ancestry.com Source?

Question

Would someone please tell me, is putting "Ancestry-Our" an acceptable source? It links to a page that that says: "We’re sorry, this page is temporarily unavailable."

I'm very frustrated, can someone help?

I've now discovered that I can get to the page, and it's MY page LOL!

Comments

There are quite a number of folks who do not understand what a proper citation is.

Maybe there needs to be a tutorial on what is a valid source and, as a minimum, how to create a bibliographic citation, that must be completed before any can enter a profile. It could be patterned after the pre-1700 certification.

The only members I would consider being grandfathered in would be those with pre-1700 or pre-1500 certification, although there can be found poor to inadequate sourcing in some of these profiles as well.

Edit

To estimate the impact of this, how many active members are there without pre-1700 or pre-1500 certification?

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Actually, it links to a profile page for an individual in a family tree on Ancestry.com. There are several sources and facts provided on the Ancestry.com profile page. I often see people who do the same thing using a link to a FamilySearch profile page as a source. 

Is this the only source on the WikiTree profile? If not, perhaps the link is being used as a way for viewers to see other source records which may be available which were not included on the WikiTree profile. It would be good if an explanation was then provided as to why it was included. If it is the only source, then I agree, it would be best if the source records and facts were linked individually on the WikiTree profile.

I agree with George that WikiTree could do better on educating its members about sources and constructing better source citations. However, WikiTree's sourcing requirements right now are such that the link Lisa supplied in her original post is a valid source for a WikiTree profile of an individual born after 1700 because all WikiTree requires is to identify where one obtained information.

Hep:Sources_FAQ

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https://ancestry.prf.hn/click/camref:1011l4xx5/type:cpc/destination:https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/9715759/person/24067118216/facts

The link you provided links to the "FACTS" page on Ancestry.com once it passes thru the tracker website.

Maybe it's the tracker website that is causing the "We’re sorry, this page is temporarily unavailable." to appear.

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Some Ancestry URLs do chronically show the "temporarily unavailable" message, but this particular URL is currently working for many of us (including myself) who have Ancestry subscriptions that include the U.S.

This particular Ancestry family tree cites eight good sources, making it an excellent resource to help in developing a WikiTree profile.

PS to Tommy: That "tracker" URL is added by WikiTree. There have been occasions when the "tracker" was blocked by overly aggressive security protocols, but that would not result in the Ancestry-generated error message that Lisa saw.

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Unfortunately, that is the only source listed.

As for it linking to a "Facts" page, I couldn't get to it and I'm on Ancestry. Now, I can get to it's and it's MY page!

I think this would be a very good idea for Wikitree:

"Maybe there needs to be a tutorial on what is a valid source and, as a minimum, how to create a bibliographic citation, that must be completed before any can enter a profile. It could be patterned after the pre-1700 certification."

Just my 2 cents worth.

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Thank you for the star.  I'll help if you decide to put together a tutorial along the lines you suggested.

Answer 1

The Profile Improvement Project (PIP) attempts to be part of the solution to this problem, but it graduates so few that it does not make much of a dent in it.

In my view, the problem remains common because we (on WikiTree) use one word--source--where two are needed--say, record and repository.  The record is what we offer to substantiate a genealogical assertion--a DOD for example, which we document with a death certificate.  The repository is where we obtained the record.  That could be one of the online sites or a state vital statistics agency or ....

Confusion arises because the major sites offer a pre-cooked reference that does not adequately document the record (while making quite clear where the record was obtained.) In my opinion, we should stop referring to these pre-cooked references and the sites as "sources."

The record needs to be documented with special care so that if the link rots, as they tend to do, the record can still be located.  The repository where the document was obtained also needs to be identified. In some cases that can very important, but it usually isn't because many records can be found in more than one place and online sites come and go.

I think a tutorial along these lines is a great idea.

Answer 2

For a post-1700 profile, a link, like the one in Lisa's question, to an entry in an Ancestry tree meets minimum WikiTree sourcing standards, though many of us would like to see other and stronger sourcing. A link just to "Ancestry.com" does not meet the minimum standards. 

See https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Sources_FAQ which includes an explanation of why sourcing guidance is much more relaxed for post-1700 profiles. The policy on this has frequently been discussed in G2G.

Because WikiTree is collaborative, we can all help to improve sourcing for profiles where it is weak.

Particularly for profiles created in the early years of WikiTree, there are quite a lot of broken links to entries in Ancestry family trees. This will often be because the family trees have been deleted since.

I should perhaps add that there are a lot of pre-1700 and pre-1500 profiles that were created before WikiTree tightened its policies on sourcing requirements for early profiles and that have inadequate sourcing, sometimes just to an Ancestry tree, which does not meet current sourcing expectations. This is a big legacy problem. Some of us spend a considerable part of our WikiTree time improving such profiles, but it is a laborious task likely to continue beyond my lifetime.