When will the FamilySearch Wiki be open to outside editors?
I started editing the FamilySearch Research Wiki within two weeks of when it was introduced. I helped design and maintain hundreds of the pages. I met every week with the main Wiki committee for eight years. Beginning on July 1, 2024, the Research Wiki was closed to all previous "outside" editors. When I wondered why I was now being excluded from editing the answer, I received without explanation was rude and abrupt. I am aware that the editing was taken internal a number of years ago and that resulted in almost no new information being added or corrections being made. I stopped working with the wiki because it appeared to me that it had been abandoned. That is happening all over again. I now see more broken links and lack of information as time passes. There is not a community page for the Research Wiki by the way. I told I would not be allowed to make changes until I was trained. By the way my wife and I have helped write the training for all the missionaries at the FamilySearch Library and elsewhere. We are on the Board of Directors of The Family History Guide. The Family History Guide is used to train all the missionaries. I don't want to see the FamilySearch Research Wiki start failing like it did before when editors were excluded. Let me know when I can start editing and adding the errors and omissions.
Thanks for helping.
James Tanner (email removed)
Answers
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I also have encountered similar conflicting messages about editing of the wiki
and some not so friendly responses. (though mine were a few years back)
I love the idea of the wki - but am very much in agreement with James - it needs editors besides just the FamilySearch folks.
Thanks for bringing this issue up James!
(name removed)
the Family Bible Preservation Project0 -
https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/FamilySearch_Wiki:Standardized_Wiki_Pages#Protected_Pages
Standardization of Wiki Pages
We are standardizing specific types of pages on the Wiki to improve the Wiki experience for all users including those new to our website. The following is a list of pages affected and details and standardization regarding the information on that page.
Until further notice, all new pages in the Wiki must be coordinated with Wiki Administration.
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Response to Áine Ní Donnghaile
From the very first, we were trying to establish standardized page designs for all the different categories. During all the early development of the Wiki, I frequently raised the issue of having the pages moderated with FamilySearch. I kept pointing out that an unmoderated wiki would get out of control quickly. FamilySearch never even wanted to discuss the issue. Today, despite this effort to "standardize specific pages of the Wiki" the effort will fail if there is no consistent moderation. FamilySearch has never allocated the resources necessary to maintain 100,000+ pages of the wiki with internal staff and Church Service Missionaries. I still watch a few hundred pages, and I can see that hardly any editing is going on. You could take me off of the wiki but what would that accomplish. The coordination and moderation of the Wiki does not need to be done in a "high handed" manner. Presently, you are discouraging the very people who have the knowledge to contribute accurate and consistently standardized content. For example, the English County Derbyshire page is out of date, and I can only assume all the other 47 English counties are also out of date. Some or most of the pages are also out of date. The longer editing is on hold, more pages will be out of date. Here is an example of what has gone on in the last 100 years for English Counties. Cornwall, England has 213 civil parishes, with the exception of the unpopulated Wolf Rock, which is the only unparished area in the county. These parishes are governed by a variety of local councils, including: 168 parish councils, 28 town councils, A city council, A community council, and 15 parish meetings. This parish structure began changing more than 100 years ago and presently, all of the county boundaries have changed. Another example, Herefordshire. Administratively Herefordshire was merged with Worcestershire in 1974 to form the county of Hereford and Worcester. This administrative unit survived only until 1988, when the Unitary Authority of Herefordshire was formed, with much the same borders as the traditional county.
Ok, so what is my point? The Research Wiki is a wiki and maintenance requires extensive cooperation and contribution. I cannot understand why FamilySearch etc. are so certain you all know what will "improve the wiki experience for all" when the information is becoming dated as I write this.
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The basic problem with anything available on the FamilySearch website is a lack of resources. So, whilst I appreciate the specific points you are making here I think you should consider the wider issue of site moderation and limited personnel resources, apart from which many of the current issues could be better addressed.
Here are four examples:
The Catalog - not updated for several years and in desperate need of revision, in order to ascertain what new material has been added over the last few years and provide an indication of any current restrictions in accessing the items that are listed.
