer Beta.FamilySearch.org website. Presently, the Research Wiki, as it is commonly referred  to, is growing at the rate of over 400 pages a day. It is my opinion that this website is quickly becoming the first place to go to for starting any research project. I am continually pleasantly surprised at the amount of information that is pouring into this website.

There are currently 43,557 articles and the start-up page has been accessed over 167,000,000 times. Not in any particular order here are my top most useful features of the Research Wiki:

Links from the scanned documents in the Historical Documents Section of the Beta.FamilySearch.org website to explanatory material in the Research Wiki. Each collection of records incorporated into the Historical Documents Section has a link that says, "Learn more..." These links take the user directly to an associated Wiki page about the collection. The information in the Wiki often includes documentation of exactly what information the records contain. For example, a list of each of the form's information fields translated into modern English. Here is an example of one of the records with the link to the Wiki indicated by the red arrow:

Browse by Country. Having a way to look for information by country, state or province and lesser geographical areas is one of the most useful features of the Wiki's organization. Here is a snapshot of the Browse by Country page:

Extensive beginners pages. There are presently 116 pages found with a search for the term "beginners."  Here is a shot of part of the search results:

The Wiki includes genealogical support information for many areas outside of the United States and Western Europe. If your family comes from the United States or from a western European country, the amount of genealogical information is overwhelming. But, if your family came from the Philippines, where would you go to start your research? How about the Philippines Portal page:

Here is snapshot of today's 20 most popular pages:

Have a good time exploring this huge and useful website.