FamilySearch Wiki:Council liaisons

Liason meetings: Bi-weekly on Wednesdays, 10:30 a.m. on alternate weeks of GS-WAC and Community Council. Click to join the meeting, 9:00–10:00 a.m. Wednesdays(Mountain). Meeting ID: 0424, click

Liasons: 4/24/2013: David Dilts (Username=DiltsGD), Lynda Avery (until May 2), Wilma Adkins (username=AdkinsWH). New liason for Support (May 8) is Robin Foster (Username=SavingStories) (instrumental with getting our presence on Facebook, blogger, etc.) replacing Lynda Avery.

Purposes:

• Transparency: Making an effort to be open about activities in order to avoid surprises and duplication of effort.
• Improved communication: Each group needs to know what is going on with another group. Also the community.
• Collaboration: Hope to generate synergy, pool ideas, work together on projects.

We review/understand/ minutes from Support, GS-WAC, and Community Council and report back.

8 May 2013

David excused - NGS conference. Wilma (Salt Lake City) and Robin (near Columbia, SC) got acquainted.

• Colors -- school bus yellow, fuchia -- not appropriate - more pastel background. Moderator can suggest to the person. (is this on the Moderators' list of responsibilities?) With David at NGS, this was not fully discussed.
• Support: working on procedures for new volunteers
  • training on different topics; on Wikitext; ongoing training; referring to materials already there, etc. Help them keep learning as they go.
  • tracking system for volunteers; info comes in on a spreadsheet tells experience (computer and genealogy); welcome letter, assessed to know where they fit best; several are signing up for 10-20 hours per week.
  • assignment by skills, location, interests; assigned to a consultant in the Library or elsewhere or assign a specific part in the wiki -- such as an article on VA cemeteries;
  • Main qualifications of a moderator: Wikitext experience; real researcher - skills in location/subject matter; good writer
• Reviewed Council minutes for May 1.

2013 April 24

Discussed purposes GS-WAC issues:

• Global maps -- David will ask
• Strategy -- to help management know we are trying to reach beginners;
• Business reports -- working on this with Janell and others
• Wiki page formatting -- Where to place a table for beginners, and other formatting problems.
• Metadata for Historical Records -- working on a way to generate the metadata by computer; purpose is to bring users to the pages. On the verge of that happening now, will shorten the time and make a better process.
• Volunteer pages -- a form was put on by Support and have over 30 signed up. Some look very trained.
• Photo uploads in Wiki: Support trying to get engineers to make it more instructive re: license, etc. -- at top of list when "new skin" problems are fixed. -- no search box, tables were a problem; wiki has so many convoluted pieces, makes it difficult. Wider screens created a lot of (wasted) blank space, images were coming up huge again.
• Moderator things to do page: Support has made some changes to the page, have taken the questions off the page and sent them directly to the form. (Lynda did this in the last few days.)
  • Support will be sending a mass mailing to recruit moderators and contact them on a 1/1 basis.
• Digital Online Collection pages: Pretty good for US, 3-5 European countries now have similar pages; placement on the page
• Main goal of the GS-WAC: what are the priorities? One is to get a higher % of FamilySearch Center staff using the Wiki

Community WAC

• Moderators and adopters need to be aware of or involved in even small projects that missionaries are doing.
  • Some projects are global -- should all of them be notified? Creating the project, then asking is sometimes unavoidable, but for the most part first contact is better.
• Missionary projects need to heed to the information already present. Use the dispute and resolution process.
  • If it is put on the talk pages, the support missionaries patrol the talk pages and bring issues to a knowledgeable person to check them. This process calls the attention and gets them to where they can be helped.
  • Also use the email function to that person to alert them.
  • Or put it their user talk page. It must be saved twice, if they don't have a talk page, in order to bring it to the attention of Support.