Auto-standardization Place Name Project - a vast amount of places (in indexed records) have been changed by a "machine", making it very difficult to make a search for ones ancestors when their vitals / other records might now be recorded with the name of a place located thousands of miles from the original, correct location.
Metadata problems - where thousands of records relating to, say, the same (correct) parish have been linked to a place that happens merely to be the first item on the microfilm (containing multiple, unrelated items) from which the details were indexed, instead of to the true location where the events took place.
Tree integrity - reports of fictitious profiles (sometimes even headed with offensive names) not being addressed / taken down, so continuing to cause offence to other users.
I'm sure FamilySearch management would be delighted if they were able to address these and many issues that are creating real difficulties for patrons in finding their relatives (in the first instance) and then, if/when found, attaching the correct facts to them. However, all these problems share the common factor of FamilySearch having a complete lack of resources (staff, volunteers and moderators) in order to manage, correct and update specific and general issues (relating to huge projects), of which management must surely be completely aware.
In summary, it is all about what FamilySearch management has to make (the no doubt difficult decision) on what matters should be prioritised - there having been an overwhelming amount of issues raised by its users. In the case of the Wiki, your known experience and history of trustworthiness should (one would agree) surely make it possible for you to be provided with immediate editing rights. However, I'm sure you would agree that there would still be a need for your contributions to be moderated and it seems FamilySearch is just not in a position, at present, to provide resources to allow edits from even a selected number of volunteers. Similarly, they have not taken up on offers (from volunteers) to work on making corrections / updates relating to the other projects I have referenced.
Sadly, unless a Community site moderator is willing to escalate your specific issue, management will not become aware of it by your raising it in this forum, of which participation is - for the most part - by everyday users of the FamilySearch website, both Church members and otherwise, rather than FS management.
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I am not connected with FamilySearch.
I believe (although I haven't done it myself) that you can click on the Flag icon at the bottom of your posts, which will take you to the Community moderator, and request that your issue be referred on to the relevant Department/Management. However, perhaps this may not happen with your issue, as I have the impression that FamilySearch Wiki matters are not considered to be part of the "remit" of FamilySearch Community. You may just be told to use the "Give Feedback" on the Wiki pages.
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Well said Paul!
@James Tanner No one in this thread is a FamilySearch employee or even a mod. There is no "you all." We're all individual users of Family Search and contributors to the Tree and, in some cases, the Wiki.
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I don't understand, given FS' clear lack of resources (as pointed out by @Paul W), why it doesn't ask for the sort of trusted volunteer assistance that could provide Community moderation, a properly maintained Catalogue (and Wiki), timely input on proposed user interface modifications, etc., all saving the time of their in-house people and helping them to focus on improving the overall offering rather than on firefighting.
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Paul's comments are correct. There is an ongoing effort to correct the Standardization issue with volunteers. The catalog issue is also in process of overhaul which likely includes the metadata problem. I am also aware of significant FamilySearch efforts to address some of the basic issues with the Tree Profile issue. I regularly cooperate and work directly with FamilySearch employees in a variety of ways. When we started working on the Research Wiki, we made entries directly in HTML. I can easily read and correct an HTML file if I have access. I have many other ways to address issues with FamilySearch and I will do so. This is merely a discussion I have with FamilySearch that has been going on since 2007.
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The Wiki was previously open-edit. According to what I've read, there were some bad (malicious?) edits causing FS to close the Wiki to outside contributions. That may change if/when a method to filter or protect is found.
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@James Tanner thank you for that clarification. Can you give us more information on these volunteer activities and on how we can (if suitably skilled) get involved, please?
Also, what do you mean by 'FamilySearch efforts to address some of the basic issues with the Tree Profile'?
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I will answer both questions. Yes, originally the Wiki (RW) was open-edit. From the very beginning I was asking why there was not a moderation team. We could have had a competent group of volunteers mostly from the FamilySearch (Family History) Library in Salt Lake who would be willing to do that. The main issues may have been edits most people disagreeing on the facts such as going on with the Family Tree which by the way I have consistently advised that the Family Tree be moderated, but one main issue was breach of copyright, I.e. adding copyrighted material to the Wiki. I can't comment further on FamilySearch's efforts to address the FSFT issues, sorry.
