FamilySearch Wiki talk:Purpose, Policies, and Procedures

Meeting Families

 * A place to post (or find) information about a specific ancestor.
 * A place to post data sets and genealogical records, such as obituaries, military histories, or transcriptions of record sources.

I disagree slightly with the above. This seems to contradict another stated goal of meeting others working on the same histories. I agree that this wiki should not become 'The Earl's grandfather web page'.

I think it is a very fine line to draw between the amount of information needed to meet on a given line, and specific information on an ancestor. In order to meet others, I might have to post a specific document showing the person I am interested in, or a lengthy history to narrow the search to a specific person or family without confusion to other parts or places in the line.

Specifically, in my family, there is some disagreement on where one of my ancestors came from. He has the same name as a few generations after him, so in order to meet others interested in the same line / story, I would have to post a short history AND a fair amount of information about his family. Since I don't have specific information as to what I am looking for, just a hypothesis, I don't think I could point someone in the right direction without that level of detail.

I WOULD like to see this become a meeting ground AND a place to flesh out lines.

Thanks The Earl 09:13, 10 March 2008 (MDT)

The collaboration role is a New FamilySearch function
The need you're describing, Earl, is exactly what you can do on New FamilySearch. You can post what you know about an ancestor, find out who else is researching him, and collaborate with them. Ritcheymt 22:48, 2 April 2008 (MDT)

The role of links to outside materials
Links to outside Web sites can be beneficial.  This reduces the content on the wiki, plus it keeps the focus tighter. For example, the question posted here about "long lists of Web sites" could be answered by saying we want a structure that leads a researcher to find the sites that will be most useful, regardless of the geographical records domain. To this end, I recommend the Family History Library Favorites list as an excellent source that should be made available to researchers worldwide via the wiki. Although it contains over 12,000 links, the space consumed on the wiki would be minimal compared to the good it could do. Perryde

How do you suggest that the Family History Library favorites be made available via the wiki? I don't consider a list of 12,000 links either focused or in keeping with what I see on FamilySearch wiki or anything I've seen on wikipedia. Do you have any suggestions for how links should be presented in the wiki?

It seems to me that links within the context of a "how to" article is most helpful. Daudwp 18:08, 2 April 2008 (MDT)

The space that the links would consume is not at issue. These are some of the issues people have with the FHL favorites list:


 * 1) The usefulness of a 12,000-link list to the average user. Most of these links would be much more helpful in context -- embedded in articles that treat the subjects each link is about.
 * 2) The man-hours it takes employees to maintain the list. (Really, the impossibility of the employees maintaining it.)
 * 3) The lack of annotations. An unannotated list of links is of questionable value, because most links aren't descriptive. The user browsing the list is forced to click on most links just to see what they lead to.
 * 4) The fact that the list is now monstrous. There seems to be a dearth of guidelines or best practices as to when to include a link and when to exclude one.
 * 5) The lack of logic behind the argument of some that the favorites file should continue to be maintained and updated by employees at the FHL because patrons like to have a file they can add to their own list of favorites. That makes no sense since a wiki community can update the links faster and since adding the best of these links to the wiki meets the same needs as the provision of a downloadable file. It's silly spending employee slots on a job the community can do themselves when we could be using employees to do what only they can do.

I built the first several iterations of the desktop the FHL uses today and I first added the FHL favorites to it for patron download, so obviously I think the favorites are useful. But it's time to change the format in which we compile them, let the community edit them, require annotations helpful to users, vet some policies on what to exclude and how to keep the list a sane, useful size, and free up our employees for more strategic work that only they can do. Ritcheymt 00:06, 3 April 2008 (MDT)

Enforcement
Out of curiousity, how do or will appropriate topics get enforced? If someone wants to post something and does, even against the guidelines, then what? Enforcement seems like it would be difficult. I personally would agree to most of the items listed. I have seen people listing FHCs and their resources, which seems to go against the guidelines. Thomas Lerman 20:46, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Two things need to happen first before we can have effective enforcement:

1) Flagging. This will allow you as a user to flag the articles on FHCs as being inappropriate, and request action by a moderator or sysop

2) We need to get critical mass number of moderators

We hope to implement flagging very soon. We will be enforcing the inappropriate content as we find it. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Jimgreene 20:27, 8 August 2008 (UTC)