USGenWeb Wikipedia Page

[Randy C]

Hello All,

I got a spam from a person that wants me to pay them to create a wikipedia page for OHGenWeb.

In today’s highly competitive digital landscape, credibility and visibility play a crucial role in business success. A Wikipedia page is one of the most effective ways to establish authority, enhance search engine rankings, and increase brand recognition.

I went and searched Wikipedia for USGenWeb and was kind of surprised there is no page, even though it looks like USGenWeb has been used as a source over 500 times!:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=usgenweb&ns0=1

I was kind of surprised that Rootsweb didn't have one either, they are just mentioned in the list of ancestry's takeovers.

Should there be a USGenWeb page on Wikipedia?

Randy

[Paula Perkins]

Randy,

I think it would be a great idea. I think I received a similar email. We can create a wiki page and a FamilySearch page for state and counties I think. All the speakers and genealogy libraries will then see we still exist! 

I'll will try to comment again soon will more information. 

Thanks for sharing this.

Paula

Paula Perkins, SC

GAGenWeb & TXGenWeb Projects

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[Dale H. Cook]

On 28 Jul 2025 12:09 pm, Randy C wrote:

> I got a spam from a person that wants me to pay them to create a
> wikipedia page for OHGenWeb.
>

> In today’s highly competitive digital landscape, *credibility and
> visibility* play a crucial role in business success.

That is typical of the spam that I get for my MAGenWeb pages, and for my
pages for my other interests. The giveaway is "business success." All of
my pages are non-commercial, so the spammer has never visited them. My
email address has obviously been harvested by a bot.
--
Dale H. Cook, Member, NEHGS, AGS, MA Soc. of Mayflower Descendants;
Massachusetts State Coordinator for the USGenWeb® Project;
Administrator of https://plymouthcolony.net

[Lynda Peach]

Hi everyone & especially, Randy, Paula & Dale. I'm the new ASC for MOgen and also serve as technical advisor. 

Re: the spammers. Never reply. Never click on the links in the email, even if they are tantalizing. Block them, report to your email provider, then delete the email. 

Re Wikipedia -- Wikis look like regular HTML but actually have their own coding setup. The USgen is on the Ancestry wiki page. And every county on FamilySearch, done by the LDS, already has a county. If it doesn't, contact them and ask for one. 

As a new ASC, I used to see a few counties needing adoption in Missouri. Now, the number of orphans is almost overwhelming, except our new SC, Martha Graham, has a good plan in the process of implementation.

Coding time - personal opinion here - should be spent on updating county sites. Temporarily adopt one and make it better. 

Lynda Coffman Peach
MOgen Assistant State Coordinator & Technical Advisor

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[Norma Hass]

Martha,

What is your great plan for MOGenWeb's adoptable counties?

Norma

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[Shone Brooks]

One of the initial inputs to creating such a WP article (and no, we need not pay someone to do that for us) is collecting some reliable/authoritative sources who have made (arguably) factual statements about USGenWeb.

Conducting that exercise helps determine whether or not USGenWeb is "noteworthy" enough to warrant an article. If such source material proves hard to come by, that suggests the answer is no.

But if (subjectively) enough external material is identified, then organizing those sources and what they have stated feeds the actual work of creating the article because the article is not to be what USGenWeb says about itself, but what other respectable sources have said about it. This is important because many groups basically copy and paste their own web sites' "About Us" and "History" pages to gin up a WP article, and that's generally frowned up in WP.

Randy --

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Shone Brooks, MIGenWeb County Coordinator for Iosco, Jackson, and Washtenaw

[Randy C]

Shone, that sounds like a very good way to go about it. I notice that many times, Wiki articles use the wayback machine as a source, so I assume those are not 'frowned' on, that might help USGenWeb.

Pauli, I haven't been allowed to edit FamilySearch Wiki for quite awhile, at least a year I think. They were shutting down to regroup but nothing has happened yet. I have been an FS editor since the first call -20 years ago, I was always making sure links to my counties were up to date, now FS Wiki is like rootsweb, useless and a hindrance.

[tngenewhiz]

Randy, the FS Wiki is quite alive and under redevelopment.  I, too, was an editor from the beginning and remained active.  I was disappointed when they decided to roll it all in-house, but it makes sense from a business standpoint.  Many of the updates are done by missionaries and other full-time volunteers who work from a specific framework.

If you'd like to know more about the FS Wiki, I strongly recommend you contact Darris Williams, who is a member of the Wiki admin team.  His contact information is at https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/FamilySearch_Library_Research_Specialists

[Randy C]

Thank you for the contact info, I will give it a try.

I think the FS Wiki is an important place for us to have our links correct, many times it is near the top of the hits when you search for county info.

Randy

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--

Randy C
GenWeb Volunteer
BS"D

[Randy C]

I spoke too soon, there doesn't seem to be a way for me to contact anyone. It says that I must be an "editor".  Unless I was downgraded with the change, maybe I never was an editor, just someone they allowed to edit pages?

Can you contact him? Maybe there could be a USGenWeb team of trusted editors, with their people monitoring our link edits, to make sure they comply with the new standard?