October 2015 Meeting – “Genealogy Wikis and Wikipedia”

Technical difficulties plagued Dave Barton’s “Genealogy Wiki’s” presentation on Tuesday, November 3, 2015, but the forbearance of a large and enthusiastic audience saved the day. Thank you to everyone who attended for your kind attention and your curiosity.

Wikis enable communities to write documents collaboratively using a simple markup language and a web browser. The “community” can be the world, as with Wikipedia, or a smaller group, such as a corporation, governmental organization—or the genealogy community.

.

During Dave’s presentation, we learned how Wikis work, and saw firsthand how three types of Genealogy Wikis work:

• Research oriented genealogy Wikis on FamilySearch and Ancestry.com.

• A Private Family Wiki for descendants of 17^th Century New England Settler, Thomas Benedict, and

• The Unified Tree Wikis WikiTree and WeRelate.

.

Unfortunately, we did not have time to create a Wikipedia article during the presentation, but Dave gave us a peek “behind the curtain” at the edit page for an article he had created for his ancestor, mathematician Suzan Rose Benedict.

Thanks again to everyone who attended. If you were not able to make the meeting, you can peruse the presentation slides at HRGS Genealogy Wiki’s & Wikipedia Presentation.