User:Luccagenes



My name is Jim and I was born, raised, and retired in Minnesota, USA

Paternal grandparents were from the province of Lucca, Italy hence the username Luccagenes. To be specific my grandfather was from San Filippo, Lucca, Lucca, Italy which is just outside the walled city of Lucca, Lucca, Lucca, Italy. My grandmother is from Coselli, Capannori, Lucca, Italy which is a few miles south of the city of Lucca, Italy.

I can be contacted via the talk page

(until I can figure out another way)

Page Size =

MyWikiWorld links
A fantasy world where I can create alternative page designs. Although these pages are not sanctioned by the Wiki they are fully functional or are a "work in progress".

MyWikiWorld 01 – Main page access (Narrow version)

MyWikiWorld 02 – Main page access (WIDE version)

MyWikiWorld 03 – Minnesota page

Why am I here?
(from a novice's point of view - March 5, 2014)

My involvement here started with a GetSatisfaction suggestion [about Family Tree but this could also be useful for the wiki] which obviously no one would want to pursue (other than in discussion) so I guess it is up to the one that made the suggestion to see if it could possibly work (for reference see http://gsfn.us/t/4gkob). I am really out of my depth here and just trying to figure out how to use this wiki, all the while hoping my inexperience, in and of itself, is not going to be the cause of the downfall of this idea (if it won’t work that’s fine, just so it gets a fair shake).

Frustration in finding “help” on specific topics while using Family Tree and listening to others finding similar difficulties has led to the idea that a “centralized” place to find all types of learning aids might be a benefit to beginners and training experts alike. The bigger issue was that this “Help Central” would have to be accessible while one is in the middle of research or data entry and the answers had to be found quickly without significantly disrupting one’s current activities. Now, I realize that a “help central” is far from unique on the web but they are usually related to a small scope (e.g., a directory for a town) and provide various website links. I was looking for something more in that it had to have a specific front-end objective (easy navigation for the inexperienced and quick infallible access; “click to find”). Another specific back-end objective that was also desired was that the results themselves (the answers) had to be universally and directly accessible by sources inside the Help Central and to the outside world (possibly software programs). During all this the results had to be accessible for updating as necessary (like in wiki). Discussions led to the possibility of using this wiki (as well as the pros and cons of doing so); so anyway here we are.

Archive01: FamilyTree HelpCentral reports
The daily progress reports about learning the wiki and the project development progress (or lack thereof) from March 5th to April 4th 2014 has been moved to an archive page.

Archive02: Misc wiki involvement reports
Periodic progress reports concerning miscellaneous projects and wiki involvement from May 3rd to November 4th 2014 has been moved to an archive page.

Jan 5, 2015
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Transferred my mockup of a Minnesota page coding from the beta (still unavailable) to a sandbox page (see Minnesota ). I will continue to evaluate this page and its second level pages in MyWikiWorld.

Back in September I was playing around with a way to better control the sizing to the image maps because the current way of doing the image size changes was annoying me (to be honest, it was a pain in the …neck). After several days of searching the internet, MediaWiki, and Wikipedia I found a reference to a [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ImageMap#Usage_with_templates.2C_magic_words.2C_or_parser_functions. “Tag”] function that could potentially allow the desired variable to be used. It took several more days to figure out how to get it to function properly as an input parameter since it had to accept a text phrase and not a number. All said and done; now it works perfectly. Recently, when I was in need of a small image map for the sidebar on my reconstructed “beta” page of Minnesota, I also noticed that people were making multiple copies of the same image map template (USimagemap) just to handle the different image sizes they needed. This new tag function could eliminate the need to do this, therefore I have updated the image map editor article with a section  called “Trick of the Trade” and posted a link to said page on Yammer. Afterwards I found a glitch (typo) when testing the directions which was quickly fixed so all is working fine now. This should be a very useful modification for those using image maps as it is much more versatile (I may even post this fix on Wikipedia and WikiHow).

The following was posted on Community News as well: An alternative image map sizing method. A new coding option has been developed and is now available. These optional changes will allow more versatility when sizing the image maps used on our Wiki pages. By substituting a simple wikitext code modification the image size can be controlled independently from the template itself which eliminates the need for multiple copies of the same template. These changes also allow the size of the image map to be easily changed while editing the target page. The instructions can be found in the image map help article in the section called Trick of the Trade.

I'm still anxiously waiting for the Tech meetings to be recorded and made available (not holding my breath). It sounded like Warren indicated that he may be reassigned, so should tech meeting recording be shifted under the same control as the other meetings to ensure they are recorded? Even if an engineer is unavailable the community could use the meeting to add items to the follow-up table and discuss issues or concerns (if recorded, that is). Note: The Dec 18th meeting apparently did not occur as no agenda has been posted.

LONG TERM note to self. The subject of the “watch” function being turned off if the notification email is not acknowledged has been brought up to Warren but should be pursued farther. Solution: See if the engineers can program an “automatic reboot” of the watch list after a defined time period (say, two weeks or a month). This way if someone misses an email notification or forgets to acknowledge one, the lockout will be reset so they will eventually start receiving them again. This should be doable.

SEOs on Help pages? Added SEO statement (or an article introductory statement) to the Help:Image maps article and did a search to check the current SEO statements being picked up. Yahoo does not appear to pick up Help articles but Google does. The Google search had arbitrary words from the article which was confusing and did not explain the title. I think SEOs should be added to all help articles and general articles (not just location articles) to better utilize the search engines and draw users to the articles (and the wiki) during their Internet searches.

Status of categories? Cannot see any progress but it may all be behind the scenes; don’t know. I may start to revamp my Category Quick Picks page in lieu of no apparent activity on this subject.

Seems to be little activity on Yammer for the past couple months. I don’t know if this is normal for the holiday season or year-end activity or if the activity on Yammer is slowly decreasing due to slow response times to questions (compared to Skype). Have heard nothing about SaleForce lately or even know how to access it (or if it will even be accessible by outsiders).

Last revision for this USER page:

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