Why have records been removed from these attached sources?

LegacyUser

Carolyn Wheeler said: Anna Margretha Reisselin 9MD6-PHW has two attached sources that were apparently created in the old Extraction Program. When I open up each source there is an error message that says "! 410 - Record removed."

I have never seen anything like this before and do not understand what it means. Can anyone explain it to me? - and why the records were removed?

See source pics below:

LegacyUser

Carolyn Wheeler said: I found the above sources in the Indexed IGI, but when I open the records in the IGI the same above mentioned "Record removed" message appears. Below is the link to the IGI search page. Not sure if it will pull up my search results.

https://www.familysearch.org/search/c...

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The link opened up the search results and click on the name brought up the tree and record...

Chrome on Windows 10.

LegacyUser

joe martel said: That error shouldn't be showing. If others run into this please provide screen shots or links so the teams can look into it.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Carolyn, if this is still happening, it may be browser-related.

If the system is now behaving itself, then it was likely a glitch of some sort (I've seen a few of those).

LegacyUser

Carolyn Wheeler said: It does not seem to be browser related. It is still happening, and I get the same message in both Safari and Chrome.

Sure do wish I could see the record, but I don't know how else to find it.

LegacyUser

Carolyn Wheeler said: When I find the record through Search Records it pops up immediately and is the very first one in the list.



But when I click on the record to open it I get this:

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: I'm attempting to look at the same record and getting the same issue as Carolyn...

PID 9MD6-PHW

This is the screen for the source
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/sou...

And when I click "Go to web-page", I get the screen

Record Removed
The record you requested is no longer available. If you arrived here from a bookmark, please delete your bookmark.

(URL at top is https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/619...)

Windows 10, Firefox 75 (latest)

LegacyUser

m said: I am also wondering about this.

One profile had so many records removed that even though I saw a giant mess of wrong merges/wrong records attached with 20 record hints (all false) in the pipeline, I don't think I will bother to undo the giant mess because the attached records so many say "record removed" so pointing out the "person lived in england not massachusetts" "see attached records" has less meaning with so many "record removed" error messages.

LegacyUser

Juli said: Ditto: in Anna Margretha Reisselin (9MD6-PHW)'s sources list, the undated citation attached by Kevin Mawhinney in 2018 has a red stripe with "! 410 - Record removed.", and the undated citation attached by FamilySearch in 2014 has both the yellow IGI stripe and the red 410 stripe.

LegacyUser

Brian Jensen said: I've duplicated this problem and reported it to the records engineering team.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Thanks Brian.

I don't know if this is record specific though, as I have seen this same thing recently on a couple of other records (unfortunately, I can't remember where they were). So this is not an issue specific to just one record.

LegacyUser

m said: Exactly. I've saw several record on 1 profile.

LegacyUser

Judy Buller said: Has this question ever been answered? One member in my tree with 10 sources attached has been reduced to 4. The other 6 are records removed. Thought it was selective by county, Lancashire sources are available, Yorkshire are not, except for one that is still available.

An explanation would be appreciated. Any reason to believe anything we may attach now won't be removed in the future and leave us dangling?

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: As far as I know, no.

Any reason to believe anything we may attach now won't be removed in the future and leave us dangling?

Well, many of those records that we attached before have now been removed leaving us dangling. We have frequently seen the same problems keep coming back after they have been resolved. I wouldn't get my hopes up :-(
https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

The problem seems to be with persistent URLs that have not been "persistent".

LegacyUser

joe martel said: Could you provide some PID's to look at?

LegacyUser

Paul said: As ever, I'm sure we would be grateful for any help you can give here, Joe. However, the link provided by Jeff shows:

(a) how widespread the problem is and

(b) Brian Jensen passed this to Engineering about 10 days ago - see also https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea....

Having been replicated and presumably passed on to the appropriate team, it really needs an urgent response before unaware users start to detach these sources, believing them to be permanently redundant.

LegacyUser

Bosch said: I've found that lots of times because they were linking duplicated records that have been removed by FS team.

LegacyUser

Paul said: By coincidence (if I am understanding Bosch's remarks correctly) I have just been investigating some reinstated sources and have come to the same conclusion.

It appears some comparison in "duplicate" sources is being undertaken by a FamilySearch team and this has led to many apparent duplicates being removed. The problem is, they seem to have got it wrong and have been retiring records that are not duplicates at all!

Some time ago, Brett complained about the removal of 1881 England & Wales census sources. He has commented (on another forum) these have largely been reinstated. Ironically, the detail these sources (dated 2017 & 2018) contain is pretty much the same - only the detail is listed in a different order. Unlike Brett, I feel one set of these could have been made redundant without any loss to users. However, many of the sources that remain withdrawn (showing "410 - Record removed") do NOT seem to duplicates of other sources in any way.

