User talk:RitcheyMT

Michael Ritchey is a community and content coordinator 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. This workgroup was formerly called Research Support.

Authoring aids

 * Article headings the wiki community has developed for use in articles.
 * Contributer Portal covers all things relating to authoring on the wiki.
 * How to add citations shows how to add wiki code that creates endnotes in an article.
 * Content and Appropriate Topics lists the types of articles writers should and shouldn't write on this wiki.

Organize and enable FHL staff for Md barn raising

 * 1) Meet with Wilma and Diane to address wilma's ideas. 2.0
 * 2) Assign all Md. topics to writers. 2.0
 * 3) Get Beth Taylor assigned to get permissions for record images and scan and upload them and place them on pages. 0.5
 * 4) Train Beth Taylor to get permissions for record type images, scan and upload them, and place them on pages. 2.0
 * 5) Introduce authors to vetted headings. 1.0
 * 6) Create pg. re. sources to check for info. for a topic pg. (including FHL favorites) and link to it from project page. 2.0
 * 7) Speak with authors 2x per week to learn of their obstacles. 5.0
 * 8) Create Md un-portal. 3.0
 * 9) Teach authors best practices in citing works referenced but not cited. 1.0

Engage helpers and research assistants for Md barn raising

 * 1) Build up my user talk page like Fran's with links to guideline pages I use. 4.0
 * 2) Engage missionary in linking all Md. topics discussion pages to heading example pages. 1.0
 * 3) Write page on major date sites for U.S. research (this fills dependency for missionary to link wiki to 3rd party data sets) 2.0
 * 4) Help authors delegate simpler tasks to missionaries 5.0
 * 5) Engage missionary in linking to data sets in record search and 3rd party sites. (Dependent on a pg. of U.S. data sites)
 * 6) Engage missionary in linking to digitized books 2.0
 * 7) Engage missionary in adding record content bullet lists from GSI and SG (Pitts, Parkins) 2.0
 * 8) Engage Md. Nnewsie (also have her do Did YOu Know section) (Depends on Fran doc.) 2.0

Replacement for portal template
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 England/Test1 page
 * 2) Fran's
 * 3) Michael's Pennsylvania page

Leave messages for Michael here
Leave messages for me here, and "sign" them with four tildes (~) so I can easily see who the message is from.

'Maryland Historical Maps'-- Google search results.
Maryland barn raising item.

Here are some promising search engine results for Maryland historical maps in Google. Not all maps described will be online, but some will. Don't overlook the utexas.edu link as that is a widely known one for historical maps anywhwere.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;q=Maryland+historic+maps&amp;btnG=Google+Search&amp;aq=f&amp;oq=

JamesAnderson