Question about referencing records on Ancestry.com

Question

I just became aware of the help page https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Links_to_Ancestry which states: "If you use one of the international Ancestry sites, you can add an additional parameter to make sure the link goes to the correct site."

This suggests that one should always direct the reader to the site where the record was found and gives as an example the parameter 'uk', which replaces "ancestry.com" with "ancestry.uk" in the address. (I presume that all sites eventually link back to the same storage system, but I am not sure.) For those with accounts on one of the ancestry sites, this will at least give a choice to go to the ancestry site in the indicated country, but my problem is a little more subtle.

I do not have a account on Ancestry. I do my searches on the site 'ancestrylibrary.ca' at my local library. This is probably very specialized and will not be helpful to most readers, especially those who have accounts on ancestry.com. I understand that I can get access to links containing "ancestry.com" by putting "ancestrylibrary.ca" instead, but  then I cannot simply use my own profiles to access records I put there myself. How should I deal with this? Is it OK to put both links into the reference section? And should I use 'ancestry.ca' or 'ancestry.com'?

Answer 1

Hi Gus, if you install the WikiTree Sourcer extension it solves this problem for you like this: In the options you set which Ancestry domain you wish to use. Then you can right-click on any Ancestry link and use the "Sourcer: Open link in in new tab" and it will open it at your prefered Ancestry domain. This is demoed in the help video at time 14:57 in the "context menu" section.

I suggested a long time ago on G2G that the WikiTree site could solve this problem for users by having a similar option on the WikiTree Settings page and, when it displays a profile or FSP page automatically point the links to that location. I didn't get much support for that idea though.

Now that we have the new(ish) WikiTree Browser Extension this seems like something that it would be useful for it to do automatically as an option. [EDIT: This is actually already implemented - see comment below]

To answer your specific question: I would not put two different record links in the citation. As to which one to use, it doesn't matter if you use a feature like I described above, but is not really obvious which is "best" to use - the one that works for you or the one that works for the most people likely to look at the profile.

Comments

I forgot to mention, if you use the WikiTree Sourcer extension to generate your citations it gives you various options for which domain to use in the Ancestry Record template. You can chose to always leave off the 3rd parameter so it goes to ancestry.com. That is what I do. But I have an account at ancestry.com

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Adding to this, the WikiTree Sourcer extension citation builder also included the link to the free “sharing“ ancestry record when available.

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Doh! I forgot that I did actually implement the feature that I mentioned above in the WBE (WikiTree Browser Extension). It is called "Redirect External Links". If you turn it on and then select the options you want it will automatically update the links to point to your preferred domain.

The differences between this and the Sourcer context menu:

• WBE Redirect External Links is automatic. Once you turn it on you don't have to think about it.
• WBE Redirect External Links only works on WikiTree profiles. The WikiTree Sourcer context menu works anywhere in your browser. So you can use it in Discord, G2G etc.