No hint for indexed record
Can someone explain to me why I do not get a hint for person P8QF-4LF even if the marriage record is indexed, see screenshot? Is it because the collection in the catalog is not searchable (second screenshot)?
Answers
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Hi Loïc,
That's a great question! In order for a hint to be displayed, the historical record has to have a certain amount of information in common with the information on the profile page. If it doesn't meet a certain threshold, it isn't displayed.
I see this a lot with English civil birth registrations. They almost never show up as hints, but I can almost always find them easily with a manual search. One reason seems to be that the locations on civil birth registrations are birth registration districts, not birth parishes. So they often don't match the birth information on the profile; also, if the location were to be added from the profile, it would be misleading (registration districts in England often don't align with geographic boundaries, even if they have the same name as a parish or county).
Another cause I've seen: sometimes I'll add information to the profile (like a spouses's name) that eventually generates the hint, but it takes a little time for the system to process the information and make the hint show up.Hope that helps!
Kathryn
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There is also an option to turn on weaker hints. Some of those will be false or misleading, but the option can bring more hints to the user's attention.
Visit your Profile, then Account, and then toggle Expand Record Hints.
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The hint has appeared on the person page, can we see when the hint was created? It took a few days before it showed up and no changes were made.
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Here is the current list of hints for this profile with their published dates/times. Hope it helps.
fsid
persona
score
confidence
collection
status
publishedDateTime
P8QF-4LF
X7YK-6H1J
0.9999869
5
Belgium, Antwerp, Civil Registration, 1588-1953
Accepted
2026-05-01 07:12:10
P8QF-4LF
X7YK-DY8R
0.99996746
5
Belgium, Antwerp, Civil Registration, 1588-1953
Accepted
2026-05-01 07:15:46
P8QF-4LF
X7TG-GDBM
0.9998311
5
Belgium, Antwerp, Civil Registration and Church Records, 1798-1909
Accepted
2026-02-12 19:15:08
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How did you get this list?
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@Loïc Baert I ran the hints API.
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@MandyShaw1 How do you run this API? Or is this only accessible to people with certain rights?
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@MandyShaw1 How do you run this API? Or is this only accessible to people with certain rights?
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I'm sorry for the double message. There was a bug yesterday with the forum
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The APIs and how to access them are documented here: https://developers.familysearch.org/main/reference/api-reference-guide
I use them from Python (I haven't tried with any other programming language). However my usage is unsupported by FS, 100% read-only, and really just to help out here in Community.
You can, as I understand it, obtain formal API approval and support only if you are a company developing an application to go on the FS Solutions Gallery.
I am always happy to pull reasonable amounts of helpful data via the APIs myself if useful, just tag me. N.B. I am non-LDS so that affects the data I can pull.
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