Community Discussion
We invite everyone to participate in the licensing discussion. The Licensing article gives some background and explains why we may wish to change to a less-restrictive license for the wiki material on WeRelate. If you have comments, please leave them on the Licensing talk page.
In the News
The last few weeks have been rather busy. First, Solveig was presenting at the BYU Genealogy Conference. (The kids thought they would probably starve--but they held out. Regular meals resumed over the weekend.) However, before the BYU conference was over, Dallan was off to the Wikipedia conference in Boston, home for 1 day and back in the air to Seattle for a workshop on open source information retrieval. He arrived home on Friday, and on Saturday Solveig taught two classes at the local PAF Users Group. I guess we are real "jet-setters" now. Dallan got ideas for several new features that will soon be incorporated into WeRelate. Solveig is off again at the end of the month; this time to Boston for the FGS conference Aug 30-Sep 2. Stop by and say hi.
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Contributors
We'd like to thank everyone that has contributed articles to WeRelate. There have been so many wonderful contributions made over the past few months. It's very gratifying to see how excited people are getting about using the website. I wish we could highlight all of our contributors, but in this newsletter we have space to highlight only a couple. We'll try to highlight new people each month.
Aburski has contributed more than 50 edits for Polish and Prussian places. Wow! He has done a great job of extended the WeRelate Community's place index.
Amelia.Gerlicher has created the Massachusetts Online Vital Records Research Guide. To quote the kids: "totally awesome."
New Developments
People are getting excited about the new Person and Family wiki pages due out in the next few weeks. You can see a sample page at Ella Boone Grey Phillips and another at Dhanks/Ephraim Knowlton Hanks. These are just sample pages; what do you think?
The format is likely to change quite a bit in the next few weeks. Please comment at the WeRelate:Watercooler page. The new Person and Family page formats will include sections for posting facts and events, relationships, pictures and scanned documents, biographies, notes, sources, and links to other websites. You will be able to completely document your research on-line.
Your cousins will be able to find your research, see your documentation, and you won't have to send a single photocopy. Yeah! You can even post and document alternate opinions and explore different theories. And you can link to your research log, divide up research activities, and keep a list of your dead ends.
The best part, of course, is that your cousins can easily post what they have and include their documentation. We can finally start working together instead of duplicating each other's work.
Cool!
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These are the mysterious Cliftons. Not a very smiley bunch are they? Do you ever wonder what these kind of folks were like? Who were they really? What would possess people to put everything they owned in a wagon and head off to parts unknown, build a very small house and live on a dry land farm? I really don't know much about this family except Grandma wrote "Cliftons" on the back of the picture. Her family lived in Oklahoma and she kept this picture all her life. These people were important to her. If this is one of your families would you let us know? We'll soon make it easier for everyone to share and identify pictures on-line.
Calling all Cousins
We are very encouraged by the response at the conferences. Genealogists are very enthusiastic about having our own community web portal. Wiki is such a new concept. People usually start out not really knowing what Wiki can do and leave the booth with a smile. "At last," or "Why haven't I seen this before?" Sometimes it's just, "I gotta do this."
So, here we are at the beginning of the Wiki Age. All of us. We can build a great community, help each other, work together and find our families! I'll contribute what I know, you contribute what you know. We'll find long lost relatives, together.
We are very grateful for all the comments and suggestions. Let us hear from you at the Watercooler.
Humor
Genealogists aren't crazy, but sometimes we lose our census!
Would you like to share a good genealogy joke? If so, please send to Solveig.
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