FamilySearch Wiki:Wiki Support/Foundation

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Wiki Support > Foundation

Vision: Improving the FamilySearch Wiki

The goal of Wiki Support is to help make the FamilySearch Wiki a better place for:
  • Researchers to find information that will help them find their ancestors
  • Contributors who want to help make the Wiki better for researchers
  • Support team that wants to make the Wiki a better place for researchers and contributors
Everything we do relates to making the Wiki easier to use, and to help those who would like to do more with the Wiki as they grow from new, to experienced researchers, to contributors.

Primary Responsibility: Community Involvement

The best way to make the wiki a better place is to come to understand the needs of each of the above groups by interacting with community members to:
  • take care of their problems,
  • answer their questions,
  • and listen to what they have to say.
The places these discussions take place are:
  • In the Forums
  • On article Talk pages
  • In Family History Centers, genealogical libraries, societies, and anywhere else where the Wiki is used
  • On Facebook
  • On GetSatisfaction
  • At Community Meetings 
  • For FamilySearch service missionaries, through Phone Support and emails we receive into Amdocs 
It will also be important when possible to:
  • Proactively reach out to Wiki contributors to help them in their work
  • Help Researchers find the information they need to progress in the search for their ancestors
  • Communicate with the entire community on those things that will affect them through the Forums and the Community News page

Patrolling and Maintenance

When any collaborative venture is undertaken, as people learn, they do things "imperfectly," and as such, there is always much that can be done to help "clean up" the Wiki.
  • Patrolling helps to ensure that the content in the wiki is appropriate for the wiki.
  • Maintenance is done so that the wiki remains always user friendly.
Patrolling is explained here:
Maintenance work is done here:
Special pages that show other reports about Wiki pages, contributors, and their contributions:

Help Content for Researchers and Contributors

Help Content in the Wiki is all about teaching how to use and contribute to the Wiki.
Help Links for Researchers:
Help Links for Contributors:
More Help Links:

Policies and Guidelines

Policies and Guidelines help govern how contributors add information and communicate with each other. As we work on the above, it will be vital to be familiar with the following:
Policies
Policies are important rules that are widely accepted, and procedures for important processes such as deletion.
Guidelines
Guidelines are consensual rules-of-thumb that are not strict, but are considered by most FamilySearch Wikins to be useful most of the time.

Governance

Governance is about how decisions are made, how policies and guidelines are agreed upon, and what to do when those policies are broken. Wikipedia has some solid procedures surrounding this and can be found in the article How Community Governs Wikipedia.
The main focus we will have is on developing policies and procedures that will help to prevent problems from escalating. But if they do, the Dispute resolution process documentation will guide the support teams in managing issues that arise.
Retrieved from "https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/index.php?title=FamilySearch_Wiki:Wiki_Support/Foundation&oldid=1401201"