User:DiltsGD/Sandbox 3

Family History Research Wiki

The Family History Research Wiki provides encyclopedic reference information, and educational articles to help genealogists and family historians find and interpret sources about their ancestors. It is a free-access, free-content Internet Wiki encyclopedia, supported and hosted by FamilySearch, a non-profit organization which is a genealogical arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Anyone with access to the Internet may read each article, and almost all articles can be edited by registered users. Registration is free.

Content. Many articles are geographically oriented with suggestions about how to research records of a particular town, county, state, province, nation, or continent to find information about ancestors in that jurisdiction. The greatest concentration of such articles are about the United States, Canada, and European nations, but every nation worldwide has at least one article.

Other typical kinds of Wiki articles are about:


 * record types (like census, church or land records): descriptions, how to find, and how to interpret them
 * research tools like the Hamburg Passenger Lists
 * finding aids like the PERiodical Source Index (PERSI) and how to use them effectively
 * ethnic or religious group research such as Jewish Genealogy, or Finding LDS Records
 * lists of significant libraries, archives, societies, museums, or Family History Centers with material of value to genealogical researchers
 * how to use selected genealogical software programs
 * genealogical research methodology—teaching the techniques needed to find ancestors
 * migration routes like rivers, ports, canals, trails, roads, and railroads
 * genealogical word lists help with 20 foreign-languages by giving English translations of words typically found in genealogical documents
 * letter-writing guides to help researchers write letters in foreign languages
 * handwriting guides help readers understand old forms of handwriting or foreign alphabets
 * blank genealogical forms
 * links to thousands of significant online databases
 * links to video lessons about how to do genealogical research

The Family History Research Wiki is not a database of ancestors' names or pedigrees. Nor is it a place for genealogical queries, or message boards—however, it often explains and then links to such places.

Content History. The Family History Library in Salt Lake City has thousands of branches called Family History Centers worldwide. These centers have volunteer staff who offer free research advice to visitors. To help these volunteers better answer questions about research, a series of published "research outlines" by the Family History Library was devoloped starting about 1988. When the Family History Research Wiki was launched in late 2007 the electronic copies of the old paper publications of the Family History Library were immediately transferred into the Wiki. The old paper "research outlines" were the original kernal from which the Family History Research Wiki has grown.

Platform History. The Family History Research Wiki was launched 14 December 2007 when the main page was first edited. The first version of the wiki was built on the Plone wiki software product, but it was soon discovered that MediaWiki software was much more suitable, so in January 2008 it was moved to the MediaWiki platform. In the intervening years it was rolled out in other languages, and as of March 2016 smaller versions are available in 11 other languages.[14] The other language wikis are found via links at the bottom of the wiki homepage. The wiki in English had over 82,855 articles and over 150,000 registered users as of March 2016.[15]