FAQ - AboutMe Pages

Q: How should I name my AboutMe Page?

A: AboutMe_RealName

We ask that all "about me" pages are named "AboutMe_" followed by the name you chose as your Real Name. Any spaces should be replaced by underscore characters. So Mary Anne would enter "AboutMe_Mary_Anne" in the box on the Add New AboutMe Page before clicking the "Create New About Me Page" button.

Q: What content should I include on my AboutMe page?

A: Whatever you're comfortable including.

We suggest you provide some summary information about how you got started in genealogy and about your line(s) of Reeves research, where they came from and in what time period. Please do not include a full lineage here and please do not include identifying information about other living family members.

You may also want to share a little information about yourself and your other interests.

This information will help your fellow TRP community members get a better understanding of the context of your research and your postings to TRP.

Q: Is it safe to add personal information to my AboutMe page?

A: We aim to make it so, but please use your discretion.

The basic philosophy of The Reeves Project is that content posted on Wiki pages should be accessible to anybody on the internet, without the need for an account on TRP. We do this so that our collective research is freely available and in the hope that other people, like you, will want to join us and add to the community's collective knowledge.

With respect to an AboutMe page, we recognise that this basic philosophy is at odds with good internet practice of not publicly posting any personally identifying information. Within TRP we have a technique which allows information to be shared with fellow community members, but not with the internet at large and advise this is used for your AboutMe page.

You may either create a new blank wiki page using the "Quick Edit a Wiki Page" and remember to apply the "AboutMe" template or (recommended) use the explicit "Add New AboutMe Page" which pre-applies the same template.

The template only needs including once, you should not re-apply the template when you subsequently edit your AboutMe page.

In addition to your "About Me" page, you should also be equally mindful when editing any wiki page and being tempted to include a comment such as "Alpha Reevez was John Smith's great grandfather". The FAQ For Our Eyes Only provides additional information of techniques for protecting such content.

And Finally

It is likely that your AboutMe page will be one of the first few you create within The Reeves Project as you're still coming to grips with our Wiki software. The text editor in the Wiki isn't currently WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), but instead relies on a not too friendly mark-up syntax. For example, an exclamation make (!) at the start of a line marks the line as a heading. So don't spend too much time trying to make your "AboutMe_" page look pretty at this stage. You can come back and do that later once you've gained some experience. And don't worry about making mistakes as your mentors will help you to straighten things out. It's all about learning and experimenting at this stage; mistakes are expected - we made enough of them when we were starting out (and still do).