User group meeting & agenda 30 December 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) Show n' tell: progress on a replacement for the portal template. (Mollie or Michael) See England/Test 1 and Pennsylvania.

Carryover from Last Meeting

 * Report from members of the Users Group -- Review of the sample page for a subject -- Maryland Newspapers. What feedback has been received?
 * Report from members of the Users Group -- Has anyone tried writing a records type page, choosing the headings that would most benefit the Wiki users.

New Items
= Minutes =

Facilitator was Jimmy Parker, Note taker was Jimmy Parker, Time keeper was [Add name here]. Note: Due to the holidays and illness, Jimmy Parker acted as facilitator for this meeting, assisted by Anne Roach. Michael Ritchey was ill and Jim Greene and Kip Enger were on vacation.

Prayer by Jimmy Parker

This week, there are now exactly 6,000 registered users of the FamilySearch Wiki. That is an increase of 280 new registered users over the last three weeks. We did not get this statistic on 16 December which explains the gap.

Attendees
James Anderson, David Samuelsen, Sister Felstad, Jimmy Parker, Darris Williams, Anne Roach

Remote Attendees
(Anne Roach), Thomas Lerman, (Jimmy Parker)

No sound was available:-(

Items Discussed
A brief demonstration of a new approach to portal pages was shown. It was emphasized that this is in the very early stages of development and needs everyone's input.

A brief discussion ensued on the headings to be recommended for subject pages. Maryland Newspapers was used as the springboard for the discussion. There are some good comments on the discussion page for that topic, which have been received from several contributors.

There was also some discussion about building city pages on the Research Wiki. Several topics are more in line with the city jurisdiction than with county jurisdictions -- cemeteries, newspapers, city directories, church records, school records, etc. In some cases, a user would be more likely to look first at a city page than to start at the county level. Some initial work has been done for city pages in the state of Idaho, especially for Bannock County, as a trial run.