Research Wiki
is the Research Wiki still being maintained? https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/United_States_Genealogy is a great resource.
Answers
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Yes, the Research Wiki is being maintained. There are hundreds of changes (or more) made every day. There are over 100,000 content pages, so any particular page might not get changed very often, but there is definitely a lot of very active maintenance being done all the time.
As with any wiki built on the Metawiki engine, the Research Wiki has a variety of Special Pages (https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Special:SpecialPages) that you can examine to see the recent activity, active users, overall statistics, etc.
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. . . but where is it being advertised? posted?
where are people being directed to its existence and use?
Thats what I'm not seeing and wondering why . . . .???
Must have just missed that part.
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The Research Wiki is always available on the main Search menu on FamilySearch.org, which is reasonably prominent.
The wiki is mentioned occasionally in blog articles. There was an article last year about the addition of the 100,000th article: https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/research-wiki-100000 . That blog article notes that over 50,000 people visit the wiki every day, so many people are finding it.
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Thanks for pointing that out. I think it used to show in the help and learning center and possibly here in the community
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Interesting stat Alan shared about Wiki traffic
another interesting stat to know - would be how many people visit the community daily - and some sort of metric as to how many people who visit the community - feel that they got the answer to why the visited the community in the first place.
and how many people felt that it was obvious or not - as to WHERE precisely they needed to look for - or ask their question - when they hit the home page.
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It only took a couple of clicks to get to the page at https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/landing, which offers a hyperlink to the Research Wiki.
As Alan suggests, regular maintenance of the vast amount of pages must be a very difficult (if not impossible) task for FamilySearch administrators to carry out. Inevitably, this means pages must often contain information that is out of date - including - as I have found - links that no longer work. In theory, most of us can obtain editing rights, so we can update articles ourselves. However, for some reason my edits were rejected when I once did try to add a helpful paragraph to an article. This was some time ago, however, and I understand from other users that editing (even by those who are not LDS Church members) is now far less restrictive.
I would certainly not discourage use of the Wiki, or its existance being highlighted as broadly as possible. However, I find plenty of items on the website are difficult to find - not least, all those "Help" (formerly KA) items that the moderators always seem to have readily to hand when answering "How do I...?" queries raised in Community.
I guess one problem is - as important that it is to make certain FamilySearch features easier to find - you would then get some users complaining about "main" (landing) pages becoming too cluttered by the highlighting of these numerous, helpful resources!
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"regular maintenance of the vast amount of pages must be a very difficult (if not impossible) task for FamilySearch administrators to carry out."
I agree it is a challenge - - but surely there are automated tools that can look for things such as links that dont work, pages with a particular key word that are older than a given date, etc. We don't need to rely on faulty human memory. Programmatic bot tools can be used to detect such items with no extra human effort - often doing so in a comprehensive all encompassing manner.
and I totally agree with you that we cant just put a link to everything on the main page.
I now see the Research Wiki on the help page - Great. Just didnt see it because I was looking for the name "Research Wiki" in bold large letters and the words are in tiny script. I just missed it. Glad to see its there.
Computer "Bots and Spiders" can execute many tedious, time consuming and brain numbing tasks incredibly more accurate and quicker than an error prone human.
things like:
- Compiling a list of bad links across the entire system
- Navigation and functionality that has broken or changed since a software release
- Data queries that have changed or broken since a software release
all within hours - that could take a human being forever to do.
FamilySearch relies way too heavily on its users to catch its more blatant bugs.
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Dennis, a lot of those "programmatic bot" tools exist on the "Specials" page that Alan linked above. For example, you can select "Status of external links" and then check the box for "Show rotten links only" to get a list of many thousands of links that have an HTTP response of "No response", "Not found", or "Forbidden". (It doesn't give a page count, but I went through ten pages, 500 at a time, and only just got to the Fs.) However, that's as far as any automated process can take it: the computer can't fix the links, and deleting them would mean that a human wouldn't be able to fix them, either.
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There are most definitley tools out there - the type of tools that Engineers and administators would use to maintain web sites. I did not mean it would totally get rid of the human factor - that was not the point ( I APPRECIATE the human factor) . My point was it didnt need to be some human remembering that because they changed A - that page B needed to change. Yes A human still (most often) has to take action - I totally agree. But my point was - the most tedious brain numbing parts of it can be automated - and 2ndly that it shouldnt just be the end users - finding bad links and then submitting a ticket for it - one offs - - rather it should an on going periodic task that is part of the administratives maintenance of the system. A process that if done periodically wont ever get to thousands of bad links (if thats what we currently have).
I was just pointing out that we shouldnt just say " oh its too complicated - we cant detect all the possible bad links - so lets not try" - when we actually CAN very easily detect bad links using automated bots and then pass along to some human to know what corrective action to take.
Whether or not FS dedicates enough resources to correct the bad links in a timely fashion - is another story.
If we are going to build something . . . lets make sure we give the resources to maintain such an entity and do it smartly - instead of relying on users to detect bad links and bugs and things that broke and some how figure out who to report it to.
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"rather it should an on going periodic task that is part of the administrative maintenance of the system" -- is that you volunteering, Dennis? 🙃
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I spend all my free time uploading family bible records and samplers to FamilySearch Memories
https://yanceyfamilygenealogy.org/genealogical_service_project.htm
more than 50,000 items so far across 4 years. - I am a huge supporter of FamilySearch - especially the Memories area for preserving family history and research. I really do try my best to be part of the SOLUTION to the shortcomings of Familysearch.
Yeh - running FamilySearch on such a large force of volunteers - has both its pros and cons. . .
BUT don't get me wrong - GOD BLESS THE Service Missionaries/Volunteers - My hats off to the sacrifices and work they do. Can we get more?? BUT also get more paid FS employees - that can give more long term continuity and vision and inspired guidance and instruction to the large volunteer force.
I wonder if anyone knows how many FamilySearch Volunteers there are at any given time. (all aspects of FamilySearch).
On a related note - the overall financial expenses that FamilySearch incurs across all departments - is probably way beyond what most people realize. I do realize its a huge balancing act - but do often wish that FS would spend more time thinking and planning for long term support/resources for the systems it builds. Way too often they are in reactive mode instead of proactive.
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