Community Meeting Agenda 8 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

Recognition
New user, Jeanne Larzalere Bloom, has been doing some great things filling out Cook County, Illinois. Thomas Lerman 20:13, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Welcoming new contributors
Wikipedia has a Welcoming Committee. We need to adopt something like this, but more detailed and hand-holding. We need people who will act as mentors to new contributors once they've contributed a certain number of edits. These mentors would ask what kinds of things they want to contribute and walk them kindly through stylistic and scope issues. Mentors would also watch the contributions of new contributors so as to gently redirect them in the early weeks/months. Ritcheymt 20:35, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Information items
It appears the link from "Report search problems" under the search box in the Navigation Bar is broken. Is that true? Is Mark still the search guru on the Wiki?Jbparker 20:22, 5 September 2009 (UTC)


 * He is. Ritcheymt 20:01, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Tech Support feedback sent 8 Sep. 2009 -- Jbparker 22:27, 8 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I also sent a message to [mailto:support@familysearch.org support@familysearch.org] on September 10. I received a confirmation (CaseID:1244803) straight-away and a response on September 14. As of now, the link has still not been fixed. --Steve 21:09, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Meeting notes
While including the information about the Support Question and having carried other items from last week's meeting, I really was wishing for some meeting notes. I had the thought of, "why not have the person that posted the meeting agenda item be responsible for taking notes on that item?" The person obviously has vested interest in the subject and it would help spread out the note-taking. Discussion? I brought over several items from previous meetings and left them in the order that they were brought up. However, I put this one at the top since it can affect this and subsequent meetings. Thomas Lerman 21:50, 1 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Mmmmm. I'm gonna have to stop posting stuff. &lt;bg&gt; Ritcheymt 20:03, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It could have that drawback. I was thinking about that too. ;-) Thomas Lerman 20:08, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * MEETING NOTES: Michael &amp; Lise believes it is a great idea. Michael asks how to ask a new person to take the notes. Jimmy believes put the notes into the person's hands to take the notes. Consensus agrees. Thomas Lerman 20:42, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

PlaceOpedia
Carried over from 04Aug's non-meeting and brief mention in the 01Sep meeting (both originating from JamesAnderson). Thomas Lerman 21:50, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Found this interesting site. Is showing up more and more as an external link on Wikipedia articles about places. Might this be something of use to us? http://www.placeopedia.com/ and it uses Google Maps. More on this meeting's discussion page. JamesAnderson 15:54, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

About http://www.placeopedia.com/

PlaceOpedia is a new wiki that appears to be working to provide exact locality information and maps for localities discussed in Wikipedia. To date this site has set up map pages for nearly 17,000 localities.

This might prove very useful to us even, and we might want to find a way to coordinate things from our wiki with their database of localities, so that people can find the locality in question on a current map. The lat/long coordinates are very precise, down to six places to the right of the decimal point. In fact, not just localities as far as towns and cities, but also maybe specific buildings (see examples on homepage) and institutions are plotted on their pages as well.


 * Out of curiosity, can you provide details on how you can see PlaceOpedia could be used with the Research Wiki? Are the points something that people have to put in and then reference Wikipedia, does something have to be done on Wikipedia to make it available on PlaceOpedia, does PlaceOpedia automatically build the links to Wikipedia, etc., or do you know? I know I could do research to answer some of the questions, but am out of town with family events and do not have much time. I hope to make the meeting still. I have done development using various map interfaces on the web. Depending on what we would use PlaceOpedia for, I could see that could potentially be overkill when a template that creates a link to a map could also be sufficient. Thomas Lerman 19:23, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * After the discussion in today's meeting concerning cross-linking with MeritBadge wiki and just touching on interwiki links, I could see cross-linking with this site might be useful. I do not know if that is what you were referring to. Thomas Lerman 21:50, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I think PlaceOpedia is still very much a work in progress. It relies on users having tagged locations and linked them to a Wikipedia article. Also the purpose of is to link a point on a map to the relevant Wikipedia article. Another similar site is WikiMapia, which allows users to draw boundaries rather than just sticking in a pin. My view is rather then linking to either of these sites that the wiki admins should look into implementing the GeoHack version of the MediaWiki gis extension. The results of GeoHack is a list of different mapping providers, including Google Maps, Bing Maps, Yahoo Maps, WikiMapia and many others. If this extension was added, it would allow a template using geographic coordinates, to link any FSWiki article to a range of map providers (see ). --Steve 18:27, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Great thoughts, Steve. Would it be possible for you to provide article(s) that use these extensions &amp; templates? Wait, I think I just found some at Template:Coord#Examples . . . is that correct? If so, that is a cool set of extensions and templates. I am quite experienced with many of those mapping systems &amp; APIs. Thomas Lerman 18:46, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes that is the correct template and examples --Steve 19:57, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Awesome, thank you. My thought is also why not have Wikipedia point to the FamilySearch Wiki? Thomas Lerman 20:47, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

