User group meeting agenda & minutes 13 August 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.


 * Changing Colors on Portal pages. Whats the process? davide 03:24, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Are you talking about in general or to specific portal/article? I am not sure that we really want to encourage this for every individual article/portal. Thomas Lerman 19:37, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

= Agenda =

Administrative items

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

Information items
Reports from BYU Conference -

Reports from the Field -

Carryover from Last Week
Report on progress with the county pages -- U.S. Unit

New Items
Recordings of previous meetings??

Log-in Problems

Using the "Getting Started" page as a basis for discussion in Users Group Meetings

= Minutes =

Facilitator was Jimmy Parker, Note taker was David Dilts.

Prayer by Joan Healey

Total number of registered users of the FamilySearch Wiki as of the start of this meeting is 3,620. That is an increase of 2 registered users over last week.

Attendees
Jimmy Parker, Mollie Forbes, David Samuelsen, Joan Healey, Darris Williams, Barbara Baker, Eduardo Seoane, James Andersen, Gerda Balls, Ruth Merimann, Sylvie Pysnak, David Dilts

Remotely: Raeone Steuart

Items Discussed
Reports from BYU Conference - James Andersen reported that a live FamilySearchWiki session was demonstrated at the Conference to get students used to the idea of the making changes and how those changes can be reverted if need be.

The word is getting out and pieces are being added. We can add stub items and go back later to fill them out.

Reports from the Field - Jimmy Parker reported that a lady from Virginia (Lise Embley) on Friday will make a presentation to try to get librarians in southern Virginia involved in contributing to the FamilySearchWiki.

Dealing with undesirable edits. Gerda Balls, Ruth Merriman, and Sylvie Pysnak were concerned about edits made to portal pages they had created that changed colors and distorted tables for no discernable reason. Would it be possible to automatically lock down certain pages? An author is discouraged from contributing when their work is liable to be casually altered and hours of work lost because of it. To deal with undesirable changes an author can:


 * Contact the person who changed the page: Click the History tab, click on their user name, and in the navigation bar Toolbox click on E-mail this user. Encourage them to continue participating and contributing to the Wiki, but in a kindly way educate them to the difficulties they are causing. Show them alternative ways to edit articles that are more constructive. Win them over as friends of the Wiki. Teach them to be courteous by contacting the original contributor before making significant changes.
 * Undo the edit. You can click the History tab, and rollback or undo an edit whenever you want (up to a limit), but to be courteous, please first try to persuade the person who made an undesirable change that the other way was better. Seek their approval in order to avoid an editing war.

Our policy is to freeze a page that has been edited and reverted back to the same place three times.


 * Locking down pages. Moderators can protect pages. Sysops can change locked pages. If a page needs to be locked contact a Moderator or Sysop. Selected pages have already been protected, such as the main page, and pages of talks from the World Conference on Records.

In most cases we prefer to avoid protecting pages if possible. It is better to allow freedom and educate people who misuse that freedom than to suppress expression and participation in the FamilySearchWiki. There is no known way to lock colors and styles without also locking the content of a page at the same time. The message when you go to save an edit explicitly says, “''Please note that all contributions to FamilySearchWiki may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then don't submit it here.''”

Genealogical queries in Wiki artlcles. Barbara Baker found a research query in one of the states. Move the query to the appropriate Forum, and notify the contributor what you have done and why it is better there than on the Wiki.

Class for FHL patrons on the Wiki. Starting in September we will have two FHL classes about the Wiki.

Keep adding things to the Wiki.

Carryover from Last Week
Report on progress with the county pages -- David Samuelson showed several counties pages from Florida (for example, Bradford County) that had been edited (a "shell" pasted in) and as a result significant content had been deleted. David Dilts will ask that the missionaries who are pasting "shells" into counties around the United States be careful to preserve information already entered for those counties. (Action item) David Samuelsen will make a list of counties he finds where content needs to be re-entered because it was lost when a shell was added. (Action item)

New Items
Recordings of previous meetings - Recordings after 25 June do not seem to be available. - Rolled over to next week.

Log-in Problems - Rolled over to next week.

Using the "Getting Started" page as a basis for discussion in Users Group Meetings - Rolled over to next week.

Action Items

 * David Dilts will ask the missionaries who are pasting "shells" into counties around the United States to be careful to preserve information already entered for those counties.
 * When David Dilts talked to people working on the project they said the problem had already been corrected and no more content should be deleted when a shell is pasted into a county.
 * David Samuelsen will make a list of counties he finds where content needs to be re-entered because it was lost when a shell was added.