User:RitcheyMT

Michael Ritchey, the founding manager of FamilySearch Wiki, is a community and content manager of the Community Services team, a workgroup in the Family History Department, Corporation of the President, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Community Services workgroup was assembled in December 2008. Roughly half the team came from the Research Support workgroup who are the founders of FamilySearch Wiki.

A new sandbox
A Sandbox of Edit and Contribute

My favorite report
Here's a report regarding wiki edit output from FHL reference units and individuals.

Pages I recommend to new users

 * Etiquette Guidelines. When people who are accustomed to creating their own Websites or paper publications first engage as a wiki contributor, they commonly struggle with the transition from a heirarchal command-and-control publication management model to a flat, peer-based, consensus-driven community editing model. A document that we've found useful to get our heads in the right mindset is Etiquette Guidelines. It'll teaches users how to work smoothly and efficiently with others in the wiki environment.

Good articles

 * 1) Prussia-Brandenburg Civil Registration details jurisdiction changes that affect which office would have documented vital records of ancestors there. Shows old place names with their modern equivalents, and links to indexes listing streets and their corresponding civil registration offices.

Users from whom I solicit opinions
These are the users who I invite to weigh in on wiki discussions -- particularly governance or Manual of Style issues.


 * 1) Alan
 * 2) Baerbel
 * 3) Bakerbh
 * 4) Batsondl
 * 5) Bromaelor
 * 6) CK Whipple (Kara Wahlquist)
 * 7) David E. Rencher
 * 8) Diltsgd
 * 9) Dsammy
 * 10) Familyjournals
 * 11) Franjensen
 * 12) G Fröberg Morris
 * 13) Genguide
 * 14) Gregorybean
 * 15) Hendricksonp
 * 16) Jbparker
 * 17) Jonesja
 * 18) Laralee
 * 19) Lembley
 * 20) Molliewog
 * 21) Mormor
 * 22) Nixiao
 * 23) Phillip Dunn
 * 24) Proarenee
 * 25) Sonja
 * 26) Thomas Lerman

Usability concerns
The following are usability issues I think we should address in usability meeting:


 * I would agree with Talk vs. Discussion (#11 above). However, I believe that "discussion" would be more clear to most people especially those that are beginners. In other words, I would rather see Discussion than Talk being used. I also believe that the "Page" namespace can be a little intimidating and that "Article" (as Wikipedia uses) is a more friendly name. Thomas Lerman 15:07, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

New items to prioritize in the backlog

 * 32k limit on page size: What browsers and browser versions choke on editing a &gt;32k page?

Other current projects

 * 1) &lt;a href="FamilySearch Wiki:How Community Governs Wikipedia"&gt;FamilySearch Wiki:How Community Governs Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;
 * 2) Link to all US/Canada &lt;a href="FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject Linking to Record Search"&gt;data sets on Record Search&lt;/a&gt;.
 * 3) Link to all US/Canada histories loaded on the &lt;a href="http://www.lib.byu.edu/fhc/index.php"&gt;BYU Digital Archives&lt;/a&gt;.
 * 4) Update all census pages for the U.S. at the country and state level. Add information to these articles from sources on &lt;a href="FamilySearch Wiki:Sources of Information for a United States Record Type Article"&gt;FamilySearch Wiki:Sources of Information for a United States Record Type Article&lt;/a&gt;.
 * 5) Update all vital records pages for the U.S. at the country and state level. Add information to these articles from sources on &lt;a href="FamilySearch Wiki:Sources of Information for a United States Record Type Article"&gt;FamilySearch Wiki:Sources of Information for a United States Record Type Article&lt;/a&gt;.

