With more and more people discovering how to “geneablog” there are more and more questions about concepts such as “blog carnivals” and “memes,” as well as genealogy terminology such as “lookups” and “cemetery inventories.” While the geneablogging community has always been a helpful and welcoming one, having a definitive resource one could go to would have great value.
Thus was born gene@pedia. It is a wiki based on the MediaWiki platform which drives Wikipedia. Users prefer wikis that mimic Wikipedia since the “look and feel” seems to make them more comfortable.
On the downside, MediaWiki is not an easy platform for most users. The main hinderance: it is not WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) meaning that edits cannot be made in a Rich Text Format dialog. There are some basic codes that must be used.
Despite there being an extensive set of Help files for gene@pedia, I will be working on a more extensive set of tools for users so they can become acclimated to the MediaWiki environment. This will include recorded videos as well as some webcasts where users can join a webconference, get on the phone and we’ll have a good old-fashioned “wiki bee” as I’m calling it!
If you have questions about gene@pedia please let me know and I’ll be happy to answer them!
Comments 3
This looks like fun – I’m interested in Tombstone Tuesday, etc. (like how to find the homepage to tell me what it’s all about)
Posted 23 Jan 2009 at 14:09 ¶Hi Thomas,
I have tried to register my e-mail address with geneapedia, but I keep getting a message that the code has expired. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks for any assistance you can provide.
Posted 01 Feb 2009 at 08:54 ¶Oops – it finally worked. Never mind!
Posted 01 Feb 2009 at 09:28 ¶Post a Comment