User talk:Cottrells

Contributor Training
Steve ... I need to revert the changes you made to the New Contributor Training page yesterday. I had moved the copies of Judy's old lessons to another page because they are not the handouts I give with my classes and I do not want it causing confusion. Thanks, Jane evancol 11:12, 4 April 2012 (UTC)


 * HI Jane, please go ahead and make the changes you need to make. I am a little confused as the only change I made to the page FamilySearch Wiki:New Contributors Training/Prior Lessons was to make the link an internal link rather than an external link. The link before and after the edit went to the same file (or at least duplicates of the same - due to the filename issue). See my comments about the issue on Judy's talk page. --Steve 12:13, 4 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I had moved her lessons to a separate page and just had a note on the bottom of that page indicating old prior lessons were available and a link. When you made the change, it brought the lessons back to my main page. I would tell you how it happened, but if you don't know, there is absolutely no way I understand it !!!!

Thanks Steve. Jane evancol 12:21, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

STEVE ....  Kindly ignore this entire exchange. Apparently, I have lost my mind. Sorry for the interruption to your day!!! Jane

RecordSearch template
Hi Steve --

This one's got David Dilts and I stumped. We can't understand why the RecordSearch template is directing people to the FamilySearch home page, rather than the specific census database page. The problem is occurring on this page: Template:Census Online Florida. (Third column, all links, except 1940 links are having the problem.) Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you. Murphynw 22:19, 20 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Nathan, there was a fix needed for the links to browse collection and waypoints. Part of the URL has changed from show to index. However the main use of the template linking to the collection search screen was working OK. I took a look at the Census Online Florida and found that the links in the 3rd column under the FamilySearch heading were not using the RecordSearch template. I have changed the links for the 1945 State Census. You can just follow these examples for the rest of that column. I did also notice that the links in the column headed Internet Archive were using the RecordSearch template and not linking to www.archive.org at all! --Steve 11:08, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

New Society Info Box Template
Hi Steve! I’d like to create a new template based on the Infobox Societies template that would have a little bit more information. Is it possible for you to help me? I’d like it to be the same blue look but include some separators bolded on a gray background like on the County Infobox US County template. It would include the following with the bolded words as the separators: Name of Society; Society Logo; Date Established; Contact Info; Address; Telephone; Website; Facebook; Twitter; Society Meeting; Address; Day of Meeting; Time of Meeting; Society Building; Address; Hours; Society Officers; President; Vice President; Number of Members; Affiliations; Cost of Membership; Date last updated. Oh, and can there be that gray thin line between the logo and "date established" like in the original society info box? Thanks! BatsonDL 23:04, 24 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Danielle, I'm not sure why you would want a new template, when we can improve the current one with the suggestions that you have made. Therefore I have made some of the changes to Infobox Societies, but not all the changes you've requested. I have run out of time just now, but I will work on the others soon. --Steve 13:23, 25 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Steve, Oh, I didn't think of that because I didn't want to step on any toes of those that created the original one. But that works for me! And this is looking great already! Thank you! BatsonDL 22:29, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh wait! I forgot to add an email address and fax under the contact info. Can we add that too? Sorry about that... BatsonDL 22:38, 25 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Danielle, I've added the parameters that you asked for that weren't already included in the template. Please let me know if any items need moving around or tweaking. I was the person who put together the template originally and I welcome any suggestions to enhance or improve it. Thanks for giving me this opportunity to work with you on this. --Steve 16:31, 26 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Steve, this is so great! Thank you for taking the time to update it for me. I've been playing with it and I couldn't get the Facebook portion to work like the affiliations part. Is there a trick? Oh, and somehow the name of the society is going outside of the box. Thank you for doing it so fast. This has helped me and my project a ton. Thank you! BatsonDL 22:16, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Danielle, I have tweaked the template a little more and adjusted your example used in User:BatsonDL/Sandbox 10. The colours used for the name title of the infobox are designed to be changeable, using the parameters name_color and back_color. I've added a note to the documentation giving the code to use to blend the title into the rest of the table. Another example using different colours, can be see in Dorset Family History Society. Also I changed the affiliations parameter so that it goes to the wiki page for FGS rather than an external link. You could use either, but I think the internal link shows users to more content in the wiki. --Steve 07:22, 27 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Steve, Perfect! And thanks so much for keeping me straight on this. We are going to recruit some societies to make their own pages so I was trying to make a scaled down version of the template with only the essentials so they wouldn't get too confused. And I'm glad you changed the affiliate. I totally forgot about the wiki page. Thanks again! BatsonDL 18:25, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to rename wiki content from Durham to County Durham
Hi Steve.