Feb 18 - Mar 17 Sprint

 * 1) Copy United States Reference Documents from &lt;a href="http://www.familysearch.org"&gt;FamilySearch Internet&lt;/a&gt; to FamilySearch Wiki.
 * 2) Copy &lt;a href="Canadian content in FamilySearch Research Guidance and Help"&gt;Canada Reference Documents from FamilySearch Internet&lt;/a&gt; to FamilySearch Wiki.
 * 3) Add county creation dates and parent counties tables to all U.S. states. See an example: &lt;a href="Wisconsin County Creation Dates and Parent Counties"&gt;Wisconsin County Creation Dates and Parent Counties&lt;/a&gt;.

Jan 17-Feb 17 Sprint Organize and enable FHL staff for Maryland barn raising
See &lt;a href="Maryland Barn Raising Tasks"&gt;Maryland Barn Raising Tasks&lt;/a&gt;

Replacement for portal template
&lt;img src="/en/images/thumb/9/94/Dbase_error.jpg/180px-Dbase_error.jpg" _fck_mw_filename="Dbase error.jpg" _fck_mw_type="thumb" alt="Here's an error" class="fck_mw_frame fck_mw_right" /&gt;The place portal pages (those titled "Portal:[place name]" use a MediaWiki template to create and lay out the boxes on the page. This template is problemmatical for two reasons. First, the content of each box on a portal page is actually a sub-page, so none of the content in the sub-pages is considered by search engines to be on the portal page itself. So although a portal's sub-pages may contain a lot of great content, search engines don't attribute any of that content to the portal page itself. That means words within in the sub-pages cannot be used in a search engine to find the portal page. As far as search engines are concerned, then, the Denmark portal page is just an empty shell with some code, not a content-rich page on everything you need to know about Danish research. This problem is common to external search engines like Google as well as the wiki's own search engine. To solve the problem, we need to find a more search-engine-friendly way to lay out boxes in our place pages. Mollie, Fran and Michael have all tried different solutions; have a look and see which ones you like.


 * 1) Mollie's &lt;a href="England/Test1"&gt;England/Test1&lt;/a&gt; page
 * 2) Fran's
 * 3) Michael's &lt;a href="Pennsylvania"&gt;Pennsylvania&lt;/a&gt; page

Marketing tools

 * Online PR: Top 40 Ways To Get Noticed Online (apart from Twitter)

Admin/Sysop/Founder aids

 * &lt;a href="Running a Project"&gt;Running a Project&lt;/a&gt; gives helpful tips on how to manage a team to write targeted content.

Authoring aids

 * &lt;a href="FamilySearch Wiki:Headings for Articles about Records"&gt;Article headings&lt;/a&gt; the wiki community has developed for use in articles.
 * &lt;a href="Portal:Contribute"&gt;Contributer Portal&lt;/a&gt; covers all things relating to authoring on the wiki.
 * &lt;a href="Help:How to add citations"&gt;How to add citations&lt;/a&gt; shows how to add wiki code that creates endnotes in an article.
 * &lt;a href="Policy:Purpose and Appropriate Topics"&gt;Purpose and Appropriate Topics&lt;/a&gt; lists the types of articles writers should and shouldn't write on this wiki.
 * &lt;a href="FamilySearch Wiki:Sources Consulted but Not Referenced"&gt;FamilySearch Wiki:Sources Consulted but Not Referenced&lt;/a&gt;.
 * &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiProject_Alternative_Music"&gt;Wikipedia:WikiProject Alternative music&lt;/a&gt; may give us some ideas about how to create a project page.

Related pages
&lt;a href="User:RitcheyMT/Sandbox"&gt;Michael's sandbox&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="User:RitcheyMT/Sandbox 2"&gt;Michael's sandbox 2&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href="User:RitcheyMT/sandbox 3"&gt;Michael's sandbox 3&lt;/a&gt; &lt;IMG class=FCK__MWTemplate height=1 src="https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/extensions/FCKeditor/fckeditor/editor/images/spacer.gif" width=1 _fckfakelement="true" _fckrealelement="0" _fck_mw_template="true"&gt;

&lt;a _fcknotitle="true" href="Category:Help"&gt;Help&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="Category:Family_History_Library_Employees"&gt;User:RitcheyMT&lt;/a&gt;