Home› Welcome to the FamilySearch Community!› FamilySearch Help› General Questions

Help wanted for using the Help Center

MaureenE123
MaureenE123 ✭✭✭✭
December 17, 2021 edited December 17, 2021 in General Questions

I had bookmarked the link Reading English Handwritten Records

https://www.familysearch.org/ask/learningViewer/96 which now says "Well, this is unexpected... We can help you search literally billions of records, but we can't seem to find the page you're looking for".

I tried to find a current equivalent and found the Search page https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/search.  This appears to be a dead link in that it did not work at all when I entered a Search term 

Eventually found (via site map) https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/landing

One of the Search results, which did seem to be most relevant but which was down the list, AFTER "What is the Italian indexing guide?, and another on Pancakes, was England Handwriting https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en-US/England_Handwriting When clicked on this said 404 Not Found.

Another result was Online Helps for Reading Old English Handwriting 

https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en-US/Online_Helps_for_Reading_Old_English_Handwriting

When clicked on this said 404 Not found

I have seen in the past the Help Center referred to the Helpless Center and I would have to agree.

I am no nearer to finding anything accessible to replace the original link I had bookmarked. Can anyone suggest anything?

Any why are the Search results so poor. Why is something on Pancakes apparently considered more relevant than an actual match with the search term?




0

Best Answers

  • Graham Buckell
    Graham Buckell mod
    January 11 Answer ✓

    Hello again @MaureenE123

    Following your helpful response to Reading Old English Wills I posted your links into a comment posted on the British Isles Research Group

    https://community.familysearch.org/discussion/111908/reading-old-handwriting

    This included the following Wiki link which may help.

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

    Regards

    Graham Buckell

    0
  • vanwagenenl
    vanwagenenl ✭✭
    January 12 Answer ✓

    @MaureenE123

    The article you referenced has been corrected.

    0
  • MaureenE123
    MaureenE123 ✭✭✭✭
    January 13 Answer ✓

    Thanks for advising @Graham Buckell and @vanwagenenl

    0

Answers

  • MarvinG
    MarvinG ✭✭✭
    December 17, 2021 edited December 17, 2021

    @MaureenE123 We are not sure what you are looking to use the English Handwriting for, so we are limited in what to provide to you. There is an article in the Indexing help, please see the link below.

    https://www.familysearch.org/indexing/help/handwriting#!/lang=en&title=Alphabet%20(Secretary%20Hand)

    https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-get-help-reading-handwriting-while-i-index.

    If these articles do not fill your needs, please reply here and leave additional comments. Thank you.

    0
  • MaureenE123
    MaureenE123 ✭✭✭✭
    December 17, 2021

    Thank you MarvinG

    Can you escalate the dead links I referred to above, to get them either corrected , or delated altogether so that they don'r show up when Searching for information

    Dead links are so pointless to be presented as a result of a Search for information.

    0
  • PiperTWilson
    PiperTWilson ✭✭✭
    January 5

    @MaureenE123 - If you still remember, would you please let me know how you found the links after the one you bookmarked? I want to dig into this more deeply.

    0
  • MaureenE123
    MaureenE123 ✭✭✭✭
    January 5

    @PiperWilson

    After a few trial and error attempts, I think to arrive at the link https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/search the process was:

    From the Main Page, not signed in

    Click on question mark icon, top right hand side of the page

    Scroll down to Help Centre, second last line of display menu

    Click on Help Center with brings you to page https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/landing

    Use Search box top right hand side of page, using a Search term

    Land on page https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/search Attempt to use a different Search term without success


    The other way of finding the link https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/landing was via the site map. At the bottom of the Main Page, and I think most other pages there is a link to the Site Map.

    0
  • PiperTWilson
    PiperTWilson ✭✭✭
    January 5

    @MaureenE123 - Thank you!

    0
  • vanwagenenl
    vanwagenenl ✭✭
    January 11

    There is a known problem in the Help Center right now getting to the wiki articles. They show up in the search results but return a 404 error when you click on them. This problem has been escalated to our engineering teams.

    The lesson on Reading English Handwritten Records was retired because it requires Flash.

    In addition to the knowledge article on handwriting, there is one on Elizabethan secretary hand: https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-read-elizabethan-secretary-hand

    1
  • MaureenE123
    MaureenE123 ✭✭✭✭
    January 11

    @vanwagenenl

    Thank you for the link on Elizabethan secretary hand. However, I would like to point out that the article contains what seems to be an incorrect link, namely

    • "The FamilySearch Learning Center has a series of video lessons about reading secretary hand".

    However, when you actually click through the lessons are titled "Foreign Language Research: Tools for Reading Genealogical Documents"

    As you appear to be connected with FamilySearch could you please escalate this to the department that produces Help articles

    to fix the link to what it should be.

    0
  • PiperTWilson
    PiperTWilson ✭✭✭
    January 13 edited January 13

    @MaureenE123 - I've bookmarked this discussion so I can return to it later today. I plan to forward this to the Knowledge team to review. I do not have a way to know when things will change.

    0
  • PiperTWilson
    PiperTWilson ✭✭✭
    January 13

    Email sent!

    0
  • PiperTWilson
    PiperTWilson ✭✭✭
    February 1

    Okay, so, I have some updates.

    First, unfortunately, the link provided by @MaureenE123 to the "Reading English Handwritten Records" class is no longer available. Full stop. Nothing to be done. I'm sorry. 😥

    With regards to the problem with the wiki links to help articles mentioned by @vanwagenenl, I have a workaround. I wish I had perfection, but it is what it is.

    Using a link that @MaureenE123 provided:

    • https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en-US/England_Handwriting 

    The problem is the "-US" located in the middle of the URL. The workaround is to go into the URL, delete "-US", then press enter. So it looks like this:

    • https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/England_Handwriting 

    That's all I have. I hope this helps.

    1
Clear
No Groups Found

Categories

  • 24.8K All Categories
  • 593 1950 US Census
  • 47.6K FamilySearch Help
  • 100 Get Involved
  • 2.4K General Questions
  • 368 Family History Centers
  • 365 FamilySearch Account
  • 3.5K Family Tree
  • 2.7K Search
  • 3.9K Indexing
  • 474 Memories
  • 4.9K Temple
  • 270 Other Languages
  • 30 Community News
  • 5.6K Suggest an Idea
  • Groups