Sorry ment to add here. I removed the Move template because as I searched the England (County) and found only a very few that were marked county. I also felt to move a talk page with out the (county) page was not logical to me. I agree that making all the England counties into county pages would be more logical. I just do not see doing one talk page. Think changing the regular pages would be a better move in my mind. Sandralpond 15:45, 27 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Sandra, I will reinstate the move template and add further notes to clarify my proposal. Please add your comments to the Talk:Durham page, so that we can keep the discussion all in one place. --Steve 07:50, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you (Assize Court Records)
Steve,

Thank you for posting the correct image on the Assize article. I did put the image on the Main page. Thank you for showing me my errors. I mean that sincerely.

joy


 * Hi Joy, I'm glad that you were happy to make the change. I know you spend a lot of time helping to improve the wiki and I don't want to lessen your enthusiasm. In this instance I was able to find a different photo that seemed a better fit for the article Assize Court Records. --Steve 11:19, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you (gold star)
Just wanted to say thanks for the gold star. Lotje 08:24, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

"Tip" icon template
Hi, Steve. Will you mind creating another template that allows editing? We have a tip icon, which we want to put with various tips. For an example, see Utah Newspapers. We will also want to be able to use other icons, which we have not yet identified. They may be for "Ideas" or "Caution" or something -- we may never implement other icons, but it is probably good to allow for that variable at the outset. Thanks for your great help, Steve. Awesome, what you can do. AdkinsWH 20:38, 15 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Wilma, I have created a new template tip which I have then used to replace the table in the Utah Newspapers article. I know you asked about a template where you can change the image, this was already present in ambox shorthand for article message box. When you decide on icons for ideas and caution messages then additional templates can be created for them. --Steve 17:41, 16 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you, thank you, Steve! I'll have our group look at this next Wednesday. AdkinsWH 21:17, 16 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Our group reviewed the tip. We love the bar on the left, and hope you can make the table border invisible. Thanks, Steve. AdkinsWH 17:10, 23 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Wilma, I've now hidden the top, bottom and right hand borders. Personally I think the borders helped draw the eye to the information. --Steve 18:14, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Changes to tip template
Hi Steve, Wilma's been presenting your creations at the Utah Wiki Project Meetings and I my mind became engaged as to how the whole thing gets constructed and how one can edit the template and make new ones, etc. I think I starting to get a grip on it, and wanted to run a test drive but wasn't sure just what the protocol might be. Should I create TIp2 template or "mess" with yours or??? Anyway here's what I had in mind... Well, as you can see I don't know what I'm doing yet; BUT if you switch to wikitext you will see the code for what I wanted to either create a new template for or change your Template:Tip too. &lt;noinclude&gt;

