Wiki Stats - End June 2011

The total number of pages in the Wiki (as at 1 July 2011) has grown to 3311 (previously 3172, 2940, 2661), an increase of 139 pages. Of these 1181 pages (was 1132, 1034, 935) begin with the letter R and are probably related to a R*v*s individual and 479 pages (463, 413, 305) begin with a number, so are probably a date related gleaning. We currently have 1270 wiki pages categorised as "People" of which 958 begin with the letter R.
At the very end of the month we enrolled Bill Bates as our newest community member and we look forward to seeing his contributions once he finds his way around the Wiki. Welcome Bill.

Finding TRP - Part 2

Last Month I mentioned that TRP was showing up in search results from all three major search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing. Since then, there's been great progress, but sadly as yet nothing to show for it. Today (1 July 2011), Google is still only seeing the Home, About Us and Join Us pages; Yahoo & Bing just the Home Page.

I eventually got my head round the way the Site Map generation tool I was using worked and posted an ad-hoc news item The Site Map Saga on 20 June. Barry very swiftly uploaded the site map file I created to the server, but unfortunately I couldn't get Google to find the file. After some more head scratching, I had to ask Barry to place the file into a different directory on the server, at which point Google found the file and reported one invalid entry (which would have been OK before we had to move the file!). Barry very swiftly deleted the offending line and Google processed the new file without errors.

That was on 28 June and we're still waiting for Google to actually crawl the list of pages its read from the site map and index those pages. Only then will they appear in search results. The situation is very similar with Yahoo & Bing who have a collaborative agreement these days. Yahoo reports they've successfully read the site map, and the file is pending submission to Microsoft (who own Bing).

Entering   site:thereevesproject.org   in your favourite search engine should report all the pages they've indexed. I keep checking every day hoping soon to see 3000 plus entries.

Gleanings

Early in the life of TRP we recognised the need for something more than just having pages about people and the concept of a "gleaning" evolved. What we expect of person page is reasonably documented in FAQ_Person_Page_Naming,   FAQ_Person_Page_Content and FAQ_Person_Page_Linking_Individuals.

However, until now we've lacked similar guidance on a gleaning page, which would help new community members get started. I've created three DRAFT pages on which I'd appreciate your feedback. ZZZ-Old-Draft-FAQ-Gleanings-Naming will become FAQ_Gleaning_Page_Naming and ZZZ-Old-Draft-FAQ-Gleanings-Content will become FAQ_Gleaning_Page_Content. I'm fairly comfortable with these two pages and they provide a good parallel to the corresponding person page FAQ's.

I'm less comfortable with ZZZ-Old-Draft-Gleanings which is more of an introduction to Gleanings. It may or may not be a FAQ when its finished. Again constructive feed back would be welcomed. If you fancy rewriting parts, please edit the page rather than post a comment and add your text directly to the wiki page. If you start and end your text with a ^ it will neatly be put in a box, clearly showing it as an alternate version. Please don't delete the original text at this stage.
Subsequently updated (31 Oct 2011) to remove links to draft pages which no longer exist.
The three new FAQ's are FAQ_Gleanings for general background plus FAQ_Gleanings_Page_Naming and FAQ_Gleanings_Page_Content.

Martin's Month Ahead

Martin's Month Ahead is only available to Registered Users