User group meeting agenda & minutes 5 Mar 2008

= Proposing ideas for this agenda =

To propose or discuss ideas for this agenda, please use the Discussion tab above. As the meeting draws near, we will review the items proposed on the Discussions page and decide which ones should get highest priority on the agenda.

= Agenda =

Administrative items

 * 1) Assignment of time keeper, note taker, and facilitator
 * 2) Introduction of new members: 10 seconds for name and desired takeaways.
 * 3) Today's agenda preview
 * 4) Where we'll look for initial ideas to cover (feedback page and agenda discussion page)
 * 5) Where to propose items for next agenda: Michael

Information items

 * 1) Some inspiration: Goldcorp and crowd sourcing. (Michael)
 * 2) Tech moment re. Renaming pages (Mollie)see: Help:Moving a page
 * 3) Show &amp; Tell: Danish portal (Geoff Morris)
 * 4) FamilySearch Wiki forum for active wiki contributors. (Michael)
 * 5) Our wiki's Google Analytics page and how it can show you user response to your changes to wiki pages. (Michael)
 * 6) New version of FCKeditor (our WYSIWYG article editor) on Test server. (Michael)

Discussion items
= Minutes =

Facilitator was Michael Ritchey. Note taker was Anne Roach. Time keeper was Geoff Morris.

Attendees
Jim Ison, Russ Lunch, Anne Roach, Alan Mann, Jim Greene, Geoff Morris, Michael Ritchey, Molly Forbes, Karen, Darris, Barbara Baker, Bruce Bowlingbrooke, Jimmy Parker, Fran

Action items
Michael: Glacial Processes

Mining company decided to share with the world their processes, and ask for feedback and ideas on locating the gold. Mining is secretive process. It isn’t something companies go around sharing. How would the contest reflect on them, and their inability to find the gold. Money was offered for best idea. All of the information was placed online, submissions arrived from all over, virtual prospectors trying to find a solutions. The contestants identified 110 targets, and 80% provided 8 million oz. gold. It saved over 3 years of work, and turned$100 – $300K worth. The company took a risk, provided data, sharing, taking the risk, crowd sourcing. Show how big companies use this. This also applies to us.

New people: Alan Mann, Russ Lynch, Karen, all from the library

Molly: Mistakes are made sometimes when titles are created. How to rename a page: "Help: Moving a page" (for renaming) Locate and open the page, then click move, the old title becomes a re-direct and sends you to the new page. Type in new name, then click move page. For popular titles, start a discussion on the discussion tab so it doesn’t create problems.

Geoff: How do you merge two similar pages if you didn’t check first to see if one existed?

Molly: Eliminating one rather than two pages floating, have one page, and request that the other page is deleted. A good process is not in place for deleting pages. Sys Ops only can delete right now.

Michael: Engage the author of the other page, go to the original page, click discussion tab, and start writing comments and edit that discussion page, and the author will get an e-mail. Put a link to your page on the other discussion page.

Karen: Can you just edit the title?

Molly: No.

Michael: Identifier is the title.

Barbara: Can we copy from spreadsheets into wiki?

Molly: click on the wiki text link,

Squishnet: Anne will check with Trig from Sorensen to see if Squishnet will work with Media Wiki. (At one request, go to GeneTree.com to try this out.)

Michael: I twisted Geoff’s arm to have him show and tell this page.

Geoff Morris: Denmark Portal Page: Not much different layout, more what is included in that layout. For example, Research Tools. Let’s put these tools right up front to help users get excited. County histories, up to the modern day, to help someone taking a trip to Denmark. He went to another portal page and copied and pasted the page. The handwriting is sometimes difficult to read, so they could look through the list of place names. Danes have a muster roll system to raise troops. DOS catalog lists these clearly, but the windows version is difficult to work with, the table has been dissolved. If someone goes into US Events under Denmark, location is included in the title, and included all of the classes. One Danish link, Danish Genealogical Societies used over there. It will bridge the pond between both groups. They usually put bare minimum of English.

Jim: User language?

Michael: Different sites will be used for each language, but there is still a case to include Danish on the English site to feed into the other sites.

Geoff: 60% of Danes regularly use the Internet, and most also speak English. All of the databases in Danish, but more Danes outside of Danish than in Denmark. Geoff suggests keeping these from being silo sites. Jim Greene disagrees. He feels that as long as the connections occur between the sites. Technologically we need to need to have silos. Geoff is going to Denmark in August and he will recruit Danish moderators.

Michael: Bate those moderators to be compelled to make the information better. Geoff wants people to experience possibilities here and stir ideas.

Jim Ison: Northern Denmark FHC contact to get moderators. Jim Greene: We still don’t know how to do foreign sites

Jimmy Parker: What about Brazilians who want to access Danish site?

Jim Greeene: If the users want it, they will make it happen.

Michael: The vetting of ideas: on a Sat or Sun, Jimmy and Michael will have great ideas and discuss together, but other times, working on ideas separately. Using feedback and discussion pages. What is not happening there, but everyone is not getting informed about that. Fran has created a forum on LDSTech.org. All of us should go there and create an account so we can work together better. We are smarter than me.