&lt;!-- Add categories and interwikis to the /doc subpage, not here! --&gt; &lt;/noinclude&gt; JanaStokes 19:52, 1 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Jana, you ask about how you should go about running a test drive. The best place do test things out would be in your Sandbox. As you test how a template works in a sandbox it does not effect anything else in the wiki. Once you have a solution/new feature worked out then you can move it to the Template namespace or edit a template that already exist. However if that template is already being used in many pages it would more appropriate to start a discussion about the proposed change on the existing template's talk page. I have changed your post to show your code in the post. The differences between this and tip is a different coloured left hand border, a different image (the one you define does not exist in the wiki) which is displayed at half the size. Can you explain to me your thinking behind the changes? --Steve 15:53, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Steve! I see you used a "pre" and a "/pre"....that's part of what I couldn't figure out. And I took your suggestion and starting playing with this stuff on my sandbox To answer your question - the Utah Wiki project (WIlma Adkins group) wanted the bar color to match the icon. I felt the icon's resolution could be improved on and so uploaded a png file called [I'm having problems preserving the transparency, but I contacted Lee Drew about that.] The Utah WIki project also decided to see how it looked with no border. Personally, I feel it's a bit of a strange combination; but do not feel strongly about it. I thought perhaps I could "figure out" how to make these template and badge things and thereby be somewhat useful to the group---you know, making different versions and swapping things back and forth as they decide on a final version. As you can tell, I only know enough to think I could learn to do this! Hope I'm not being too much of a pain :) Thanks again for your help!

JanaStokes 21:01, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Parish register box colours
Hi Steve, Would love to discuss this with you. Am open to changing colours and simplifying with templates. Murphynw 01:23, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Here's an example of one of the boxes. Would you mind to tinker with it and see what you can come up with?

References

Contributions Changed
Hi Steve I was just over at some of the pages that I developed in Suffolk. I took 24 pages in Hoxne Hundred and see now that Djbrewer (this person has no user page so I know nothing about them) has decided to add his or her flavor to them. I spent hours and days of editing and rewritng them to get them to that point and to see that is disheartening. I personally consider it unprofessional rude and insulting. I'm surely not going to take my time to develope pages to see them being altered like that. There are 500 parishes in Suffolk, all I was working on was 25 of them. This is the second time this has happened where someone alphabetically goes through parishes and makes changes without any regard for what is there. It don't make sense for me to go through and undo time and time again what I create on pages. I'll come back next month and see what is going on. Donjgen 02:38, 28 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Don, I sympathise with you, seeing your contributions effectively ignored. I hope to attend the Contributors Meeting webinar this evening and I will raise this issue. I have a feeling that the contributor in question is a volunteer at the Family History Library and has been assigned a task and is following it without considering the effects. Please know that your contribution are valued and I hope to resolve this inconsiderate removal of your welcome additions. --Steve 16:22, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi Steve, I see the problem is not with the volunteers. There basically doing what there being told to do. The Family History Library is following a unwritten rule book that uses volunteers that have no user page to identify themselves and do not participate in the contributors England Parish pages. They alphabetically go down a list of parishes making changes. The few parish pages I created did not look like all the others so they make it conform. I created those pages to be expanded upon not to be torn down. The volunteers are not independent enough to think outside of what they have been told. As a result I was not aware that the two online National Gazetteers are approved for introductory comments. I use county gazetteers that are online. I also see that a draft census template is being put on every page. I created alternate census templates that are just ignored. It appears that it is ignored because I am not part of the club. Maybe its not a good idea that I don't add anything more until the unwritten rule book becomes transparent. Donjgen 23:26, 6 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Don, I don't think there are "approved" and "non-approved" sources. Surely if multiple sources are available each have their merit. My personal opinion is that short excerpts are given from the sources available, with external links to the whole text, if it is available online, or quoting a, and/or other references to help others find a copy of the source.
 * I agree it would aid in collaboration if the plans that staff and volunteers from the FHL are working to were added to the wiki. The signs are there that a co-ordinated effort is being worked on, but this is not shared beyond the FHL. I'm going to be attending the Contributors Meeting later and will raise this issue. --Steve 12:54, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Steve, I got the impression from the volunteer when I inquired as to why he changed the some of the pages I developed. A lot of excuses and one of them is directions from the Library Staff. The material and source that I had there was replaced with such inferior material. This discussion needs to continue on the England Project page. The 'Vision of Britain' is a good gazetteer but is is not Parish History material for the most part. Many parishes are very small and have only a few sentences in the gazetteer. It really don't make sense to take a few sentences and reduce it down to a few more sentences and call that the parish history excerpt. It looks like systematically this is what is being done to every parish. There is a Gazetteer section on every page that one would think is where gazetteer entries would go. I'll post my thoughts on that over on the England Project pages. Donjgen 06:13, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Don, hopefully I will soon be able to talk with those who are directing the work of the Library staff and volunteers, with a view to understand their goals and help them understand that there are other contributors willing to help. What we need is to align our efforts so that we don't work at cross purposes. Thank you for comments. --Steve 12:20, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Policy changes

