FamilySearch Wiki:Feedback

A call for Feedback! We need your feedback! We are eager to hear input and feedback from you because the FamilySearch Research Wiki is a community driven, community maintained site. Our goal is to make the FamilySearch Research Wiki a friendly, welcoming place that is easy to use and make contributions to, for both experts and beginners alike. Please leave your comments regarding any suggestions, solutions, or any of the following issues you may have encountered. We want to hear about the good, the bad , and the ugly .

The Governance Council needs your feedback, ideas, and suggestions! With a lot of our effort currently focused on format and standardization, we need you feedback and ideas to answer the questions: What's working? What's not working? How can we improve?

While we cannot promise to address every issue immediately or implement all solutions and ideas posted, your voice will be heard and all of them will be reviewed by the governance council."

How can we improve?
1. The bright red warning "If you are unable to edit the wiki after logging in, you will need to request editing rights using this form. You will be notified when editing rights are granted" is ugly. Can you change it to black?

This new policy also seems to contradict the pages that invite participation. Why not scrap the lockdown policy and change that statement to something like "Help us fight vandalism. If you see a page that is inappropriate click here" At the very least perhaps give church members the benefit of the doubt. I don't know the extent of the problem, just giving my perspective.

2. The following life preserver link is found throughout the wiki ->

When a new editor clicks on this, they are taken to a very generic FamilySearch help page (and there is no box there for Wiki-help). I would think a solution to this would be to add a wiki box on that page, or better yet change the help page to this support page instead. As someone with experience with Wikipedia I can easily code and tell you these things. Most new comers trying to give feedback would probably just give up and disappear.

3. The font is freakishly small on this site. One of the few site that require me to hit "ctrl" and "+". Not very friendly for the visually impaired. This is especially true for superscripts
 * and for bullet points, which are fairly common.Superscripts within a bullet are next to impossible

4. New user on Wikipedia usually get a welcome/orientation message on their talk page when they first set up an account. This would be a good thing.

5. I've noticed a there's a push for creating more articles, rather than improve existing articles. I don't think FS wiki has the resources and volunteers like Wikipedia to maintain quality. More pages = more maintenance. Going for quantity over quality will make this look like Cyndi's list (an ugly directory of resources) rather than an online encyclopedia and how to guide for genealogy. It may already be too late ...

6. It would also be good to have a different introduction for new editors who have experience in editing on Wikipedia. Maybe a special page to tell them how this Wiki is similar to Wikipedia and how it is different.

7. Templates should be made for international and national resources that are repeated on numerous pages. For example a template for Findagrave.com could say the exact same thing on hundreds of cemetery pages. This provides consistency and accuracy as well as easy maintenance and updating. Similarly for each USA census. This could also be done for topic introductions (i.e. "cemetery records usually contain... They are useful for ..." can be templated).

8. Article quality ratings - Wikipedia has articles labeled as "good articles" and "featured articles". These act as a gold standard to which others can rise to. This might be something to consider using here.

9. Respond more promptly to feedback. Pages such as this should be on the administration's watch-list. It's been over a month since I posted this. I placed tags and pings that most new editors could not do. Even a brief acknowledgement would be better than nothing. Just a few of my initial impressions. I hope to use my Wikipedia experience to help make this site better. I hope this feedback is useful. Asparagus (talk) 16:02, 28 November 2016 (UTC) User:Caleblove1 Pinging the last contributor (Wikipedia -style). Asparagus (talk) 02:23, 2 December 2016 (UTC)