Genealogy Chat

I'm not sure how many people here are familiar with Wikipedia, the online, open source Enclyclopedia. It's fast turning into one of the world's most helpful and accurate sources of information. For those not familiar, the idea is that anyone who considers themselves an expert on a subject can edit the information in a wikipedia page (though if you put in nonsence, it's likely to be edited out pdq) People now (at least for IT literate groups) are starting to write various wiki forums and interest groups. The beauty of these is that they effectively become a collaberative web site where a common interest group pools its accumulated wisdom on a subject. Unlike a fast moving message board such as this, the information is structured and hyperlinked so that an organised body of knowledge develops, rather than messages being burried under the deluge of incomming information as on here. In theory a wiki is the ideal place to develop things like, most useful sites lists, selection of helplists etc, as the information can be stored and is not subject to the sort of corporate overview of a commercial site such as GR. I thought about starting one up, but quickly found that something has been started already. http://en(.)wikibooks(.)org/wiki/Genealogy:_UK remove () The problem with the site at the moment is lack of numbers, especially compared with a site such as GF which has such a high profile for anyone doing research in the UK. As such it's forums are never going top be a fraction as active as these. Nevertheless it may be a good place to place such things as a most useful sites/ best tips type lists. If you are not familiar wityh the concept of wikis in may be worth having a peak at this site to get the hang of what i believe will be an incrasingly inportant and common information source. Wade

It certainly looks promising... As the URL doesn't have the dreaded combination of 'CO' preceded by a '.' you can put it like this: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Genealogy:_UK Christine