DEAD LINKS on - Free Guide to New York Ancestors
I want to look at the Free Guide to New York Ancestors. I can get to this page,
https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/free-guide-to-new-york-ancestors
but I clicked on many of the links on that page and all of them are dead and go to a 404 page and it 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."
How can I view that Guide to New York Ancestors?
Answers
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That is an old document that may have broken its links. Perhaps this one would be more useful:
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Thank you. I will check it out.
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(note to Moderators and FS employees)
. . . and I wonder why Family Search doesn't have a LINK on that 404 page so users like this can report a "bad link"
these bad links have probably been bad for a very long time because there is no facility/team in place to report and handle correcting bad links . . .
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The question would be, "does FamilySearch have the resources to go back through every blog article written over the past ten years and update all the links?" The article referenced was written in 2013.
One thing you can always do is examine the URL and see if there are any hints as to what it was. The first link in the article is: https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/New_York. So this was a Research Wiki article on New York. The link that Norm posted https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/New_York%2C_United_States_Genealogy does appear to be the same article.
One of the other links in the article is this: https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/New_York_Emigration_and_Immigration. Following the pattern of the other link, changing it to: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/New_York_Emigration_and_Immigration takes you to the article.
I checked a few others and with each one, editing the URL in the browser search bar brought up the right article.
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it doesnt need much additional resources. .
there are plenty of automated tools that can systematically sweep the entire massive familysearch site across many tens of thousands of pages
and automatically detect and report bad links
any page that is on the familysearch site should have a corresponding responsible party and reports could be automatically and systematically sent to such parties.
(it doesn't require a human being to do all the tedious work)
though it may take a human being to fix it. Just very unprofessional to have so many bad links. and plenty of ways to automate the validation process.
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ConderKarenS That page you were looking at is someone's blog, Nathan Murphy, written in 2013. FamilySearch should not have to keep personal bogs up to speed. Nathan has not blogged since around 2015. When you start reading a blog, stop immediately if it is more than 5 years old.
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it doesnt need much additional resources. .
there are plenty of automated tools that can systematically sweep the entire massive familysearch site across many tens of thousands of pages
That page you were looking at is someone's blog, Nathan Murphy, written in 2013. FamilySearch should not have to keep personal bogs up to speed. Nathan has not blogged since around 2015. When you start reading a blog, stop immediately if it is more than 5 years old.
I agree that some automated system should be introduced to keep links up to date.
Just recently, as part of Records Search I was looking at the India page https://www.familysearch.org/search/location/asia-&-middle-east/india
Under Learning Centre the FIRST ITEM was "A Great Tool for Finding Ancestors in India!" which was a 2011 BLOG which had a dead link in the middle of it.
ANY INFORMATION BEING USED AS A LEARNING TOOL SHOULD BE UP TO DATE.
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Point taken
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The Research Wiki isn't trendy anymore but I find it a great resource for research finding aids.
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dontiknowyou I use the Research Wiki almost daily! I gave a workshop on Virginia genealogy last Nov, and I really pushed the research Wiki as a place to begin for quite a few points of research. I just wish it was more efficient than clicking several drop down lists in a row.
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