User group meeting & agenda 25 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) Forums on Amazon cloud. (Michael)
 * 2) Update on moving navigation bar. (David Crowther)

New Items
= Minutes =

Facilitator was Michael Ritchey, Note taker was Jimmy Parker, Time keeper was ---.

Prayer by Sister Felsted. During the prayer, Jim Greene provided background music from "Flock of Seagulls."

This week, there are now 5,642 registered users of the FamilySearch Wiki. That is an increase of 261 over the 11 November figure of 5,381.(This is a rise over two weeks, not the customary one week.)

Attendees
Michael Ritchey, Jimmy Parker, Susan Guthrie, Baerbel Johnson, Jim Greene, Sister Felsted, Kip Enger, David Samuelson.

Remote Attendees
(Anne Roach), (Michael Ritchey), (Mollie), Thomas Lerman, Lise Embly

Items Discussed

 * The URL for the forums is being changed and the forums moved to Amazon.cloud for scalability. This has necessitated a new address for the forums on the Church Office building campus. If you are on the campus, the URL is forums.familysearchsupport.com. Some of the links to the forum pages from the Wiki may not work until the move is complete. Now would be a good time to test links from the Wiki to specific threads in the forums.
 * Single sign-on for forums and the Wiki is at least a year away.
 * A report on the Navigation Bar move and other issues reported on last week by David Crowther, was given by Jim Greene. A recommendation was made by David Crowther's team that major changes should not be made until other sites that will interface with the Wiki have been designed. However, a skin change will be made at the end of this sprint that will move the navigation bar back to the left side and the tabs back to the top of hte page.
 * Meetings are being held regarding best practices for the headings to be used in record-type articles. Michael is seeking input from those interested in responding to some of the suggestions being made for those headings. Baerbel Johnson and Jimmy Parker volunteered to offer suggestions.
 * When contributors link to external web sites from the Wiki, an article should be written explaining what the users will see in those web sites and how to use the external sites. This is particularly important if the external site is in another language.
 * To see the history of changes made on a portal page, go first to the box on the portal page in which you are interested, then click edit on that box, and then on the history tab. If you click on the history tab for the entire portal page, you will see a lot of code, rather than the history of changes made in a box on that page.
 * If there are differences of opinion on the content of a page in the Wiki, place those differences on the discussion page so all can see and express their agreement or disagreement. This is preferred to the calling or emailing of the specific person who made the change on the page that is in question.
 * Notification on the watch list may be set on the system so it will not continue to send notifications if you don't click on the link to check on the changes. The setting of the system will be checked and reported at a later meeting and changed if necessary.
 * Baerbel showed some examples of Ahnantafels compiled by those who worked for the German government during World War II. She is going to scan the documents into the Wiki as examples of this type of record and add explanations of their use. Scans of documents should be as .jpg or .png files. The system can also handle .pdf files, but they are harder to handle. Do not use TIFF nor BITMAP files.

Action Items

 * Kip Enger will check on the settings of the systems for watch lists and will report his findings at a subsequent meeting.