FamilySearch Wiki talk:WikiProject Feedback/What New Users and Contributors Want to Make Wiki Easier

Community Meeting vs. Village Pump
Wiki Governance -- From my perspective the current weekly Community Meeting has played a large role in the development of this wiki. However there is only so much that can be discussed and agreed in an hour each week. I'm sure there are many other meetings/dicussions that take place between people based at headquarters. It would be helpful to other contributors to at least see the outcomes of these decisions documented in the wiki.

Further as the number of articles and people involved increase the community meeting will only be able to manage some of the most pressing/controversial/high impact matters. Other more routine yet still important decisions will need to be dicussed in either different meetings or (my preference ) within the talk pages of the wiki.

Wikipedia has developed a which is divided into 4 sections.
 * 1) Policy
 * 2) Technical
 * 3) Proposals (non-policy)
 * 4) Miscellaneous (for items that do not fit one of the other 3 categories)

I'm, not proposing that the Wikipedia model will exactly meet the needs of this wiki, but there is some merit in defining/revisiting the terms of reference for the Community Meeting and also expanding the influence of other means of decision making within the wiki community. For example it has already been mentioned that some previous attendees at the community meeting have ceased attending as the discussions had become too technical and yet the meeting is billed as a place for discussing content, technical issues, workarounds, community, site design, and strategy. Maybe the balance of some meetings has been weighted too much towards the technical side of things.

Perhaps to start with there needs to be specific venues/channels for contributors to collaborate on content issues separate from technical aspects of how the wiki works. This could be achieved by 1) alternating the focus of the weekly meeting, 2) holding a second weekly meeting or 3) move all technical discussions to the wiki itself. There also may be other more suitable solutions that this contributor hasn't even thought of. My mind is not fixed.

This page and other two (Challenges Facing New Users and Newbies Priorities) created by Kara are seeking to find where the rough edges of the wiki are and to smooth them out. The smoothing out process would be greatly enhanced by a clearer, more responsive governance process. --Steve 22:38, 9 November 2009 (UTC)