family search indexing marketing
Posted: Mon Oct 15, 2007 11:35 am
I am a little disappointed with the current management of the Family Search Indexing project. I think that there is a lot more they could be doing to encourage greater productivity from their membership.
For one thing, they are a little closed. I think just some simple auto-updated statistics on the site would go a long way towards getting people fired up about the work. People like to think that they are part of something big, and from all I've heard, the amount of work that is getting done qualifies as pretty big. The more work people do, the bigger the numbers will climb, leading to greater excitement and levels of work...
To go along with the statistics, I also think rankings might be popular. You could see, for example, that last month you were the 3rd most active volunteer in your stake (or area for nonmembers), 247th in your state/country, and 8,914th in the world.
Another item that I feel has been over looked is the publication of a monthly newsletter. This should be easily found on the web site, but all members should also be asked if they would like to subscribe via email. Why? Simply because people get busy and forget about records extraction. It might not be that they don't want to or can't do it, its just that they don't think about it. The monthly newsletter would not only act as a gentle reminder, but it could also keep people updated on the new projects that have been added/completed, give tips for extracting, and just help people to feel included.
Right now, the extraction program is too much of a blackbox. A lot goes in, but seemingly very little comes out.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. I think the Distributed Proofing Project from Project Gutenberg could teach us a lot. http://www.pgdp.net . The first thing you see on their site is the number of books completed last month, and since the site began.
Aaron
For one thing, they are a little closed. I think just some simple auto-updated statistics on the site would go a long way towards getting people fired up about the work. People like to think that they are part of something big, and from all I've heard, the amount of work that is getting done qualifies as pretty big. The more work people do, the bigger the numbers will climb, leading to greater excitement and levels of work...
To go along with the statistics, I also think rankings might be popular. You could see, for example, that last month you were the 3rd most active volunteer in your stake (or area for nonmembers), 247th in your state/country, and 8,914th in the world.
Another item that I feel has been over looked is the publication of a monthly newsletter. This should be easily found on the web site, but all members should also be asked if they would like to subscribe via email. Why? Simply because people get busy and forget about records extraction. It might not be that they don't want to or can't do it, its just that they don't think about it. The monthly newsletter would not only act as a gentle reminder, but it could also keep people updated on the new projects that have been added/completed, give tips for extracting, and just help people to feel included.
Right now, the extraction program is too much of a blackbox. A lot goes in, but seemingly very little comes out.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. I think the Distributed Proofing Project from Project Gutenberg could teach us a lot. http://www.pgdp.net . The first thing you see on their site is the number of books completed last month, and since the site began.
Aaron