User group meeting agenda & minutes 9 July 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 -- Mollie Forbes
 * 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
Misc. Items:


 * Categorizing an article
 * Internal and External Links -- Darris Williams
 * Cleaning up unwanted code -- Jimmy Parker


 * We have an obligation to teach these procedures to others to help them feel comfortable as contributors.


 * Family History Library Favorites and the FamilySearch Wiki -- Statement of policy and possible future discussion item. -- Michael Ritchey

Carryover from Last Week
Report on tab titles on articles (Thomas Lerman)

Report on a test of image approval process (Jimmy Parker and others)

New Items
Advanced Search -- Thomas Lerman

Inviting users to attend the Users Group Meeting remotely and making them feel more a part of the experience. -- Thomas Lerman

= Minutes =

Facilitator was Jimmy Parker. Note taker was Fran Jensen. Time keeper was Mollie Forbes.

Prayer by David Dilts

Attendees
Michael Ritchey, Darris Williams, Mollie Forbes, Fran Jensen, Joan Healey, Barbara Baker, David Samuelsen, Geoff Morris, James Anderson, Baerbel Johnson.

Remote: Anne Roach, Thomas Lerman, shaller45

Items Discussed

 * Review effectiveness of last week's user group meeting when several items were discussed to help beginners who are using the Wiki. Is this something we should do more often? Yes, especially if we have attendees who are Wiki beginners.
 * Internal and External Links by Darris Williams. One idea is to click on the Edit tab in an article that has the feature you want to use. Be sure you are looking at the Wikitext, not the text as it appears in the FCKeditor. Finally, look at the text that was entered for the feature you want to use. When you are finished reviewing the text, instead of saving the page, choose the option to cancel the page.
 * Internal and External links follow-up. The wiki contains pages on how to create internal and external links. What wasn't entirely clear in the meeting discussion was whether we're aware of anything new that should prompt us to change the instructions on those pages.
 * We discussed various options for entering links to external websites. Sometimes only a number appears, or a single letter "n" appears. Sometimes the name of the web site is within the text of the article and other times it's the actualy URL that is within the text. What does everyone prefer? Should a "best practice" article be added to the Wiki to explain what options and preferences should be used? After several options were discussed, the final concensus was that authors should add links to websites either by lisiting just the URL itself, or by adding text that links to the URL.
 * We have an obligation to teach others how to use the Wiki and how to add or edit articles in the Wiki. We need to help others feel comfortable as contributors.
 * Cleaning up unwanted code by Jimmy Parker. We can remove the "Tidy" code string in the text of all articles and all pages. The engineers are working on the bug and we hope that soon we will be able to automatically remove the "Tidy" string of code from all pages within the Wiki. In the mean time, the code string can be deleted manually.
 * Family History Library Favorites and the FamilySearch Wiki: A Statement of policy and possible future discussion item by Michael Ritchey. We are in the process of discussing the option of adding the FHL favorites. We welcome your ideas and comments concerning this option. Use the Forum to weigh in on this discussion item.
 * Report on a test of image approval process by Jimmy Parker. A couple of weeks ago Jimmy submitted about six images for approval. He used the new image approval process that requires the images to be sent by email for approval. Jimmy is still waiting for notification that the images were approved and uploaded to the Wiki.

Action Items
Look into the option to have a satelite user group meeting during the BYU Family History Conference.