User talk:Donchallis

Will you help me (help you?)
Hi Don. As you know, I'm designing a new type of wiki page that would list all the professional genealogists for a locality and link to their user pages for more information. These pages will be linked from many other pages in the wiki, so they should draw significant traffic to pages like yours. I need some help, though, because I need to build an example page for one locality that lists a few researchers and has live links to their user pages. However, there aren't very many professionals listed on the wiki, and most are not specific about which U.S. states they'd like to be listed for, so I'm having trouble choosing a locality where I can list several researchers. Could you tell me whether you'd be comfortable being listed under any U.S. state, or if not, which ones you'd like to be listed under? Thanks! The example I'm building is at Talk:Professional Genealogists Who Specialize in Ohio Research.

Also, as you look at the table there, it'd help a great deal if you would fill it out with your hours of experience in the various areas it displays. It doesn't have to be exact for this example -- we're just using this to show the contributor community what we intend to do in listing pros here. (Wiki communities are sensitive to commercialization, so we're managing this discussion so that everyone's expectations are set correctly around the idea that this project is intended to help patrons find their ancestors.) RitcheyMT 11:23, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

After reading your discussion page instructions I can see where you are going with this. I have a way of adding the links in the State or local articles. I created a template called "Template:Pros-UT" that points to the list of Pros in Utah page. If you copy the Template you can paste it in each area easily. That template can be modified for each State by adding the State, 2 letter abreviation and changing the State in the Page it links to.The wording is: "Professionals who can access these records." Is there a way of Saving the Form you created for each State? Starting from scratch each time will take forever.Donchallis 12:55, 26 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I like the template, Don, and thanks for your time today on the telephone. We can dot i's and cross t's on the template wording, but frankly, that's what a template is for, right? But the very idea of using a template for this is great. Another nice thing about using a template is that since we can always tell what links to the template page, we'll be able to tell whether anyone removes the template from any of the pages we put it on. ;-) RitcheyMT 21:24, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I created a template for Ohio and linked it to the Ohio page that you made. Can we use it to add some links, or do you want to wait? Donchallis 21:41, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Steve has made a template to use to create the directory page table without spending the time to create it for each state. See it here:www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Template:Professional_Genealogists_Table

There should be a page with all the State names that is linked to the State directory pages, and also linked to the project page, where they are instructed to fill out a form to get listed. That way they would not have to search for the State directory pages. I have made a sample with the links in place Donchallis