@Jeni - Since I just @pinged you, you'll get this message in your Stack Exchange inbox in the top left corner. Whenever you @username someone in a comment or chat, they get a little notification.
@GeneJ this is why everyone should put a photo up! It helps to keep you in check when you shed some of your anonymity and know that people you know might read the things you write here one day. ;)
"This coming Saturday, October 13th around lunch 3PM UTC we’ll be testing our redundant datacenter and failover procedure. We’re hoping for two brief downtimes while we swap over and swap back between New York and Oregon are all the outside world is aware of. We’re planning for mass chaos and lots of fail."
@RebeccaChernoff FYI ... Not sure where we might report problems with the redundant data center testing, but it looks like part of our private beta stats have been reset. area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/43502/… Questions per day and avid users stats are back at zero
Hi @Jeni - If I happen to be around, I'm happy to help brainstorm some edit ideas for your post. :) :) And GeneJ committed to updating his answer, so I think together we 3 would make a great team! Let me know.
One issue that concerns me... we have a lot of new to SE people on the site.
I saw some of the chats from CanadaGirlScout, who had some bad experiences with some other SE members on another SE site. It got me thinking......
How can we give constructive feedback to people without scaring them away?
It's really important for people to know that just because we happen to discuss a question in meta or chat, that we're doing it because we want to make this beta a success and also help get really awesome answers! So far everyone here's been great, and we should continue to be nice and still focus on good quality. :)
@GeneJ - Wish Jeni was here..... I'd rather discuss her post w/her here.... :(
Did you see her self-answer? This has me wondering, could this be a "process" question?
A question about the process itself rather than how to find a specific person?
That's how she answered it. :)
I personally don't plan to edit without hearing her thoughts on the subject as I'd be interested to see what she has/had in mind for this post. I think I'll check back in later after getting some coffee and breakfast. :)
@GeneJ I appreciate all your constructive direction regarding my Charles James Sanderson work.
@GeneJ It's been amazing what a great trail exists for Charles, I was even able to find a small ad he took out in the London Times and of course I was THRILLED to find his Will, although I don't have a copy of every page from it. I need to work on that.
@LorraineW Thank you. I don't think there is any more rewarding work in genealogy than proving up a birth date and location in that process. Ha! Could be downright emotional about the thrill. I do have some other resources for you about New York.
@GeneJ What I LOVE about this 3rd great grandfather, is my favorite grandfather shared his first name. And I love the fact that we came full circle from England to the U.S. Me and my mother (born in Massachusetts), my grandfather, Charles Henry Sanderson (born in Canada), his father Charles Hugh Sanderson (born in England), his father Walter Leighton Sanderson (born in England), his father Charles James Sanderson (born in New York).
@LorraineW It has all the makings of a wonderful genealogical article--one you should write and either blog or seek to publish once you have completed the research.
We have people here who legitimately want to help build a new Q&A site, and that's awesome! There's a lot of positive energy here, and we should continue to build on that.
No, I don't think so. Here's why.
Asking questions is hard!
You put yourself out there and take a risk to try to help the community. At the same time, question askers are the most important people in a new community, because without them, we won't have any answers.
there will be nothing for the experts to do.
So no matter how bad a question might look, we should always treat those question askers like gold and be as nice and encouraging as we can.
At the same time, it's important to make sure our quality is high, and setting the tone early for discussions around questions and getting people used to the idea that constructive feedback is to be expected will help us down the road.
@jmort253 Just a footnote, I see some good cross border/continent exchanges being made (about which I get all excited). I also see those I know to be technologists and those, non-teckies participating in the same answers to questions. (Which is even more exciting).
We could end up with help vampires, and we'll get them.... but anyone in our private beta is here because they're either passionate about Genealogy, passionate about building Q&A, or both. So I wouldn't call anyone here a help vampire.
@GeneJ - I answered a couple questions as best I could, and asked one so far. I'm one of the non-techies when it comes to Genealogy. I'm definitely learning a lot just in the 3 days we've been active!
What do you mean by "cross border/continent exchanges"?
Thank you for saying that asking questions is hard. I might not have fully appreciated the rationale for the beta before the questions came.
By cross border, etc., I am recognizing that we have folks from different continents chiming in on pretty high level topics. This is important for genealogy, which has traditionally gathered at regional/national levels.
The global nature of the Internet... wow. I didn't even think about that. So someone searching for a German ancestor, for instance, could benefit from the knowledge of people who actually live in Germany.
@jmort253 It's a core potential. We gather as scholars around records/knowledge, etc., but now we begin to gather as a world community.
@jmort253 I'm among the FHISO volunteers. FHISO is going to be the international standards developing organization for genealogy. A key word there being international. Our success will in part depend on participation by the global community and also on the ease with which genealogists and technologists communicate well.
@GeneJ Nice, so there are a lot of fhiso.org peeps here.
On some SE sites, the commuities have a question per week post in meta or on their blog.
I was thinking that Genealogy SE could do something a bit different and maybe highlight major breakthroughs that occur in some people's research based on their interactions here.
I thought about blog too. But I lean towards waiting, maybe building up some interest first, sort of like a mini-committment phase like in Area 51
Last thing we'd want is a blog that doesn't get updated.
Meta is a good way to start with something like highlighting questions because if it doesn't get maintained, there's no big loss.
If enough people were excited to be authors on a blog, then I think it would be a really awesome tool!
Writing stories about people's experiences in their research could be inspiring to others and also be a great way to expose the site to the outside world, as well as to share with the community.
What that means is that 273 people had this same problem.
If enough people benefit from the content posted on Outdoors SE, then they'll likely keep coming back, or tell others, or even join the community themselves.
At this point, focusing on the quality and asking "How would this look from Google" is one of the most important ways to organically grow the site. :)
Best way to promote IMHO. "Build it and they will come."
I agree. (But I am not unbiased in believing that how the questions are asked (including repeat buzz words) will make a difference.
I asked the question about accepting answers in part from my experience on outdoors.
Beg as I might, I can't invite more competing answers. Nor can I gain more notoriety or acceptance of my own. If this was a classical question, I might understand.
@GeneJ - I'll redirect the question to you, since you know more about Genealogy than I do. As an expert, do you find the majority of the questions interesting?
Are these posts that would draw other people in that would love to participate and share knowledge Q&A style?
What information do I need to have about my ancestor before I can find the ship he/she came here on?
