Community Meeting Agenda 22 September 2009

Be bold! Post your agenda items!
Feel free to post on the agenda any items you wish to cover during the meeting. If your item requires details or feedback, post some details on the discussion page and link to the discussion from the agenda.

Administrative items

 * 1) Assignment of time keeper and note taker
 * 2) Introduction of new members: 10 seconds for name and desired takeaways.
 * 3) Review of Minutes
 * 4) Today's agenda preview

Take notes regarding the agenda items you post
For those that post any items, please remember to take notes directly in the agenda for your items during the meeting. This will help so that we not only have a record of the discussions &amp; decisions, but also for those that are not able to attend the meeting. This is a new procedure that was discussed in the 08Sep2009 meeting. Thomas Lerman 21:35, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Meeting recordings now available
Links to all recordings made of this meeting are now posted to FamilySearch Wiki community meeting. Ritcheymt 20:01, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Linking any mention of FamilySearch
During the 15 September meeting, Lise Embley asked whether it would be appropriate to link any mention of FamilySearch to FamilySearch.org. She specifically mentioned doing it from an article on the American Genealogical Biographical Index. I think it's appropriate and a great idea. It will clarify things for new people who aren't familar with FamilySearch. Ritcheymt 16:11, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Maintenance regarding flagging
We have a way to flag articles that needs to be merged, but nobody seems to be watching the category that is populated when the merge template is used. Who will shepherd these articles through?

We also have a way to flag inappropriate content, but to Ritcheymt's knowledge there is nobody at HQ monitoring this daily.

Ritcheymt 20:46, 22 September 2009 (UTC)


 * With regard to Merge articles I have added it to the list of continuous maintenance projects --Steve 22:10, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

THE FATE OF THE PORTAL NAMESPACE
I am adding this to the agenda, but I won’t be there to head it up, so I thought I would pass this along to you. As a community we did decide to remove the portal template, but we didn’t decide if we should remove the portal namespace. We need the community to discuss the pros and cons of that. I know Geoff Morris wanted to keep the namespace to distinguish those “unportal” pages Eduardo is working on from the rest of the pages in the Wiki. At any rate, we also need to decide what to do with those old redirected portals once Eduardo is finished migrating them. We can also move the unportal back into the page with the portal namespace, or we may delete the old Portal namespace pages, along with their subpages. Why delete them? Because when someone follows a redirect, and then tries to edit that page, they see the same portal template that existed in the previous page, rather than being able to edit the actual un-portal. At any rate, we need the community to make decisions on these points so that when Eduardo is finished migrating the pages, we will be able to have a workable solution that meets the community’s needs. nixiao 17:42, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Thomas mentioned only one negative aspect of deleting all the portal pages. If other sites link to them, these links will break. Ritcheymt 20:49, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

The other part of this that was discussed (I consider this as external links as well) would be bookmarks. With the portal pages &amp; namespace, no redirect would exist (unless it is handled some other way). Someone brought up the problem with hitting Edit on a redirect page still does not work. Thomas Lerman 21:58, 22 September 2009 (UTC) P.S. This includes any portal page that may have been saved through the addThis widget to any site, e-mails, etc. Thomas Lerman 05:04, 23 September 2009 (UTC)


 * During the discussion on this item it was mentioned that one of the perceived drawbacks of keeping the Portals redirected to the new articles, is that when a user selects the page for editing, the old Portal page is opened for edit and not the new page. I have emailed Technical Support the following:

"Currently when a user follows a link from a redirected page (for example https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Portal:England) and then selects the Edit link from the menu box. The page that is opened for editing is the redirect source page and not the redirect destination page. Would it please be possible to change the settings of the wiki so that it performs like Wikipedia, in that when a user follows a redirect link and then selects Edit, the redirect destination page is opened for editing (Try for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familysearch.org)"
 * --Steve 21:58, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Follow-up question

 * Steve, do you know how Wikipedia does this? Is this an extension that was added, or something else to accomplish the editing of the redirect source page? Has Technical Support responded to the request? Fran 17:58, 7 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I believe the way Wikipedia works is the standard for MediaWiki. I'm pretty sure it is how the Reaserch Wiki worked up until September. I'm not sure what was changed, but my guess would be a MediaWiki configuration setting, but that is only a guess. The response I got from Technical Support was that they would forward [my] comments to the software developers to consider for future enhancements in our genealogy research and record-keeping programs. See CaseID:1262798. --Steve 17:10, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

.pdf file naming - Ease of Use question
The US census transcription forms are handy to have, but not so handy to refer people to (for example, in response to someone's question in the forums). Is there a better way to do this?

United States Census Forms


 * I have changed the  [[Image:]]  links to  [[Media:]]  links. By doing this, users will open the file referenced in the link rather than opening the wiki page where the file is stored. Is this what you had in mind? --Steve 19:55, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Interwiki links - external vs. internal
A discussion concerning interwiki links being treated as internal or external links may be viewed at the Template's discussion page. Discussion on this subject would seem appropriate. Thomas Lerman 18:39, 1 September 2009 (UTC)


 * NOTES FROM 01Sep MEETING: Carried over. Thomas Lerman 21:50, 1 September 2009 (UTC)


 * MEETING NOTES from 08Sep: I had also added this item to the Manual of Style. Carried over to the next meeting that I am attending. Thomas Lerman 21:25, 8 September 2009 (UTC)


 * MEETING NOTES from 22Sep: Carried over to the next meeting. Thomas Lerman 22:44, 24 September 2009 (UTC)