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I totally agree with @James Tanner over the Research Wiki. For years, I have been directing people to the Lancashire Wiki because that is an excellent source of the relationships between specific Church of England parishes and chapelries. So far as I can see it still is. (This is a particularly important topic for researchers in the North of England).
Alas, the tables that also used to exist of specific parish register etc dates and corresponding websites for each Lancashire parish appear now to have gone and have been replaced by text such as (in a typical parish entry):
Due to the increasing access of online records:
- Individual parish coverage for databases in this table are inconsistent and should be verified
- Dates in the following table are approximate
[sample line] Findmypast-Lancashire ($) Baptisms: 1500s-1900s (etc)
Basically, that's boiler plate text that is ripe for standardisation but adds no parish-specific value. So far as I remember, it has replaced text that contained accurate, parish-specific, values. Fortunately, the standardisers appear to have left the parish / chapelry relationships in place.
The truth of it is that the phrase "Due to the increasing access of online records" has a lot of validity. If I want to know what original records exist for Lancashire parishes, I go to my downloaded copies of the Lancashire Record Office's "Yellow Pages", which list the years for each church with registers at LRO. I know of no single source of Lancashire registers per online site, so it is not easy to list them.
Easy or not, if I put my business process hat on (somewhat old, dusty and threadbare by now) it appears that there are several elements that need to be considered:
- The Wiki's software platform;
- The standards for that Wiki data and the processes to maintain it;
- The sources of authoritative information to go into the Wiki;
- The people to maintain the data - how many, what are their necessary skills, what is their necessary knowledge (not the same thing as skills);
Again, I list these bullets to persuade people that this is not an easy process to invent. But it would be nice for us to understand that this longest journey has started with a single step, and further steps are being made.
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A wiki is, by definition, supposed to be multi-input, and ideally, open-input, but that's Very Difficult. Even the single author's wiki that I occasionally contribute to had to lock down access to "author only" for a while, because of one … well, misguided fan, who simply couldn't be convinced to stop with his undesired, uh, details. The author has been slowly giving permissions back to people who ask, but it's no longer the freely-collaborative effort that it used to be. (My contributions are mostly genealogy charts for the characters. No, I don't expect anybody to be surprised.)
If one author's wiki, for just one of the universes she invented, can't manage multi-input, then the surprise isn't that FS's version is now locked, it's that it was ever unlocked in the first place. However, locking out a contributor like James Tanner, who effectively wrote the training manual for the endeavor, is like locking the teacher out of the schoolhouse. It makes no sense. I hope management realizes that soon and accepts his help once more.
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Clarification, I am the Chairman of the Board of Directors for The Family History Guide (thefhguide.com). In addition to helping run the company, I am also a regular contributor and reviewer for The Family History Guide. My wife and I developed the first training for Church Service FamilySearch missionaries using The Family History Guide which is still being used to train the missionaries.
See https://www.thefhguide.com/blog/the-familysearch-wiki-and-the-family-history-guide/ for how these two websites differ. I was involved with the early development of the Research Wiki meeting weekly for about eight years. We developed the page layouts and content.
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Another clarification, I am actually watching 1,124 pages in the Research Wiki.
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No offense intended, James, but with your credentials, you should have better sources for the answer to your question than this Community.
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I'm sorry to say too much about myself. But when I am trying to help someone and they don't want help, sometimes I have to start telling them what I can and can't do for them. It is plain that FamilySearch needs some help from the community. This is evident from looking at the updates and changes for the last month or so.
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@James Tanner Mod note: Community is a public online forum. For your privacy, your question was edited to remove your contact information. Please see the Community Code of Conduct for more details.
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@Family Bible Mod note: Community is a public online forum. For your privacy, your post was edited to remove a name that is not part of your username. Please see the Community Code of Conduct for more details.
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