Citation not working

Question

Family Search citations in the sources section will give me an
underscored source that will direct me to the source by clicking on it.  I have entered three censuses--1850, 60 and 70, none of which recorded with this feature.  I thought it was my fault using the draft feature.  I recorded a marriage by itself and it worked correctly.  I went back and entered the 1860 census two more times individually, none of them gave me a referrable source.  Is this feature not working on censuses?

Comments

The first citation that has a working link has the full URL:

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KZCK-LNG

The others are missing the initial “https:/:www.familysearch.org/“. If you insert that, they should be working links.

Answer 1

In the citations that don't seem to work, if you add the text https://www.familysearch.org/ inside the parentheses but before "ark/....", those citations will become clickable.  I'm not sure why Family Search has changed some of these citations, as they have become less descriptive and less useful.  I believe this issue has come up before in G2G. 

I fixed one of the 1860 citations for you. 

For myself, I've also begun adding the name of the person being profiled to the citation in cases where that person's name is not mentioned in the original FS citation.  That is not the case with Elam and these citations here, but it often seems to be the case.  

Comments

I did as you suggested and it worked on the 1850 and 1870
censuses.  I wonder why it stopped working since yesterday or is it just his name?  I will just copy and paste for his wife.

Answer 2

If you use the WikiTree Sourcer browser extension it will create a citation for those records in a single click that have working links.

For example for the 1950 census the citation on the FamilySearch page is:

"United States Census, 1860", database with images, FamilySearch (ark:/61903/1:1:M4NS-YLZ : Tue Apr 04 20:37:27 UTC 2023), Entry for Elam Crouch and Elizabeth Crouch, 1860.

You can set the Sourcer options to generate the citation in the format that you desire, it can also generate inline citations, a narrative sentence and a household table. But ignoring that for now. If you just want a source citation, by default it will generate:

* '''1860 Census''': "United States Census, 1860"<br/>
citing Page: 35; Affiliate Publication Number: M653;<br/>
{{FamilySearch Record|M4NS-YLZ}} (accessed 13 June 2023)<br/>
{{FamilySearch Image|33S7-9B9J-5X5}}<br/>Elam Crouch (57) in Penn Township, St Joseph, Indiana, United States. Born in N York.

If you want it to be more like the style of the FS provided citation you can change the options to generate:

* "United States Census, 1860", database with images, ({{FamilySearch Record|M4NS-YLZ}} : accessed 13 June 2023) {{FamilySearch Image|33S7-9B9J-5X5}}, Entry for Elam Crouch and Elizabeth Crouch, 1860; citing Page: 35; Affiliate Publication Number: M653.

Many other formats are possible with different options settings.

Comments

I use Sourcer for this purpose daily and highly recommend it.

 I also recomend using the "Build Narrative with Citation Option" as that puts the facts in the Bio and the linked source in Sources, makes it easy to find the correct source to support a fact if there are a lot of facts in the Bio.