Familypedia:Community Portal

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Welcome!


This page is designed to help you navigate the Genealogy Wiki, and make use of its capabilities for displaying and sharing your family heritage. There are over 1500 operational "Wikia" in the Wikia.com community on the internet, all built around the same premise of collaborative efforts. Think of a wiki as one big web page that anyone can edit. You can review existing content, or add new content, depending on your needs and interests.

This Wiki is designed to let people create and improve articles about their ancestors.

You may find information you need about an ancestor in an article that someone else previously placed. If you find that you know something about a person in an existing article, but it isn't already covered, feel free to add that information. No one will mind. In fact, we want you to edit these articles. If you have something new to say about the subject---or maybe you just know how to say something better (typo corrections are always welcomed)---just click the "Edit" tab on the article, and edit away. You can't make an irretrievable mistake; everything is backed up and recoverable in case of need.

You may even want to create an article yourself. In fact, we hope you will! Thats because it's through the creation of such articles that this site grows, and becomes a resource of benefit to many. 

This site has three major purposes:
 * It serves as a repository of family history information
 * It allows people to add to that repository by editing existing articles
 * it allows people to create entirely new articles about family members, and connect them into a network of related people.

The boxes below this one provide help for each of those functions along with ways you may help other researchers. Item 5 (see table of contents) is intended to give users a pointer to the site registration page.
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Finding Things on the Wiki


Search Machines

 * Use the simple search box in the sidebar
 * Use the more intermediate level search box below

 Search This Wiki

or use the advanced search machine
 * | Use Advanced Search

Each of the above has its advantages and disadvantages. Some additional guidance is found at Guidance

Indexes
Click here to select a surname for which you would like to see an index.

Special Projects
There are also a few Special Projects that have been developed around certain research areas. There aren't many of these, but we can expect more to be added in the near future. Anyone can create one. Discussion at Genealogy:Watercooler.


 * The Wigton Walkers Focusing on descendants of John Walker of Wigton, Scotland
 * The Walker ShortList Focusing on Walkers in Southwest VA, Northwest NC, and Northeast TN


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Editing Articles

 * Category:Help - updated list of the most helpful pages
 * Help:Editing - starts with the basics
 * Margie Cowan's Wiki Tips, Tricks, Links
 * Pages that need to be in a category or two
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Creating Articles

 * Help:Starting pages
 * Naming articles
 * Wanted articles (red links on more than one page: someone has considered them worth having articles about)
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Login and Registration
It's not necessary to register with this site to use it. However, there are several advantages to you if you do register. So, if you would like to register, go | here. Also, it's a very good idea to log in each time you use the Wiki (See "Spam" elsewhere on this page.)
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Other Things You Might Like to Know

 * Short guided tour of site
 * Mission and policies
 * Mailing list
 * Administrators
 * Deal with spam
 * Detailed statistics
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