User talk:Cottrells

FHL template for an author search?
Hi, Steve. Is there an FHL template where a search can be done by name of the author? I want to be able to search for ward records, all of which have the beginning of "Church of Jesus Christ..." and end with the specific ward. That would make it easy to change ward by ward. Any ideas? AdkinsWH 02:59, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Wilma, I have briefly looked at this issue.It may be possible to add the functionality to the FHL template, but more investigation needs to be undertaken done before I can answer and hopefully implement your request. --Steve 13:49, 4 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Steve! AdkinsWH 21:03, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Progress
Hi, again, Steve. Any progress on this? I'd like to search for authors like "Salt Lake City 4th Ward Utah." I think we don't have to include the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." that precedes it. Thanks again. AdkinsWH 18:50, 5 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Wilma, apologies for taking my time to get around to develop this for you. I think I have amended the FHL template so that a parameter can be specified to search for a "corporate name" For example produces . You can change the link/displayed text by using the disp parameter. Let me know if this produces the results you were hoping for. --Steve  22:54, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

England Parish Histories
2012 was a good year for the Suffolk Parish pages. There have been a few instances where volunteers have sought to tear down what I have built rather than improve it. What volunteers I have come across have no interest in collaborating, rather they have an agenda of copying and pasting similar dialogue on every page. What they are copying and pasting is rather weak material. Parish History Section - I cannot accept that a short one or two sentences with a link to a gazetteer should be in anyway be considered a parish history. The approach to the Parish History Section is very simple. Enter websites, links and references in the body of the page and once a sufficient amount of material has been found, then a history can be written based on those sources from a genealogist perspective. A new wiki article should be created, England - Writing a Parish History. This short gazetteer entry currently being introduced should be moved or put in the Maps and Gazetteers Section. Pertaining to Suffolk pages I noticed recently that someone is entering those gazetteer entries again and at the same time removing the link to the Suffolk Gazetteer page. Could you use the text replace function to place a link to the Suffolk Gazetteer page in the Maps and Gazetteer section for every parish in Suffolk? Donjgen 18:36, 26 December 2012 (UTC) I'll also place a copy of this over on User talk:MannAE page.


 * Hi Don, I agree that there is room for improvement in the way that contributors work together and not at cross purposes to each other. I'm sure that the majority of wiki contributor have the same goal to improve the content of the wiki and I really feel that WikiProject pages can help with this by setting out long term vision for a collection of similar pages, for example Suffolk Parishes. Contributors by reviewing the project page information can then be directed to articles, like the one you suggested, so that a consistent approach is taken with developing similar pages. The Parish History section and what kind of content should be placed here is a good example of where this collaboration could achieve much good. I will look into restoring the links to the Suffolk Gazetteers page. Before I take action I will investigate how best to do this. --Steve 13:58, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Steve: I could take the time to create a WikiProject - Suffolk Parishes but I have seen such anemic participation. Since I am focusing on Suffolk, I would expect participation from people in East Anglia. There needs to be a person in East Anglia that would promote participation. What are the goals? I haven't seen clear goals. I see some people have a goal of putting a short snippet of a gazetteer in the parish history section with a link for every parish in England. I see that some have a goal of putting the same template in the census section of every parish in England. I see some people have a goal of recording all the possible online church records for parishes in specific counties in England. There are only a few that have focused on a single parish or parishes. The goals for the FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject English parishes need to be specific. This idea of going from parish to parish putting the same snippet of information is a poor goal. Any body can goggle any parish in England and get all the information they need. How are the England parish pages going to be different? How is it going to be different from genuki? After years of slow growth it should become apparent that a different approach should be taken. This lack of England participation has to tell us that FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProject English parishes needs to have specific goals that will lead to more participation. WikiProject_English_parishes pages needs to be rewritten and redeveloped. People should put there focus on a specific county or district. Thats my take on what I see Donjgen 20:48, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Projects
Steve, I'm trying to update the status of wiki projects. I'm assuming that the England and English Parishes projects are ongoing. Is that correct? Percent complete? averyld 16:26, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Also, Wales and New Common Taxonomies averyld 23:10, 2 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Lynda, yes these projects are all ongoing. The England, English parishes and Wales WikiProjects are all similar in that the purpose of these projects is to improve the articles about these localities. They are very hard therefore to say how complete they are. Tasks within a project can more easily be stated as x% complete.
 * The WikiProject New Common Taxonomy is in my mind, more of a foundational document, setting out the top-level categories to be used for research topics. It was renamed as a WikiProject by Fran Jensen and although I agree it belongs in the FamilySearch Wiki namespace, I think it falls more into the realm of policy - meaning that it defines how the taxonomy is organised/to be used in the wiki rather than being a project in which a goal is to be achieved.
 * Further to our discussion yesterday, I have created the WikiProject status template. There are still some tidying up to do around this template, but you can start using them if you like. --Steve 14:12, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Steve, thanks so much for this information and the templates look great! I hope you have a small idea of how much you are appreciated! averyld 18:36, 4 January 2013 (UTC)


 * For the inactive template, the page is FamilySearch Wiki:WikiProjects Seeking Contributors/Inactive. I'm not sure if doing it as a sub page is the best way to go, but that's how it is for now. averyld 18:39, 17 January 2013 (UTC) Also, I put the template on the Alabama page and it looks like it didn't add it to the Inactive category.


