User talk:Cottrells

Problems with Templates and Image Maps
Hi Steve, I am currently involved with an ongoing Massachusetts Wiki Project. David Dilts suggested that I contact you. Lately I have been working on creating some clickable maps. I recently added a clickable map for Plymouth County, Massachusetts (See Template:PlyCoMAmap). In the past when I created a clickable map we added the information to a template page because there is so much wiki code associated with the image map. I added the Plymouth County map the same way I have in the past but ran into some unexpected results. I was able to finagle the template page so that it will show the map when users go to the template page. However, if they try to edit the template page, instead of seeing all the wiki code, they see a message "Error: image is invalid or non-existent." If a person was to make any modification to the page and then save, the map will disappear and it is no longer functionable. Can you tell me why we get an error message when we click on edit? Where is all the wiki data used to make the map clickable going? The map continues to works just fine. Should I be doing something different as I add more clickable maps?

In addition to what I mentioned above, when I go to the template pages we created for putting our map images on (see Template:MAPlyAbiMap), all I see is the name of the image, orientation details, and picture description. Where did our image go? The image no longer shows. The map displays on the Wiki pages we insert the template code on, but the template itself is confusing to me. Any thoughts? I will be adding roughly 300 clickable maps over the next month and want to make sure that I do it the right way. Any help you can give would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance. HarrisonJB 17:33, 13 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Jason, the problem with the imagemaps is a known issue. The workaround is to add the magic word __ NORICHEDITOR __ to the template (within noinclude tags), so that the Rich Text Editor is disabled when you edit the imagemap. I have edited PlyCoMAmap so that this is now in place. The other template was set-up by David as a way to add a caption to the image that is displayed on the page Abington, Massachusetts without subsequent edits removing it. This is another workaround to a problem caused by the Rich Text Editor. If you want to change this into an imagemap, you will also need to edit the code on the Abington, Massachusetts so that it just calls the template, stripping away the [[Image: and ]] parts of the code. --Steve  12:32, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

England Gazetteers
There still seems to be FHL contributors working on alphabetical listings from a single source conflicting with contributors who have contributed local knowledge of parishes and the record sources - Downe, Kent - Keston, Kent - Cudham, Kent as well as neighbouring parishes all have Online Parish Clerks. Some colleagues are unwilling to take the time and effort to create FamilySearch Wiki content to have gazetteer material entered and conflicting. In some counties large slabs of material exist as parish history which are in fact text from other web sites (including copyright). I have made the point in forum post that an 1848 gazetteer entry may not be useful, a later gazetter may be more informative and the Kent Online Parish Clerk site has even more information including a satellite image and might be a more informative link to include under the "maps and gazetteer" heading rather than dropping gazetteer entries for an entire county into parish history pages. This seems to be a recipe for needless discussion and conflict in every English county. Many English contributors have ceased contributing citing lack of communication from FHL contributors. We do not seem to be any "further forrarder" on this issue than earlier this year or in any of the previous years it has arisen! I think it sad that we are alienating English genealogists and AGRA members through unresolved organisational problems arising from America.If possible could you convey that it might be better to work with an Online Parish Clerk who has invested huge effort in a parish history and records rather than drop in gazetteer material as part of a mechanical process in alphabetical order; the heading gazetteer is also a clue to where such entries should be placed. DowneOPC 06:37, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Henry, this issue was discussed during the weekly Wiki Contributors Meeting on November 8, as a result of your forum post on the issue. Those attending the meeting agreed to the points that you raised. Some wondered why the change was not just made and explain in the edit summary or on the article talk page. I sence that UK based contributors are trying to engage with FHL staff about developing pages/edits, but do not receive replies to their questions. Anyhow following the meeting I moved the gazetter text from the history section to the gazetter section of the Downe, Kent article and left a message on the user talk page of the contributor. Hopefully the message will get back to the staff at the FHL to be more considerate of the information already developed on a page, before adding additional information. I agree that a multi sourced parish history is preferable to a single source gazetteer extract. Would you and other OPC/AGRA members be willing to help develop the instructions for developing English Parish articles in the WikiProject English parishes? --Steve 13:05, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, in answer to your final question I can only speak personally and will try to contribute wherever possible. I lead a group of transcribers. We have 3 parish Cooperative Indexing agreements in place with FamilySearch which await a response from them and we hope to obtain Diocesan permission to add a further parish for agreement to transcribe in 2014. The agreements are taking more than 6 months for FamilySearch to respond to once submitted with both archive and Diocesan approval and support. Wherever possible I try to describe the surviving record which I am permitted to handle in order that the viewer of a microfilm or digitised image can make sense of the images, duplicates and why entries appear out of sequence, gaps and other unique aspects of an individual register.(One Downe register has been bound in a deed which bears no relationship to the parish) As volunteers our priority is to transcribe so that writing parish histories is the latter stage of OPC page development of our site and involves a different type of research in many source materials which we include in our page creation. Any contribution to other media (print and electronic) is a lower priority. FamilySearch material forms a small part of the total parish material; the larger part is on average spread in up to 14 archives for a typical Kent parish. Another high priority is to respond to email requests for assistance in researching within a local district including the parish concerned.

I am afraid that in the professional community in England that many contributors have reported negative experiences of trying to contribute and the Americanised format (and language) of the FamilySearch wiki derivative of Wikipedia. Sadly each contributor lost is influential in influencing others. There is an effort in Wikipedia to cover all civil parishes in England and local county initiatives to list places of worship. I would comment that Wikipedia went through this process early in its development; there was an American perception that English contributors were "difficult" to involve or retain. There was likewise an English perception that if contributing became a negative experience it was better not to invest time and effort to see content removed or "put down" by a small clique appearing to dominate. Here the FHL contributors need not to alienate or appear to be more influential but to enter into discussion about use of a source to complement the existing contributions. Gazetteers (plural) are cited on all Kent Online Parish Clerk page creations which begs the question why not link in the relevant heading to that available online source rather than paste material for one gazetteer only?