I have argued this issue (particularly with Brett) over a long period. I now have to admit he appears to have been right about the suggestion by Robert Kehrer (a few years back) that an exercise would take place to remove the "least valuable" of these almost identical sources. I thought this was a great idea. However, if my theory is correct, then sorry Brett, it appears pulling sources in this way can prove to be a dangerous exercise!

Of course, I could be completely wrong and other reasons might be involved. Sadly, conjecture will continue to be rife until a FamilySearch employee is willing to share the facts with us, concerning why so many of these sources (from a wide variety of collections) are currently being "removed".

LegacyUser

W David Samuelsen said: Images are disappearing lately.

Latest one https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...

2nd source - NC Probates.

and I get this:

An Error Has Occurred
We are unable to display page content due to technical difficulties. Please try again soon.

Feel free to use any activity from the menu above to continue your family history.

and the other link in same source led to this:
Search is currently experiencing technical difficulties. We're working on the problem and hope to have it fixed soon. We apologize for the inconvenience.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: That hasn't been the case in my personal experience recently. They are mainly marriage sources and once they disappear, they cannot even be found in a search (Although you CAN find them in Ancestry.com)

I noticed a few months back that the "pal" type URLs that were used on many sources in the database were being updated in the citations to the new "ark" type URLs. Since the old URLs were supposed to be persistent, they continued to be supported even after new "ark" URLs were assigned.

So in this case, the problem is that the "persistent" URL(s) no longer accesses the source file in question. So the source itself has either been removed (end of contract?) or it has just had it's URL unmapped from it. Many of these did have the old "pal" type URLs, but I'm not sure that they didn't also include some of the new "ark" type URLs.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: An interesting observation for anyone using URLs in a source -- avoid doing it. Even FamilySearch's URLs, which FS claimed would not change, can and do change or disappear.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Tom, I don't even think that ANY text is safe in a citation when a persistent URL is attached to it. A few years back, I had attached a source to a person record, and then I copied the citation down to my AQ database. The contents of that citation are shown on the left side of the following image:



Note that even though the original citation used the old "pal" URL, the new "ark" URL that had replaced the old one was included in the citation. The current citation from the source list in FS is showing on the right with the exact same URL it has had for 3 years now, but NOW it no longer contains the additional Citation, Description, and Notes text that were originally there (i.e., it used to be after my sync, that the left and right side of the image would contain the same information) Looking at this same citation from the FS database, you get:



Again, what ever has happened, not only disconnected the source from its CORRECT "ark" URL, but it ALSO destroyed useful information in the citation itself!

Whatever blew away the source mapping to it's URL reference, it ALSO destroyed additional information that was in the citation itself. If someone had tediously copied an entire block of data from a source image and placed it into the citation "just in case" that image went away, it would have done them no good as all of that data ALSO appears to have been removed, making the source citation that was attached to the person record totally useless.

They might be able to fix the "Missing record" issue, but for all of those source that have been attached to person records which have had their citation text, descriptions, and notes all blown away, I have no clue how they could easily recover any of that.

I really hope that I'm wrong about this, but there seems to be a chance that a lot of data has been removed from the system that will only be restorable manually one at a time.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: :-(

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Even the chronological sort date that was originally entered for that item in the source list has also been deleted. You can find these corrupted Citations by looking down the list of sources and checking all those that don't have a source event date on them.

At least, if you turn on Chronological sorting on the source list, it will tend to group all of the broken citations together.

LegacyUser

Judy Buller said: Went back and checked today. Have found the same records that were marked "removed" are now "access denied"?

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: FS has rolled out a fix for this that seems to have taken care of part of the issue, but there is now another behavior that has shown up (or at least has just become visible due to the fix):
https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

LegacyUser

W David Samuelsen said: fixed ? it got worse !!!! As of this morning. Now I can't verify the dates, completely blanked out.

"410 - Record removed."

Record Removed
The record you requested is no longer available. If you arrived here from a bookmark, please delete your bookmark.

Feel free to use any activity from the menu above to continue your family history.

LegacyUser

W David Samuelsen said: need more info?

4 sources one person

Robert Raymond Zweier
13 May 1885 – 13 February 1959 • M7N6-28L

marriage sources

1. https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1...
2. https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1...
3. https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1...
4. https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1...

LegacyUser

joe martel said: The original issue on April 12 should be fixed now. The other items, like Wales, might be a different defect.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Not completely. There are still issues See my comment in response to the "IT's Fixed" announcement:
https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

For an additional side effect in the dismissed hints area, see:
https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...