User group meeting & agenda 18 November 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.

= 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 --
 * 4) Review of Minutes
 * 5) Today's agenda preview

Information items

 * 1) What's New page for rollout to Staging (testing) server and Production (the public wiki) server. (Michael)

New Items

 * 1) Security warning popup. See the forum thread.
 * 2) Adding FHL call numbers? See the forum thread.

= Minutes =

Facilitator was Jim Greene, Note taker was Jimmy B. Parker, Time keeper was Fran Jensen.

Prayer by

This week, there are now [#] registered users of the FamilySearch Wiki. That is an increase of [#] new registered users over the last week.

Attendees
Jim Greene, Alan Mann, James Anderson, Susan Guthrie, David Dilts, David Samuelson, Don Stringham, Diane Loosle, Fran Jensen, Jimmy Parker, David Crowther, Barbara Baker, Anne Wuehler, Mollie Forbesand David Samuelson's interpreter.

Remote Attendees
(Anne Roach), (Mollie), Thomas Lerman, Sister Edward, Lise Embley

Items Discussed

 * Minutes of last week were reviewed by Jim Greene, including statistics of new users. He also reported having taught a class at a seminar in Mesa, Arizona last weekend inwhich approximately 100 people were introduced to the Research Wiki. Most of those present committed to at least do some minor editing on the Wiki site. Some of the new users do not feel comfortable until someone mentors them on-on-one. He mentioned that we're learning that software engineers often do not take into consideration the users' view, so in many ways we are pioneers in doing so with the Research Wiki.
 * As an information item, Jim suggested that users check the "What's New?" link off the main page, where announcements will be made and opportunities for users to review upcoming changes will be provided. We want to become very disciplined in adding things so as to not surprise users.
 * In last week's minutes, brief mention was made of Semantic as a tools that was coming. It is being tested now and will be offered for testing by users as soon as some of the problems with interfacing with the Wiki are worked out. When it is available for testing, that will be announced from the "What's New?" page. Semantic is a much more powerful search engine than the one currently being used. It will necessitate that all articles be tagged in a manner to allow them to be found by Semantic. Instructions will be forthcoming.
 * It was reported that cut and paste is working on Firefox 3, but not on version 2.
 * A brief discussion ensued on the new training videos and whether or not that instruction will also be available in written format. It was stated that there shouldn't be any problem in making it available in both video and written format.
 * A more in-depth discussion of including FamilySearch Catalog numbers in the Wiki was held. It was felt that titles of books or record groups should stand alone -- that is, nothing should be linked directly to the title, unless it is the ISBN number. Links to records depositories where copies of the book or records are located should be made by linking to the catalog entry for those libraries or the digital link, if available on the internet. Additional instructions on this will be forthcoming.
 * The issue of the "secure and unsecure" pop-up box is a known bug and is being fixed.
 * Recently, some smaller localities have been placed in the "Browse by Country" page. We were instructed to hold this to country level only.
 * A question was raised concerning linking to a Category Page. That has been answered on the forums -- place a colon in front of the Category link. This may be handled by the Semantic search engine anyway.
 * David Crowther reported that he is meeting with the User Experience Committee tomorrow and will recommend a skin that will return the navigation bar to the left of the screen and return the tabs at the top of the page. He also is considering the suggestions from the users regarding shortening the wording in the navigation bar and the width of the screen display.

Action Items

 * Diane Loosle and David Dilts and others of the supervisors in the Family History Library were assigned to determine how best to teach their staff of employees and missionaries what should and should not be added to the Wiki and what the best practices are and why they are in place.
 * Fran Jensen was assigned to add instruction to the authoring article about what should be linked and how to do that linking from books and sets of records to records depositories where those items can be accessed.