Community Meeting Agenda 20 October 2009

Be bold! Post your agenda items!
Feel free to post on the agenda any items you wish to cover during the meeting. If your item requires details or feedback, post some details on the discussion page and link to the discussion from the agenda.

Administrative items

 * 1) Assignment of time keeper and note taker
 * 2) Introduction of new members: 10 seconds for name and desired takeaways.
 * 3) Review of Minutes
 * 4) Today's agenda preview

Recognition
Thank you, thank you, thank you! For moving the Bookmark box away from directly below the Save Page link on the edit pages! Jbparker 02:37, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Agreed! Lise 12:58, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Ditto! Laralee 16:55, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I think Dave Crowther did that. Why don't y'all leave a nice note on his user talk page? Ritcheymt 19:59, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Information items

 * Some of the past agendas, especially from February, March and April of 2009 were somehow inadvertently removed from the User Group Archive. Links to those agendas have now been re-installed. Jbparker 20:46, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Replication of Instruction Pages
While doing some categorization I noticed that many of the states have basic research guides for where to look for information and suggested search priorities. While I haven't checked them all the ones I have looked at seem to be nearly identical in the information they provide - they are guides to the sorts of records to look for, not specific descriptions of the records for that state. Here are some examples:

Alabama, United States - Birth - 1702-1816

New York, United States - Birth - 1700-1775

Maryland, United States, Births 1776-1849

The only obvious differences in most of these (that I could see) are the date ranges in the titles. Would it be better to have these pages consolidated and linked to - rather than replicated in all or most of the states? It seems a lot of work to wikify each page for each state, if its not necessary. Laralee 17:49, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

These seem to be replications of research guides that existed on FamilySearch with suggestions based on the available records for each state. This is a resolution-flow process where you identify research objectives then go to specific resources to answer the questions. The priority is to get the information in before the pages that direct them to that information. The other alternative is to make pages with links to nowhere.

Templates might be an alternative that would allow replication without as much hands-on labor. Laralee will investigate. Laralee 20:30, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Proposed role -- Uploader
We had a long talk in user group meeting about a proposal to rename the Reviewer role to Uploader. I've moved the discussion to the Reviewer Discussion page. Ritcheymt 15:06, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

category problem - a solution?
There may be a solution to one type of category problem. We may need a team of moderators/sysops assigned to this one like Georgia (state) vs Georgia (Republic).

A different solution for different type of problem? Have a team develop guideline on linking the pages to different levels of categories? I am sure Laralee as well as I would like to be on this team. dsammy 20:26, 20 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Part of my question is why not call the country what it is called in English, Republic of Georgia? I am not sure if I will be available next week. Thomas Lerman 21:01, 20 October 2009 (UTC)


 * There is already a state in the United States, that is Georgia (state) and a country, Georgia (country) . It's the category that kept getting screwed. The naming of urls need to be same. dsammy 03:25, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The reason we do not call it Republic of Georgia is because, otherwise we will have to create Soviet Socialist Republic of Georgia and Monarchist Georgia portals. Wikipedia has it as Georgia (country) with additional information about time periods as a monarchy, soviet socialist republic and free republic. dsammy 03:27, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I do not believe we are creating articles about every previous name of previous countries. My opinion is that we would have the country page as the country is called now with reference to previous time periods in the body of the article. Thomas Lerman 03:34, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Not as "Republic of Georgia". Georgia (country) covers the whole spectrum of the records, be it monarchist, soviet or free republic. The problem was the category that got skewered. I am cleaning the mess out and found some belonged in the other category. dsammy 03:54, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I think you missed my point, the country is currently called Republic of Georgia and it is of my opinion that that it was we call it. It still would cover all historic names of the county. In other words, I was stating my opinion and it is okay that we have different opinions. Thomas Lerman 04:06, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I didn't miss your point. Based on your point, we better rename Macedonia, "Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia", Republic of Moldava instead of simply Moldava, People's Republic of Korea instead of simple North Korea, etc. You are trying to marginalize the past. The creators of Georgia (country) did the right thing. dsammy 05:10, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I did not talk specifically about any other country and I am in no way marginalizing the past (that may be your interpretation, but definitely no my intention). It is okay that we have different opinions and respect them. I firmly believe it is best to talk about various options no matter how good or bad one may think they are. Thomas Lerman 13:44, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The Krispy Kreme Conveyor -- fresh out of the oven
How can our wiki automagically show our customers a conveyor belt full of well-written articles — a list of articles which are pretty engaging and which have reached that threshold within the last few hours or minutes? For background, see my blog post Adding Hot-off-the-Line Freshness to a Wiki. Ritcheymt 16:49, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Tech Support
Since the "Tech Support" provided in the forums is really user-driven, should it be re-labeled so as to explain when to post queries there and when to opt for the Tech Support link at the bottom of each page? Lise 01:56, 20 October 2009 (UTC)