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Why are the source citations being suppressed?

ishinSC
ishinSC ✭
February 19 edited February 28 in Search

When I open a source document, the source citation no longer is available. It has been like this some some months but it was spotty--now I don't see the source citation on ANY source document. How is this good? This makes your site and database virtually unusable for anything but looking at an image--attaching a source citation to anything is essential.

Poorly done.

If I'm feeling pessimistic, I'm guessing that this is to force everyone to Ancestry, which is a pay site. At least make the source citations able to be copied in fewer copy & paste clicks. It is so cumbersome and clunky, very aggravating.

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Answers

  • Áine Ní Donnghaile
    Áine Ní Donnghaile ✭✭✭✭✭
    February 19 edited February 19

    Can you share a screenshot or a link/URL? I'm not seeing that source citations are suppressed.

    For example - here's the URL of a 1905 NJ census for one of my families. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KM45-RXC And the citation is visible on the left side:

    image.png


    1
  • Julia Szent-Györgyi
    Julia Szent-Györgyi ✭✭✭✭✭
    February 19

    Given the completely different goals, business models, and data structures involved, and the complete lack of corporate connection between FamilySearch and Ancestry, conspiracy theories about forcing people from one to the other are ...not plausible.

    Like Áine, I have not noticed any pattern of missing citations -- but then, I wouldn't, because when given a choice, I don't use the machine-generated ones, neither on FS nor on any other website. Sure, they're a convenience when they're provided, but they're often full of nonsense (such as "Archiv der Stadt Budapest" in citations for Hungarian civil registrations), and they're even more often missing the sorts of details that allow one to re-find the document if the URL goes awry. I find it's much easier to just write my own citation than to figure out the quirks of the automated process. (It helps that I don't actually care about citation formatting: as long as all of the information is there somewhere, I don't think it matters whether I separate things with commas or periods, or whether the URL comes before or after the repository.)

    1
  • A van Helsdingen
    A van Helsdingen ✭✭✭✭✭
    February 20 edited February 20

    "Given the completely different goals, business models, and data structures involved, and the complete lack of corporate connection between FamilySearch and Ancestry"

    It is well documented that FamilySearch and Ancestry have a partnership. The two share records, indexes and images in a way that mutually benefits both. However it is far from clear whether that is relevant to the issue of source citations not being available.

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  • Áine Ní Donnghaile
    Áine Ní Donnghaile ✭✭✭✭✭
    February 20

    I haven't seen any evidence of source citations not being available.

    1
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