Identify reliable URL path prefixes when adding a source.

LegacyUser

Eric said: It would be nice if familysearch could recognize some URL path prefixes from reliable sources when adding a new source. For example, I use the Swedish National Archives site and its church record pages have https://sok.riksarkivet.se/bildvisning as a URL path prefix. If you could identify this prefix in the URL as being from a reliable source (others might include ancestry.com) you could mark it with a different icon. Users would know that the source is more reliable than a typical web URL. And, if the reliable source ever changes their URL path prefix, you could systematically repair all the broken URLs.

Thank you for building such an excellent family history site,
Eric

LegacyUser

Juli said: As judged by whom?

For example, I strongly disagree about Ancestry being at all a reliable source. It's full of unsupported junk trees that would also have a URL starting with ancestry.com.

Besides, the trustworthiness of the website is only a small part of the equation. It doesn't matter one iota how reliable that church record from Sweden is if it's attached to someone who lived his whole life in Minnesota.

LegacyUser

Eric said: It should be judged by FamilySearch of course.

I don't use ancestry.com much, but I believe that "junk trees" have a different URL path prefix than collections held there. A quick look at a tree on ancestry.com reveals that it has a path prefix of https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree; whereas, documents have a path prefix like https://www.ancestry.com/interactive.

I know that FamilySearch has agreements with some commercial data services, such as ancestry.com. This suggests that FamilySearch believes that there is some value in their service and its reliability.

I presume that FamilySearch has relationships with non-commercial data services as well. And that they are in a very good position to evaluate the stability and reliability of their data and services.

I have complete confidence in FamilySearch's ability to reasonable evaluate the quality and reliability of family history document collections.

LegacyUser

Eric said: Thanks for this very informative message. Clearly there is a lot of work going on in this area and it seems that FamilySearch is very involved. I look forward to the day when I can take advantage of all the wonderful work that has been done.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Your quite welcome! In the meantime when you define a source citation to attach to a record, It would likely be a good idea to make sure that you have copied most of the important data from the source into the citation description and notes fields. That way, if the URL moves or breaks, you'll still have the critical information in the citation along with the clues for a person to find a copy of the source.