User group meeting agenda & minutes 2 July 2008Edit This Page

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Agenda

Administrative items

1. Assignment of time keeper and remote monitor
2. Introduction of new members: 10 seconds for name and desired takeaways.
3. Prayer --
4. Review of Minutes
5. Today's agenda preview

Information items

Review of the application of procedures for contributors to FamilySearch Wiki.

• Authoring an Article, including naming it. -- Geoff Morris
• Editing an Article, including formatting it to make it "pretty." -- Geoff Morris
• Categorizing an article
• Internal and External Links -- Darris Williams
• Using FCK Editor or not?
• Cleaning up unwanted code

Keeping an article a reasonable length.

Teaching these procedures to others to help them feel comfortable as contributors.

Try to think as a user (patron) would think. How would they look for things in the Wiki? That affects the naming of pages (articles), categorizing articles, and internal linking, among other things.

Report on tab titles on articles (Thomas Lerman) -- will be included as a discussion item next week.

Family History Library Favorites and the FamilySearch Wiki (Stephen Bobowski) -- Statement of policy and possible future discussion item.

Discussion items

Carryover from Last Week

Report on a test of image approval process

New Items

Advanced Search -- Thomas Lerman

Inviting users to attend the Users Group Meeting remotely and making them feel more a part of the experience. -- Thomas Lerman

Minutes

Facilitator was Jimmy Parker. Note taker was Carol Smith, Time keeper was [Add name here]. Remote monitor was [Add name here]

Prayer by Lisa McBride.

Attendees

Attempted Remote: Thomas Lerman

Items Discussed

• We will try to have a review once a month of the basics.
• We want to provide help for all users beginning to advanced.
• Teaching these procedures to others to help them feel comfortable as contributors. Think about how people think as they search. Create an article and provide links to how you think a user or patron would think. Arrange the articles that way. This approach effects article naming and linking.
• Principles: 1)  When the servants of the Lord determine to do as he commands, we move ahead. As we move ahead we are joined at the crossroads by those who have been prepared to help. It's as if someone knew we would be traveling that way. When we are ready, it will be revealed whatever we need. We will find it waiting at the crossroads. 2)  Story by Elder Packer. Huge size of this challenge. Have faith, we will win the day. Wake up and see the vision of it. You always want to see the end from the beginning. Ether 12:6: you receive no witness until after the trial of your faith. You need to learn to walk to the edge of the light. We have not yet moved to the edge of the light--when we do walk to the edge of the light, the light will move ahead of us.
• Every day we refer people to the Wiki.
• Geoff Morris: Authoring an article. Creating a new article. FCK editor=software built into the Wiki to arrange the text or use an icon for a link. My Preferences, Misc. tab, and Disable rich editor, then Save. This will give you code in the article.  Geoff works with the FCK editor off. Then you need to be more familiar with the code. You can use an article on how to author on the Wiki. Use the SEARCH field to type in a subject. Be aware that articles in the Wiki were dumped from the Research Outlines. WE are smarter than ME environment. Start a discussion if you find a problem with the article.
• Creating a new article or page. No standard of how to title an article. Think about a title that is intuitive, and has a reference to a locality. A title only becomes wrong when it is a stumbling block to the user. You have to categorize every article so the user can find things. Type the title in the search field to create a new article, and hit search. You can fix a title later, so don't get hung up on that. The title will show up in red--that means it's an empty page. Red is an invitation to create, so click on the red title and you will get the edit screen. You have to save as you go, or the Wiki may time out. You can do your writing offline and copy and paste it into the Wiki. If the FCK editor is on you have to use Ctrl C and Ctrl V. We think you can work for about 45 minutes before you time out and lose it. If you are working with the FCK editor off, you have to include the code: 1) {{stub}}  2)  Category: Denmark  Then click Watch this page. Then click Save Page.
• Make the pages look pretty: Digestive bitesize chunks visually. Watch the size of text--it effects how much the user scrolls.  Use internal links and external links within the Wiki. Watch orphan pages (no links). Gray bar for Type 2 heading. Can add a Tips heading to get to the next step. Add a References heading to indicate that you have looked at other sources.  Example link to add an image.
• Jimmy Parker: Jimmy uses both FCK editor and Wiki Text. Check This is a minor change, and it won't go out to email. You can't copyright information, like a list.

Action Items