Help wanted for using the Help Center

MaureenE123 · December 17, 2021

I had bookmarked the link Reading English Handwritten Records

https://www.familysearch.org/ask/learningViewer/96 which now says "Well, this is unexpected... We can help you search literally billions of records, but we can't seem to find the page you're looking for".

I tried to find a current equivalent and found the Search page https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/search. This appears to be a dead link in that it did not work at all when I entered a Search term

Eventually found (via site map) https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/landing

One of the Search results, which did seem to be most relevant but which was down the list, AFTER "What is the Italian indexing guide?, and another on Pancakes, was England Handwriting https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en-US/England_Handwriting When clicked on this said 404 Not Found.

Another result was Online Helps for Reading Old English Handwriting

https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en-US/Online_Helps_for_Reading_Old_English_Handwriting

When clicked on this said 404 Not found

I have seen in the past the Help Center referred to the Helpless Center and I would have to agree.

I am no nearer to finding anything accessible to replace the original link I had bookmarked. Can anyone suggest anything?

Any why are the Search results so poor. Why is something on Pancakes apparently considered more relevant than an actual match with the search term?

Graham Buckell · January 11, 2022

Hello again @MaureenE123

Following your helpful response to Reading Old English Wills I posted your links into a comment posted on the British Isles Research Group

Reading old handwriting

Graham Buckell

Dec 20, 2021

There was recently a discussion elsewhere in Community
https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/111698/transcription-of-english-wills
about reading old handwriting.
@MaureenE123 gave some useful links where you can find more resources on this topic.
FIBIS Fibiwiki Page "Reading old handwriting" https://wiki.fibis.org/w/Reading_old_handwriting
English Handwriting Online 1500-1700: an online course, with links to 28 Lessons, with difficulty rating 1 to 5, based on documents from Cambridge University Colleges, with transcriptions provided. A CERES COPIA project (Cambridge English Renaissance Electronic Service (CERES)).
End quote
There is also the FS Wiki article
https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Online_Helps_for_Reading_Old_English_Handwriting
Now I have no excuses for not transcribing all those wills I have collected. Just need to find a few spare weeks (months?).

This included the following Wiki link which may help.

Online Helps for Reading Old English Handwriting

https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Online_Helps_for_Reading_Old_English_Handwriting

Access online tutorials and helps for reading the handwriting in old English records at the following web sites:

Regards

Graham Buckell

vanwagenenl · January 12, 2022

@MaureenE123

The article you referenced has been corrected.

MaureenE123 · January 13, 2022

Thanks for advising @Graham Buckell and @vanwagenenl

MarvinG · December 17, 2021

@MaureenE123 We are not sure what you are looking to use the English Handwriting for, so we are limited in what to provide to you. There is an article in the Indexing help, please see the link below.

Handwriting Helps — FamilySearch.org

https://www.familysearch.org/indexing/help/handwriting#!/lang=en&title=Alphabet%20(Secretary%20Hand)

Discover your family history. Explore the world’s largest collection of free family trees, genealogy records and resources.

https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-get-help-reading-handwriting-while-i-index.

If these articles do not fill your needs, please reply here and leave additional comments. Thank you.

MaureenE123 · December 17, 2021

Thank you MarvinG

Can you escalate the dead links I referred to above, to get them either corrected , or delated altogether so that they don'r show up when Searching for information

Dead links are so pointless to be presented as a result of a Search for information.

PiperTWilson · January 5, 2022

@MaureenE123 - If you still remember, would you please let me know how you found the links after the one you bookmarked? I want to dig into this more deeply.

MaureenE123 · January 5, 2022

@PiperWilson

After a few trial and error attempts, I think to arrive at the link https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/search the process was:

From the Main Page, not signed in

Click on question mark icon, top right hand side of the page

Scroll down to Help Centre, second last line of display menu

Click on Help Center with brings you to page https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/landing

Use Search box top right hand side of page, using a Search term

Land on page https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/search Attempt to use a different Search term without success

The other way of finding the link https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/landing was via the site map. At the bottom of the Main Page, and I think most other pages there is a link to the Site Map.

PiperTWilson · January 5, 2022

@MaureenE123 - Thank you!

vanwagenenl · January 11, 2022

There is a known problem in the Help Center right now getting to the wiki articles. They show up in the search results but return a 404 error when you click on them. This problem has been escalated to our engineering teams.

The lesson on Reading English Handwritten Records was retired because it requires Flash.

In addition to the knowledge article on handwriting, there is one on Elizabethan secretary hand: https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-read-elizabethan-secretary-hand

MaureenE123 · January 11, 2022

@vanwagenenl

Thank you for the link on Elizabethan secretary hand. However, I would like to point out that the article contains what seems to be an incorrect link, namely

"The FamilySearch Learning Center has a series of video lessons about reading secretary hand".

However, when you actually click through the lessons are titled "Foreign Language Research: Tools for Reading Genealogical Documents"

As you appear to be connected with FamilySearch could you please escalate this to the department that produces Help articles

to fix the link to what it should be.

PiperTWilson · January 13, 2022

@MaureenE123 - I've bookmarked this discussion so I can return to it later today. I plan to forward this to the Knowledge team to review. I do not have a way to know when things will change.

PiperTWilson · January 13, 2022

Email sent!

PiperTWilson · February 1, 2022

Okay, so, I have some updates.

First, unfortunately, the link provided by @MaureenE123 to the "Reading English Handwritten Records" class is no longer available. Full stop. Nothing to be done. I'm sorry. 😥

With regards to the problem with the wiki links to help articles mentioned by @vanwagenenl, I have a workaround. I wish I had perfection, but it is what it is.

Using a link that @MaureenE123 provided:

https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en-US/England_Handwriting

The problem is the "-US" located in the middle of the URL. The workaround is to go into the URL, delete "-US", then press enter. So it looks like this:

https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/England_Handwriting

That's all I have. I hope this helps.

Help wanted for using the Help Center

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