FamilySearch Wiki:Contributors Meeting 13 September 2012

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Purpose of the meeting Improve the Wiki Forge solutions with other community contributors. Share best practices, ideas, and content. Discuss current issues, community matters, and strategies. Move issues to decision.

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Kudos go to ... 

• Lee, James, Fran, and Dick Eastman for helping to get the word out about the new FamilySearch digital book reports! Here's a link to another report (July 2012). Murphynw 16:05, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
  

Updates and follow up

• Poll for proposal regarding Guidelines in Wiki for policy changes  New poll has been posted.
• Could you see on a state or country page, at or near the top, something like "The 3 most important things to know about researching in Kentucky" with a format underneath similar to how wikiHow does their steps? -- janellv (talk| contribs) 16:26, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
• This item was discussed and the general consensus was that it is a good idea.  We need more ways of making it easier for beginners.
• Update: - Jana Stokes is working on this, and has made great progress.  Check the pages she's working on. Sandbox/Utah
• Discuss testing

• References in the wiki "the question really isn't about whether to use footnote or endnote styles, but rather how to display information so that readers can most effectively glean it."

• Philadelphia, PA is an example of a link to several books, rather having several links to each book (WeRelate).
• There are different styles - giving a source, as opposed to the reference information. Quotes in the body of the document would have the souce in the footnote.
• We need to present sufficient information to guide them to the title, etc. and then to further links for citing, etc. (endnote) The text should make the reader want to find more information on the topic, without giving too much information to muddy the waters (include the date information).
• More discussion is needed before we change the style guide.
• Create a separate page, such as in WeRelate - periodicals, etc. - avoiding long citations in our text, as well as a lot of links for the same information
• Links need to be made to more stable sites - also, linking to Google provides a good starting page, but we don't want multiple links on the page to the same site, etc.
• Have a page that lists sites that has books.  Do we have one? FamilySearch, Google, etc.
• WeRelate has some book lists, but it may not have been updated
• If it's just a quote, it could be in the footnotes
• We need to make a decision on this discussion - should the guidelines be changed?

Business/Announcements

• Survey for new home page http://bit.ly/R137je
  
• We would like to have people from all spectrums take the survey.  Example 2 has some bad links  that will be fixed tomorrow, probably.  
• If we can sit with people as they take the survey, it's helpful to get their comments.

New Agenda Items

• Check out the recording of the Researching in the Wiki class that Jan Edwards taught in Meetingplace.  She did a great job and pointed out items that are in the Wiki that many of us have probably overlooked.  Go to Meetingplace and look for past meetings for 2323, on Sept. 6th at 6:00 PM.  (It might have been listed as 5:45).

Forums Overview

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Current forum threads of interest: Polls New since last week   Comments added since last week Decisions made since last week

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