MEETING NOTES: It appears nobody took meeting notes on this. Much of the discussion occurred concerning the extension and template that Steve discussed above. Steve is going to provide examples for the next meeting. Some of the discussion was concerning PlaceOpedia, WikiMapia, and Wikipedia pointing back to the FamilySearch Wiki. Thomas Lerman 02:09, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Request string function extension
Carried over from 09Aug's non-meeting. Thomas Lerman 21:50, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Request string function extension through Forum. Thomas Lerman 17:04, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * MEETING NOTES: Michael - get access to Jim Greene (the decision maker on getting engineer on this for sprint) on this ASAP. Thomas Lerman 20:54, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Support question
Carried over from 09Aug's non-meeting. This may have been discussed in the subsequent meeting that I was not able to attend. I am curious about the answer to Jbparker's question and really wish notes existed. Thomas Lerman 21:50, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

The Research Support Missionaries are asking for where they refer patrons who ask for help using Wiki searches and for other Wiki help questions. They answer many of the questions, but when they don't know the answers, to what resource should they turn? Jbparker 19:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Would it not be the Forums? Thomas Lerman 19:44, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, it would be the forums, there are plenty of questions and answers there about technical issues, and 'how too' general use questions, like the searching questions mentioned. If you haven't, take a look. JamesAnderson


 * Yes, I know about the forums and the great guidance that is given there. But they are asking if there is a high-level phone-desk they can call, when they have a patron on the phone and they cannot find the answer in Wiki or forums, etc., like they can call the International desk in the Library as a last-resort on International research questions. I've already referred them to the forum, and explained how they can send in a report on something that doesn't work like they think it should (report search problem or contact us or feedback).Jbparker 03:29, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

WorldCat - worldwide vs. regional
A discussion concerning the use of WorldCat for regional libraries versus the libraries in ones locality (according to IP address) throughout the world may be viewed at the Template's discussion page. Discussing this would be appropriate. Thomas Lerman 18:24, 1 September 2009 (UTC)


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


 * MEETING NOTES: I had also added this item to the Manual of Style. I am not sure why we would give a link containing books in an area outside of where the person is doing the search. Steve indicated Sammy raised the question concerning regional libraries. Jimmy thought it may be because Sammy found it listed more libraries. Lise asked about interlibrary loan, which does not matter where I get it from and the library only wants the ISBN. What about those going on research trips? Michael says, 99% of the time would be libraries close to them. Jimmy suggests putting a link to the regional libraries within the state or county instead of the specific link. David Dilts brought up some problem he has had with footnotes. Maybe a problem with the editor and a support ticket should be made again. Incidentally, I believe the editor changed names. The consensus of those left in the meeting seemed to be to:
 * only have WorldCat give the libraries in the patron's area (IP based) instead of the ancestor's area (regional) to cover 90% of the uses. The user that want to get to the ancestor's area may get to them using the mechanisms built into WorldCat.
 * put a link to the regional version of WorldCat in the region's (such as county) article.
 * We would like Sammy's input on this since he had brought the regional issue and dropped out of the meeting.
 * Thomas Lerman 21:22, 8 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: 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)