I Came, I Saw, I Wiki'd

I was lured into joining Twitter not long ago because I didn't want to be left out. But I still maintain my rebel status because I refuse to follow Oprah or Aston Kutcher. I don't do too much on there, mainly I follow genealogists, a couple of twittering cats, and some pseudo-Christopher Walkens (I like to think my tastes are eclectic, which is a much nicer word than inconsistent or weird).

Whilst reading my tweets one day, I came across a genealogy wiki different from the one that I entered myself into before, this one you could create pages for each of your family members. I was intrigued and intimidated at the same time.

After registering, and with encouragement from the gentleman in charge of it, I dove in and started to create some pages for my Domelle line. I have to admit, I was scared! I don't know why, it's not like any mistakes I made couldn't be fixed and the world wasn't going to come to an end if I did something wrong. I know, I am a little uptight, I like things to be Right and Correct and if you aren't going to do it Properly, then don't bother doing it At All. The best part was that when I would go in the next day, magic elves (aka, Robin) would have fixed my grossest errors and explained to me how to do it right the next time. What a great guy!

And so, I debut for you, my in-progess collection of wiki pages on my Domelle family:

Domelle surname page

My great-great-grandfather: Adam Domelle
My great-grandfather: William Domelle
My great-great uncle: Nickolaus Domelle
My great-great aunt: Anna Domelle
My great-great aunt: Lena Domelle
My 1st cousin 3x removed: John Domele
My 2nd cousin 2x removed: Anthony Domele
My 2nd cousin 2x removed: Martin Domele

There is lots more to do, more info to fill out, more citations for information, but I think it's turning out pretty cool. And it gets the info out there in a way that others may understand better, rather than looking at my genealogy reports.

And I encourage others to try it out! I am a pseudo-technical person, I sound like I know what I'm talking about, but when it comes down to it, I don't actually know much at all about the guts behind things (like html, xml, shtml, abcdml, blahblahblahyoupeoplearemakingthisupml) on the web. But it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be once I dove in. I now know the power of these thingies: <> and these thingies: [].

The most amazing part though, is that it's actually helped me at work! Who knew? Suddenly I realized that I could actually contribute to our internal wiki because I actually knew how it worked now. I was in there today, creating new pages and linking and feeling awfully productive and contributory.


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