Can we send a reminder to sourcerers to add links to their sources?

Question

I think some people forgot or don't know they should add the links whenever possible. I've been finding census sources from Family Search on orphaned profiles like this: 1850 US Census, Simpson, Mississippi, database with images, Familysearch.org. No links to it. It is very frustrating to not be able to look at the source someone else found without doing the work over again, but very simple to add the link once you've found the source!!

Comments

It may be on purpose.  It's disturbing the number of members who don't use hyperlinks and discourage their use.  The usual excuse is that links can change in the future because it's happened in the past.  Most FamilySearch links now have ARK identifiers which are intended for long term persistence (https://n2t.net/e/ark_ids.html) and Wikitree now has templates for Ancestry records so corrections can easily be made if Ancestry every changes their URL format again.

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How disappointing to think people are doing it on purpose. It seems to me that doing that diminishes the wonderful collaboration that the Wikitree community has going. Thank you for this information about ARK identifiers you shared.I had no idea. 

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It seems like a lot of people who don't use the supplied FamilySearch citation want to reformat it in an Evidence Explained format.  They ignore that E.S. Mills says to include the source of the digital record, including hyperlink,  if you're not looking at the original.  One example:  https://www.evidenceexplained.com/content/quicklesson-26-thinking-through-an-ancestry.com-citation

More on ARK from FamilySearch:  https://www.familysearch.org/developers/docs/guides/linking

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I make a point of copying the citation as given.  The only exception is when I spend a LOT of time going through the images to find the exact record.  Then I will sub in the link to the image, so others don't have to hunt through potentially a few hundred years worth of church registers.

Same with Find a Grave.  I copy their citation, and only sub in the template for the memorial ID#.

I used to do my own FreeCen citation, but since they now offer a Wikitree citation, I use it instead.

Answer 1

It would be great if everyone followed the help

Fundamentally, a good source citation enables others to:

1. judge the accuracy of the information found on the profile, and
2. independently verify the information by finding the source themselves. 

Even though links may not persist, including all the information about the citation does really help. And, it is right there on FamilySearch to just copy and paste.

It is more difficult with sources from Ancestry, although there are a number of tools available to capture this information.

It would be great also if there was some type of source citation when all that is found on a profile is an image captured from something.

Comments

This looks like a good opportunity again to plug Greg Clarke's Ancestry Citation Builder.

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Kerry, Thanks for calling out the tool. I was thinking of it, but didn't have the name or link.