User talk:JanaStokes/Sandbox Utah

''The Sandbox Utah page was created for the purpose of exploring and creating ways to make state pages newbie friendly. The Utah State page content was transferred to the Sandox Utah page and is being used as the practice content.''

Links pertaining to content development:

 * how wikiHow does their steps? -- janellv [This is our goal: 1) be graphically absorbing 2) steps (logical - most freqently asked question addressed first)  3) bolded concise topic "sentence"
 * JanaStokes/Sandbox Utah
 * England (Beginners Corner -- birth -- taken to time fram page and split from there)
 * Virginia (Most Uniques Genealogical Features)
 * Sweden (Intro. What Are You Looking For? Community Section (Facebook, Skype) vs News Events
 * Germany (Getting Started vs What Are You Looking For? vs Beginners Corner) (location of Beginners corner vs What Are You Looking For)

Audience
AUDIENCE - NEWBIE:

What is a newbie looking for?


 * People just fresh from the LDS Family History Course (the Sunday School class) are after: PARENTS, birth info (dates, locality), marr and SOMETIMES death, sibling. Several in Community Mtg thought that there is no difference between those who've gone through LDS intro and those taking various intro classes at Hist Societies, etc.
 * Should we assume that a newbie's goal is to fill out a birth field? Will anyone ever come to the wiki just wanting to know where there family immigrated from? And not even realizing that pedigree charts are part of the journey. But are they really? Or could a patron (depending on time frame) be directed straight to a census, immigration or naturalization record?
 * Question: is there ever going to be a case of newbie arriving on a state page without the equivalent background of Just Getting Started (aka not having gone through an intro class via a church or Hist Soc)

What key pieces of "lacking knowledge" are going to trip a newbie up?


 * jurisdiction - should newbie be on state or county page? or independent city?
 * record selection (they don't know birth certif don't exist from beginning of time)
 * time period (they don't know time period affects record selection)

AUDIENCE - WARD CONSULTANTS:


 * unique genealogical features
 * latest news - new collection on line

Consistency of Style

 * if beginner stuff kept in same spot then professional eyes will auto skim out
 * beginners stuff - imperative it is graphically catching

6 Sep 2012 - Community Mtg

 * beginners want to get to on-line databases
 * beginners really like seeing the family in a census record
 * remove distinction between LDS and non-LDS beginners needs (they are basically the same)
 * Consider Just Getting Started? (LDS Church Lesson's in text)....Those land on state page, will they already know this or not?
 * talked about putting Beginners Corner above Key On-line Databases and incorporating the on-line databases on the page(s) the Beginner Corner links to.....Know one really said yes or no to that though...need to revisit

5 Sep 2012 - Utah Wiki Project

 * Group OK with doing the assignment
 * The best and most refined ideas percolate to the top
 * Test and try on more patrons
 * People who are new need something to help. User friendly
 * Background: wiki started being more advanced. Utah wiki project has introduced soft-teaching -- don't directly say jurisdictions, just get people to the records they need.
 * State page should also have some soft teaching.
 * England and Germany has some things we like. May be too long in some places on that first screen. Don't overwhelm. Do something similar, but put the links to the other things on a subsequent page.
 * Date ranges
 * Ours may not need as much explanation -- may be on one page.
 * Explain what church records do and why you are sending them there. Suggesting death records first. A little bit of info
 * Beginning stuff -- First?
 * Online at the beginning

Jana will pull some more things together.