 * Hi Lynda, the categories associated with the template WikiProject status are now being added when the template is used. I think setting up the list of inactive projects as a sub-page is the way to go. --Steve 22:04, 17 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you! Thank you averyld 22:27, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you
Thank you Steve I did not understand, thank you for your help

Categories that don't show up in edit
We, the category committee, are working on cleaning up the Categories. One items that is a problem for us is the few categories that don't show up in edit so we can fix or remove them. Example is Category:Mexican_Family_History_Centers it has two pages Puebla Mexico Mayorazgo Family History Center and Tapachula Mexico Izapa Family History Center. Since the category is a duplicate of Category:Mexico_Family_History_Centers. I tried to remove the two page from Category:Mexican Family History Centers but they will not show in edit. Have a few others. Would like to ask if there is something we can do to understand this and work with it. Sandralpond 03:49, 7 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Sandra, the pages in question were being added to this category via the location parameter in the FHCpage template. By changing the parameter value from Mexican to Mexico, this changed the category, clearing out the unwanted category, which I have now deleted. I hope that helps explain how this was occurring. --Steve 05:05, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Internal Links opening in a new tab/page
Hi Steve, I'd like to revisit the idea of all internal links on FamilySearch open in a new tab or page. You mentioned last summer that it could be done for all links on the wiki through engineering. Is it a hard fix? In your opinion, what are the chances of them doing it if we asked? Unfortunately, I have a meeting every week at 2pm so I can't go to the tech meeting to ask. Batsondl 23:11, 7 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I know there is a setting to change the behaviour of external link (see MediaWiki Manual:$wgExternalLinkTarget). Do you mean external links? Or do you want a new window opened whenever a user goes to a different page in the wiki. I'm not sure, as a user if I would find that useful. In fact I'm certain I would find it annoying. I can't think of any website that automatically opens a new window when a link is followed. It is rare nowadays for this to happen for "external link" although I do remember when it was in vogue to do so. --Steve 14:16, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh, no not just a wiki page. No I meant when they click on a database or digital book on FamilySearch. Sorry about the confusion. We are doing some user testing and when they click on a FS database it doesn't open a new page and then they lose their place and can't find the wiki page they were on to see other sources, databases or instruction. I've always hated that myself. Is there a way to just open those and not all wiki pages? Maybe in the templates we use? Batsondl 16:21, 8 February 2013 (UTC)


 * OK, so are you talking about the links for example, in the header of articles about record collections, that follow the text Access the records:. Eg England Births and Christenings (FamilySearch Historical Records)? Are you also talking about links to books, films in the FHLC? --Steve 14:17, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Changing the Historical Records pages would be awesome but Dorothy might not agree to that. I haven't talked to her. Yes, it's those in our locality article pages that link off to the databases, books, films in the FHLC. I was thinking maybe the templates we use for them would be changed. Although I'd love for it permanently to change all of them (which in turn would change Dorothy's HR pages) but I don't see engineering getting a chance to do it anytime soon. But the truth is, I've never asked. Can changing the templates work? I'm thinking of the FSbook, FHL, and RecordSearch templates. Batsondl 17:31, 11 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Danielle, can you try the links you were interested in again. We raised this issue in the Tech Meeting and we believe it has now been fixed. --Steve 21:17, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

User Canada and User Canadian templates reply
reply to User talk:Saskgenweb

Hi there

Thank you most kindly. I looked at some already started, and they seemed to go back and forth betwixt ancestry and residnce templates. I like your idea a lot! I am just new here, good find on the flag, I missed it in my first peek around and about for some reason.

Kind Regards Saskgenweb 00:54, 27 February 2013 (UTC)


 * You're welcome. --Steve 13:50, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

