What is the difference between FamilySearch links with tree/person/details and those with ark:/61903 ?

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in Policy and Style by David Barrington G2G2 (2.9k points)

1 Answer

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Best answer
Those "ark:/61903" links are to actual records, many with images. The links to a tree or a person are just that. The tree or people may have no sources or incorrect sources. For the purposes of WikiTree, you should use the "ark:/61903" links to support your information.
by Lucy Selvaggio-Diaz G2G6 Pilot (839k points)
selected by Maggie N.

Just a note - ARK links are just persistent links - and can also point to tree or person entries. So an "ark:/61903" link is not always superior to a "tree/person" link - it all depends on the context and what the link is referencing.

For example, this link: https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/4:1:L63X-ZDR is the same as this link:https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/L63X-ZDR

Thanks.  This question is set against my lack of understanding of the FS structures.  I appreciate that we should avoid putting FS links as Sources, unless there is nothing better available.  So I am minded to use the special connection utility to put an FS ID directly onto the WT profile (which does not imply you are using it a source).  This uses only the xxxx-xxx part of the URLs we are discussing.  What prompted my question really was that I wanted to tidy a profile that had two longhand links of the types described.  But they had different FS IDS, both of which worked but led to different types of profile on FS - different formats of screen presentation - which led me to wonder why the difference.  Was one an FS transcription perhaps, and the other part of someone's personal effort? (I didn't think you could build personal trees on FS)  The example you give leads to exactly the same FS screen for both.  So there is still confusion in my mind - but if I stick to selecting the FSID shown in the 61904 link to put into the connection utility, and ignore the other one, I can't go far wrong?

The FSID link facility also seems to be able to take more than one FSID instance - so I could of course load both of the presented IDs in the WT profile.  They do after all seem to be the same person, just presented differently.  (If only all these screens had system dialogue identifiers, so I could easily say it's screens FS-1A and FS-2B or whatever, instead of having to describe them as 'that screen with the twiddly bit half way down the turquoise box marked ploop'!).

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