 * Since it appears Steve is considering this issue seriously and may consider policy changes I feel comments by other contributors are appropriate.


 * I don't believe that there is even an issue here. This appears to be a simple example of, which stands for: be &lt; bold &gt; and make the changes that you believe are necessary - if anyone else disagrees with the change &lt; revert &gt; it - and if the person making the change feels strongly about then it is time to &lt; discuss&gt;. I believe Familysearches version of this is at FamilySearch Wiki:Guiding Principles-Bold. To ask permission of previous editors before making changes will bring this wiki to a screeching halt.


 * In addition, since this was originally an issue about content on a page, it should have been brought up on that page's talk page. I'm really shocked to see Donjgen calling other wiki users "unprofessional and rude" on their talk page and again on an administrator's talk page simply for making a change he disagreed with. Calling other contributors "unprofessional and rude" on their talk page and again "unprofessional rude and insulting" on an administrators talk page is disruptive and violates FamilySearch Wiki's Talk page guidelines:Behavior that is unacceptable. Perhaps he was just upset, but that is no excuse. Furthermore, giving the other contributor only 23 minutes to respond before taking the complaint to an administrator is at best unreasonable. Lotje2 01:00, 30 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes I would not want to see a situation where contributors didn't want to make any change without consulting other previous contributor. We must remember to assume good faith. However it is also worth explaining edits using the edit summary (which many contributors do not) or even better, and of great help to explain major changes, to use the talk page of the article. I do think in the example Don has encountered that contributors are following a "script" and changing page to conform to a FHL basic guideline, without taking into account a page that has been developed beyond the basic form they have in mind. Hopefully we can get the people involved on all sides to talk through the issues and find a way to work together to improve the wiki. --Steve 12:54, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Templates on the Spanish wiki
I have recently created several templates for the Spanish wiki. Users on the Spanish wiki can now create navigational templates as well as flag pages for deletion-(now fixed) and merging. I also created a translation template that allows users to flag a page and point to the page on the English or other language wikis. I was wondering if you think it would be a good idea to add the ability to point to the page on other language wikis to the Translation needed template as well. Also, I created the translation templates with the format parameter 1 = page name and parameter 2 = country code, but I'm wondering if that should be reversed. Either way I think the format should be the same for all translation templates. The problem with country code first is that it makes the country code required all the time unless parameters are named and does not allow for a simple default. At least that is my understanding. H-langs has the opposite format. Let me know what you think. Lotje2 01:48, 30 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Lotje2, if you haven't already I would suggest contacting Charles Smith who has been working on the other language wikis. I'm sure he would welcome the contact.
 * Can you explain, with an example, your suggestion for the Translation needed on that template's talk page. I'm not sure I completely understand what you would like to achieve, regardless of how it is implemented - what do you envision? I think you would like to add a link from say the English wiki for a given article to a different language wiki for the article that has been translated. Or have I misunderstood.
 * I can see that you created the template ill-2. Looking at this it seems to have the first unamed parameter as language code, second parameter (optional) page name. Is this the template to which you are referring?
 * With unamed parameters you can set a default by using the code  
 * H-langs is different in that it uses named parameters for each language code with the page name/title as the value.
 * --Steve 13:19, 2 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Steve, yes I see what you mean about H-langs being different. Nevertheless, since it uses the format - language code first, then page name - I think we should probably use that format to keep the templates similar and easy for users to remember, unless you can think of a compelling reason to put the language code second. I should probably change the order of the parameters on the two templates I created on the Spanish wiki so they are similar to H-langs.
 * The templates I was referring to at the beginning of my comments were the two I created on the Spanish wiki. You will see one of them if you click on the link in the example template I placed on the talk page for the Translation needed template.
 * You may have misunderstood. I was not talking about creating a link in the article itself to a translated article, but a link to the requested article which may not exist yet in the Translation needed template so that anyone answering the request will know where to put it. Things can often be translated several ways and someone may have a location in mind when making the request especially if they have already created red links or if the other language wiki has specific guidelines for naming.
 * Yes ill-2 is the other template I was referring to.
 * Some standard images for the templates on the Spanish wiki would be nice if anyone has time. Lotje2 07:22, 3 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for explaining that, of course you were referring to the templates created in the other language wikis -doh! I like you suggestion for Translation needed and have added my comment to the talk page. As for getting some of the standard images uploaded to the language wikis, Charles Smith has been uploading images to these wikis. I see you have posted to his talk page about fixing a template. I'm sure that if you ask him to upload a list of images needed, that Charles will get that done. --Steve 13:08, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Meesden, Hertfordshire
Steve, as I started reading over the page on Meesden, Hertfordshire. I am not sure if there is still a problem. Please Could you get me a little me insight to what has happened and you feelings. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jenson1 (talk | contribs) 17:46, 2 July 2012