DeLuca
Steve, you moved content from this page to the user talk page, but now we can't get this off the pages to be patrolled. I tried to restore it to do that, but no luck. Could you fix it so that we can mark it patrolled and then get rid of it? DeLuca Thanks! averyld 22:34, 25 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Lynda, I have marked this page as patrolled. I'm not sure why you wouldn't have been able to do it. Please let me know if it's still an issue. --Steve 20:13, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Brackets Problem
Steve, I have this interesting problem and David Dilts could not help me. He said that for whatever reason, the template cannot handle single brackets. Here is the page: https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Czech_Republic_Getting_Started Down at the bottom are two tips. Tip: Join a Community of Czech researchers! Ask questions, help others, and share your research success on [Facebook] and/or Skype. Tip: For more learning see the tutorials at FamilySearch Learning Center on [Czech Republic Archives]. We cannot get rid of the brackets. These are external links and every time we do single bracket the text disappears. Can you please help me? Thank you. Pysnaks 22:12, 1 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Sylvie, I have fixed the links in the tip templates you directed me to on the page Czech Republic Getting Started. I have also added an example to the template description page to show how this was/can be achieved. --Steve 06:58, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Steve. I really appreciate your quick response.Pysnaks 15:00, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Search and replace link
Steve, we've found a link on British pages that needs to be deleted and there are a lot of them. We though you could do a search and replace when you have some time. Ramsgate is a good example. Under Census records, there's a link to the FHC portal that shouldn't be in the Wiki. Hostelery added this to many British pages a year or two ago. The link should only be used in the FHC's and by missionaries, etc. Even though it doesn't work to get you into Ancestry, etc. if you don't already have that access on your computer, the link shouldn't be there. If you can help, I'd greatly appreciate it. averyld 18:51, 11 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Lynda, I have replaced the majority of all the external links to the FHC Portal to a new article Family History Center Portal. The handful remaining did not match search string wikicode and will be easier to tackle individually. I found that the link in addition to be included on many English parish pages was included in the template used to create the hundreds of FHC pages. --Steve

Steve, thanks so much! averyld 22:01, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Template Categories
Thank you so much for the tip about how to deal with these with noinlcude. I did notice the problem but had not gone to our best source, you, to get help. Thanks so much will go back to as many as I can to correct. Sandralpond 20:51, 1 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Sandra, I have changed some myself as it was causing some issues with pages, Infobox/row, Infobox US State and Infobox country being the main ones. For some it will not cause display issues, only add a template category to the page that is not needed. --Steve 20:54, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you I am learning a lot from this. Another question. Is the following really a template or just a holding page for a future template. When I try to put the noinclude it will not stay and if it put the {{ on it is red. Think I will need to remove these categories. Thanks so much. Sandralpond 14:20, 2 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi Sandra, it's not clear to me what your question is. You ask " Is the following really a template or just a holding page for a future template." Would you please clarify or link to the object/page in question. Thanks. --Steve 16:09, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Sorry forgot to put in the link: Template:LondonStDunstanEastChurch There are many many of this type pages but they don't appear to me to be real templates. Sandralpond 18:46, 2 May 2013 (UTC)


 * HI Sandra, they are templates but created for a specific purpose. They are used as a workaround to the problem of the rich text editor removes captions from images. The category that has been created for them is Category:Ampersand avoidance templates. --Steve {{toolbar|talk|

contribs}} 12:59, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Great, thanks so much. Will use it for them. Sandralpond 13:17, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Hello Steve, We just removed a strange topic on the Baden page sidebar but were told later that you probably should have done that. If so, It was for Merchant Marine and Heraldic visitations. Has the removal affected others. In the past it hasn't but perhaps this changed.

Sonja

FHL template place link not working
Hi, Steve, I've tried a link using the FHL Template for a place search:. What have I done wrong? I get an "Oops" AdkinsWH 21:44, 29 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I think this is a bigger issue than you first thought. It looks to me as if the format of URL for FHLC searches has changed, and that the FHL template need a overhaul so that the links in the wiki using this template will work. In short it's not something you have done, but changes made by the FamilySearch engineers. --Steve 20:47, 30 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Not good news. So does the FHL template need updating? Or is it fixable by us — or more accurately — you? AdkinsWH 04:13, 5 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Steve, do you suggest I just start direct linking to place instead of the template? AdkinsWH 23:35, 13 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Steve - you are wonderful! the place search is working again, and I understand you are working hard on some of the other searches. Can't thank you enough! AdkinsWH 21:41, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi Steve, is the linking to the catalogue changed permaantly. Its been dysfunctional for a long time. I have about 100 links using the format   It looks like its not a good idea to link to the catalog anymore. Maybe will have to wait till the Beta period ends, which appears not to be anytime soon. Donjgen 04:13, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Template help
Steve, could you take a look at the formula over at my Help_me_create_template page? You made a few adjustments while at WDYTYA conference, but I have not been able to remember what adjustment you made, and I can't get the template to work. I need help.Alan 05:47, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Idaho page I messed it up
Hi, Steve, I'm screaming for help. Somehow, I made a serious mistake on the Idaho page this afternoon (using wyzer17 username). The top of the page should have the image, the online collections banner, and probably the counties list. Then below the info box, the text should fill more space right to left. I tried undoing, but not soon enough. So I was trying and trying, but only filled up a lot do edit history.

Hope you can once again come to the rescue. I'll be at the meeting tomorrow, but then out of town until next Tuesday.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Wilma Adkins 10:34 pm, 23 July, 2013. My iPad doesn't have tildes.

Welcoming Committee
Hi Steve,

As the new lead for the welcoming committee I wanted to get acquainted with the other members. I read your User Page and am impressed with your knowledge and experience. It is my hope that you will remain an active member of the committee. Please let me know your intention.

Sincerely, Parrisl 21:33, 29 July 2013 (UTC) Welcoming Committee Lead