User talk:Donchallis

Will you help me (help you?)
Hi Don. As you know, I'm designing a new type of wiki page that would list all the professional genealogists for a locality and link to their user pages for more information. These pages will be linked from many other pages in the wiki, so they should draw significant traffic to pages like yours. I need some help, though, because I need to build an example page for one locality that lists a few researchers and has live links to their user pages. However, there aren't very many professionals listed on the wiki, and most are not specific about which U.S. states they'd like to be listed for, so I'm having trouble choosing a locality where I can list several researchers. Could you tell me whether you'd be comfortable being listed under any U.S. state, or if not, which ones you'd like to be listed under? Thanks! The example I'm building is at Talk:Professional Genealogists Who Specialize in Ohio Research.

Also, as you look at the table there, it'd help a great deal if you would fill it out with your hours of experience in the various areas it displays. It doesn't have to be exact for this example -- we're just using this to show the contributor community what we intend to do in listing pros here. (Wiki communities are sensitive to commercialization, so we're managing this discussion so that everyone's expectations are set correctly around the idea that this project is intended to help patrons find their ancestors.) RitcheyMT 11:23, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

It seems to me that the user pages could be by-passed and link directly from Research pages to Company website. If the user pages are not searched by search engines, they don't seem to have that much value in the equation, or am I missing something? For the Alliance members the choice of where to be listed will be fairly easy, since they have assigned areas for which they are primarily reponsible. I have added a column that will help people decide which person to choose: residence. Making these posts is fairly easy and should not be difficult for most people. There will need to be instructions for sure. I have also done some work on the Alliance Wiki page. Is there any chance of getting adminstrator status? As this evolves it would be useful to be able to make some changes without bothering and waiting for someone else. Donchallis 00:06, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

After reading your discussion page instructions I can see where you are going with this. I have a way of adding the links in the State or local articles. I created a template called "Template:Pros-UT" that points to the list of Pros in Utah page. If you copy the Template you can paste it in each area easily. That template can be modified for each State by adding the State, 2 letter abreviation and changing the State in the Page it links to.The wording is: "Professionals who can access these records." Is there a way of Saving the Form you created for each State? Starting from scratch each time will take forever.Donchallis 12:55, 26 July 2012 (UTC)