 * Hi Rorie, I had a look at the article Meesden, Hertfordshire. I could not see a problem with this article, nor is there anything on the article talk page. I see that I did make some changes to this page in January, March and May of this year. Each time I did, it was part of a process to replace some boilerplate text with a template or something more consistent with other articles. I'm not sure why you thought there was a problem! --Steve 12:52, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Arabic message
I'm a bit concerned about something that has shown up today on Help:Creating a new WikiProject written in Arabic. Do you know what we should do about it? Murphynw 23:11, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Nathan, I looked at the page in question. I can see that you now resolved the issue. I would have done what you did. --Steve 12:23, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Records questions
Does anyone monitor this Category:Questions about Record Collections? It takes weeks or months for users to add the Records question template in the first place and even then it appears the questions simply sit in this category unanswered. I don't think users expect to pose questions on the talk pages with the expectation that they will be answered months later or possibly never. Does the category need to be added to a list of maintenance tasks? -- Lotje2 20:11, 15 July 2012 (UTC)


 * This template is fairly new (created in January 2012) and I don't think the category is being monitored as well as it might. Most of the wiki support team are volunteers and have a range of tasks that they deal with. This specific template was created as many question were specific to the record collections and not general questions that the wiki support team could answer. However they could help monitoring the number outstanding and prompt the records team that many are still unanswered. --Steve 12:29, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Linking question
Hi Steve! Quick question...is it possible to force the wiki to open a new tab or new window when you click on a FamilySearch.org link? I'm thinking specifically of clicking on a FHLC or Historical Records collections link without losing the wiki page. Thanks! BatsonDL 19:41, 18 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes it is possible to include code to have links open in a new window/tab. Is there a consensus within FamilySearch that this should happen for links to collections?


 * The default setting for how the wiki handles external links (ie those with the external.png image) is defined in the Setting $wgExternalLinkTarget. If you wanted all external links to open in new windows/tabs an engineer would need to change this setting. However, whatever that setting is, you could add code to specific links so that it behaves as you define. --Steve 12:38, 19 July 2012 (UTC)


 * No, there is no consensus or talk about changing all FamilySearch links. (Although I wish there was.) We are making some cemetery charts on Pennsylvania county pages linking to cemetery websites. And it is so nice for the person to click off to another page then easily get back to the chart for the next link. We wanted to make it consistant down the line with the FamilySearch.org link as well as the external links. We would use that code for the specific links only. Are there instructions somewhere? Thanks! BatsonDL 21:20, 19 July 2012 (UTC)