User talk:Jester7

An invitation to the Wiki Welcome Center, a resource guide for new contributors (https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/Wiki_Welcome_Center) has been sent to the contact email you shared. Please join us there.

Brepouille/Wiki Support Team (talk) 13:19, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

I remember...
I started doing genealogy as a teenager. My aunt was an avid genealogist and encouraged me. My pencil and paper graduated to a manual typewriter and I saved up for a new wide carriage manual. I remember giving the ward records examiner my forms and waiting for them to be processed. I remember using the TIB, FGRA, CFI, IGI, PAF, and the controlled extraction program. I was an indexer when we read microfilms provided by "the vault" and wrote the entries on index cards. I sent in my 10 dollars to get a survey done. Years later I was one of the library staff that did the surveys. In fact I did hundreds of them. I answered Thousands of letters inquiring how to "...", or "Would you look in ...." I helped develop visual aids on how to use the soundex system and how it helps find census entries with "spelling variations." Oh, the joy when the first index to the 1850 census started coming out, one state at a time. It was always the smaller eastern states they published first. Then the larger more populated states, then the "western" states like Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa. I knew enough of the dewey decimal number for every book in the US&Canada section to find it on the shelf without going to the card catalog. --Jester7 (talk) 00:37, 7 August 2019 (MDT)

Missouri County Pages
Audrain County, Missoui

Hi. My name is Beverly Repouille and I am a member of the Wiki Support Team.

Thank you for your interest in improving the FamilySearch Wiki. We appreciate your time and contributions.

I've been reviewing the changes you are making to the Missouri County pages. Please make sure you are following the instructions on the Project page.

Also, I noticed that there is a problem with the number 6 reference which you added. You correctly added the URL for Audrain County but didn't change the name of the county just previously in that reference (it currently says a different county.). If you would please correct that and keep an eye as you copy and paste!

Once again, thank you for all you do. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

Sincerely,

Beverly Repouille (User_Talk:Brepouille), Wiki Support Team, 8/18/2019

Carter County, Missouri
Hello Steven!

I'm Pamela Leavens, from the FamilySearch Wiki team. We are thrilled to have you as a volunteer, and have already seen the extremely useful work you are doing for Populated Places sections on US County pages. Thank you, thank you!

Would you be available to do a little research on the populated places for Carter County, Missouri listed on Wikipedia? I noticed that on the body of the Wikipedia page, it lists as ghost towns: Chilton, Eastwood, and Midco. However, down at the bottom of that same page, in the section titled "Municipalities and communities of Carter County, Missouri, United States", it lists as ghost towns: Barren, Midco. In some places, some of these towns are designated as 'unincorporated' instead of ghost. Would you be willing to dig a bit deeper and find out for sure? I'd like to know that our FS Wiki Carter County page has the correct information on it. I hope it is relatively easy to find out. Do let me know if it becomes too much of a headache. If so, we can take it from there.

Thank you!

Pamela

psleavens, Wiki Support Team (talk) 15:32, 15 September 2019 (MDT)

Hello Pamela, I noticed the inconsistencies (problems) with the Wikipedia Page for Carter County. I started to investigate and ran into so many questions that I did not feel experienced enough to resolve. This county is not as well done in Wikipedia as most of the others I have done. I was encouraged to compare different sources and rewrote the section based on information I found on HomeTownLocator. I cross-checked in Google Maps, Wikipedia and anything else that seemed well researched. I added a second reference footnote to the section to give credit to HomeTownLocator. So many questions: Thanks, all suggestions appreciated, the newbie, Steven Jester7 (talk) 00:10, 18 September 2019 (MDT)
 * 1) What are the indicators for a ghost town?
 * 2) What differentiates a town from a city?
 * 3) Do we want to differentiate active and inactive townships in Missouri.
 * 4) I presume that we follow wikipedia conventions unless we see a problem.
 * 5) Is there a core group or meeting for populated places in FS Wiki support?

Hi Steven, You have a lot of good questions. I am not the expert on the populated places project. Whoever trained you is the person to ask. Who was it that encouraged you to compare different sources? Was that the person who trained you?

I think I probably just confused the issue with my request. My intention was just to pin down the ghost town designations. I see from your response that that was not as easy as I'd hoped. I looked at the project instructions to try to clarify a few things for myself. One thing I get from the instructions is that it seems we are only to use Wikipedia links for the individual towns, cities, etc., and if there isn't a Wikipedia page for the place, then we are to just type in the name and forego the link. To me, that means we are not to use the HomeTownLocator or other links for the individual town names in the columns. And in the columns, the county and state names should not be added. On other pages you've done, I didn't see those, but on Carter County, the Townships section all include "... Township, Carter County, MO". The instruction page does not show those, so they should be removed so that just the actual township name displays (i.e., Carter, Kelly, Jackson, etc.).

There is a Project meeting every Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. MT, during which questions can be asked. I suggest starting with the person who trained you, and that person can answer the questions you posed above and also give you details about how to get into the meeting.

I hope I haven't muddied the waters too dreadfully! Thanks for soldiering on so well and so willingly. I especially like how you made the columns line up instead of wrapping to the far left under the Contents section. It looks so much better your way.

Pamela

psleavens, Wiki Support Team (talk) 22:14, 18 September 2019 (MDT)