Community Center

Welcome to the FamilySearch Wiki community page. This is the place to find what is happening on the FamilySearch Research Wiki. Come here to find a list of things you can do to help the Research Wiki to grow. Join a user group or start one in your own area. Check out the ongoing discussions and join in on the discussions!

Tip of the day...

 * Help expand the knowledge in the Research Wiki by adding content to stub articles. The stub articles are identified as stubs because they are just the beginning of a full article about a specific subject. There are a lot of Stub articles to choose from. Just pick from the list of stub articles the one that interests you and have fun adding to what's already there. The article What is a stub? will give you ideas about content you can add to locality stub pages.

Creating new articles

 * FamilySearch Wiki is "international" so any article with a general title such as "The Census" should really cover the entire globe! If you are writing an article which applies to one country only, then that should be made clear in the title of the article, such as The Census in England or England Census‎ etc..
 * To make your article easier to find by others, make sure you insert a Category at the end of the article, e.g.

Notices

 * List of changes to the Research Wiki skin

Project pages seeking contributors

 * The England Barn Raising project has launched! Tasks await English experts, wiki experts, and volunteers willing to help with routine editing. Anyone willing to help can sign up now.
 * The Maryland Barn Raising project has started! Sign up for a task today!!!
 * WikiProject Linking to Record Search needs volunteers to link wiki pages to new indexes and digitized records in FamilySearch Record Search.
 * WikiProject Linking to Books in the BYU Family History Archives needs volunteers to link wiki pages to digitized county and state histories on the BYU Family History Archives site.
 * WikiProject Maryland News and Events needs volunteers to find genealogical news and events relating to Maryland and link to them from the News and Events section of the Maryland Portal.
 * Denmark has several individual projects that need volunteers to help with expanding and improving content about Danish research.

Discussions
Discussions that are asking for wider attention include:


 * There is an ongoing discussion about the development of record-type articles. The two discussion points include: (1) The headings that should be used in record-type articles, and (2) The pros and cons of having long article or short articles with multiple links between them. This discussion is taking place within the context of the Maryland Newspapers article. Join the discussion on the talk page at: Talk:Maryland Newspapers.

Things to do
Idea #1 There are several articles throughout FamilySearch Wiki that refer to the Periodical Source Index (PERSI). Help improve the content by linking all the articles that discuss PERSI to the complete Periodical Source Index (PERSI) article that already exists in the Wiki. To find all the articles that discuss PERSI, type the term "persi" in the search box and click the Search button.

Idea #2 Help build the Danish content by participating in one of the following projects:


 * FamilySearch Wikiproject: Danish Articles Needing Revision
 * FamilySearch Wikiproject: Danish Directories
 * FamilySearch Wikiproject: Danish Jurisdictions
 * FamilySearch Wikiproject: Danish Lægd Numbers after 1869
 * FamilySearch Wikiproject: Danish Newspapers
 * FamilySearch Wikiproject: Danish Orphanages

Idea #3


 * The United States Maps page needs a major overhaul. The current U.S. Maps page, which comes from the FamilySearch United States Research Outline, was written years ago with printed sources in mind. Today roughly 80% of a genealogist's needs for U.S. maps can be met by using a few incredible, free Websites. If you'd like to overhaul this page, have at it! For ideas, see the United States Maps discussion page.

Fix-up projects

 * Add external links to articles
 * Add internal links to articles
 * Categorize articles- As of 18 Dec 2008 there are 1,880 pages in the Wiki without a category. All uncategorized page needs at least one category added to the page.
 * Disambiguation
 * Expand an article or short page
 * Double redirects need fixing - 14 pages as of 18 Dec 2008 have double redirects. Each case needs to be fixed.
 * Link dead end pages in FamilySearch Wiki to other pages as needed - 2139 pages as of 18 Dec 2008 that do not link to other pages in FamilySearchWiki.
 * Uncategorized category pages - 31 category pages need at least one category added to the page.
 * Unused Categories - 168 categories in the Wiki are unused as of 18 Dec 2008. Evaluate each instance and either delete, redirect, correct, or use the category.
 * Stub Pages - As of 18 Dec 2008 there are over 5,000 wanted pages. The wanted pages are those that were created as a stub article, meaning the beginning of an article that needs to be written. There are two ways to view the list of stub/wanted pages, (1) Stub pages and (2) Wanted Pages. Both lists are the same, but are organized differently. Find one of interest and add what you know about the subject.
 * Wanted Categories - As of 18 Dec 2008 there are 438 categories that need a description added to the category page.

Article Collaboration
Submit an article that needs a group effort to improve and expand the content. Every month, beginning January 2009, a new article will be featured here for collaborative improvement.

Guidelines, Help, and Resources

 * The Guiding Principles for this site.
 * Overall FamilySearch Wiki Policies
 * Copyright, Copyleft, and Intellectual Property
 * Privacy Policy
 * Image Approval Policies
 * Running a Barn Raising