FamilySearch Wiki:Contributors Meeting 19 July 2012

MeetingPlace ID: 7770; Join the meeting; Dial-in number: 877-453-7266  1 p.m. Mountain time on Thursdays

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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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Updates and follow up

Present Policy
If you refer to a subscription website or one which has a charge to obtain information, use the "$" to indicate that there may be a fee for the site.

Proposed Policy
If you refer to a subscription website or one which has a charge to obtain information, clearly indicate that it is a “for pay” web site. For tables, you may use a symbol to refer to a footnote at the bottom of the table that states the site is a for pay site. You should use the symbol of the currency (such as "$" or “£”) required by the site.

Style Guide Discussions

• The following text appears on Historical Record Collection article talk pages.

bibdesc coding

Please do not remove or edit the coding around the “Citation for This Collection” section of this article. The coding is essential for the source to appear on the FamilySearch.org Collection Page and is only visible when the page is viewed in wikitext.

Thank you for your help with the FamilySearch Historical Record wiki articles; we look forward to seeing you in the wiki!

-User Guidance Team

This really isn't a discussion about the article, and does not actually have any chance of helping prevent inadvertent or intentional edits to the bibdesc coding. Because it acts as a barrier to the important role of healthy dialogue regarding the content of an article, I propose that this text be removed from all talk pages where it appears. Lise 00:14, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

It makes sense to embed some explanation of the bibdesc coding within each page using the nowiki code.Donjgen 01:27, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

• Revisit the topic from last week's meeting regarding the text and link pointing to "Help:How to Create Source Citations for FamilySearch Historical Record Collections" on all HRC articles.  Discussion on the forum thread. Lise 20:41, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
  

• Style guide question about references: What is the current thought about showing references within the text versus footnoting the reference? Is there a style guide suggestion? Whick format is more useful to the wiki user? Does putting the reference within the text clutter the page?

Example:

• Adams, Marilyn, comp. Ohio Local and Family History Sources in Print. Clarkston, Georgia: Heritage Research, 1984. At various libraries (WorldCat); FHL book 977.1 H23o

• Adams, Marilyn, comp. Ohio Local and Family History Sources in Print. McBrideLW

Project Help Requests

Need help with your project? See a project that needs to be done? Add it here:

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Improve the Wiki

• Edit or remove the "New to the Research Wiki?" box. The material in it is superfluous--We are expanding the main page and it will include a more direct invitation to ask questions about using the wiki for researching and for contributing. 

• The option to edit it would be for using it for recurring messages to readers, such as "What topics would you like to see added to the wiki?" Since the team has edit privilages for these boxes, it would not require engineering intervention.
• The option to remove it would require engineering intervention, and would use "engineering capital" that would be better spent on higher priority projects.

• Edit the Search Box that appears in the upper-right corner of each page. Following are items, in order of importance:

• Replace the phrase "Search Learning & How-To’s" with "Search the Wiki" as the name of the search box. There are many Learning & How-to’s on FamilySearch. This search box only applies to the wiki.
• Replace "by country" with "by place". or "by location" Many of the choices are not countries (e.g. British Isles, Isle of Mann, Guam, Puerto Rico)
• Replace "Subject, Place or Keyword" in the search bar with "Type keyword(s) here"

Forums Overview

Be part of the solution! Make your opinions known! Post comments to an existing thread or start a new discussion at Wiki Contributors Corner forum.

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

Be bold! Post your agenda items! Feel free to post on the agenda any items you wish to discuss during the meeting. If your item requires details or feedback, post them on the discussion page and link to them from the agenda.