Sourcerers Challenge Team Sandbox

Profile manager: Debi Hoag [send private message]

To Post a New Challenge

1. Be ready to post the challenge the last day of the prior month between 11 am and noon Eastern Time.
2. Open a new question in G2G titled "Sourcerers’ Challenge Month of MONTH_NAME YEAR"
3. Set Category to "The Tree House"
4. Copy and paste the Sample below
5. Apply G2G tags: challenges, profiles, sources, connectors
6. Edit the Headline to the correct month
7. If the graphic did not copy over
   1. click the picture insertion icon
   2. copy and paste this URL in the URL space:
      https://www.wikitree.com/photo.php/6/6b/Social_Media_Collection-20.png
   3. adjust width to 300
   4. click save.
8. You may need to bold a few things, just review the post. You might need to increase the heading size to 16. For some reason not all the formatting comes over in the copy.
9. Make sure the "email me" box is checked with your email address.
10. Click the "Ask the Question" button.
11. Copy the number that follows g2g in the Monthly Challenge G2G URL
12. Update the Calendar Space page for the Sourcerers Challenge
    1. Go to Calendar Sourcerers Challenge
    2. Find the code set for the month of the Monthly Challenge just created
    3. Paste the number from the URL at the end of the line that says g2g=
    4. Save the page
13. Monitor the comments to make sure people are using the answer function unless they really do not want to win the monthly challenge like John Noel.
14. Monitor the answers to see if there are any questions posted.
15. Post an acknowledgment to each answer so that you will be notified if a comment is posted on any answer

To Finish a Challenge

For future challenges, it may be easier to add people who say they are new in the thread to the spreadsheet immediately with green in the month but no total. Otherwise, new people need to be checked against the thread to determine if they added an answer.

1. Run through the thread to see if anyone posted to their answer
2. Check to see if it was the first month for any of those (fastest way is to look for existing Sourcerers badge)
3. Open the Sourcerers' Challenge spreadsheet and the finished month's Challenge Tracker (links can be found in the Challenge Tracker Stats at the bottom of the Project page)
4. add a bunch of blank lines to the top (7-21 is a good start)
5. Hide columns C-previous month
6. Do the following on the spreadsheet for those who used the thread to track and those who used the tracker
   1. Ctrl+F, type surname,
      1. If Found: ESC, tab twice, type number, repeat from 6.1
      2. If Not Found: Move to top of sheet, add the name, WikiTree ID, and number, set the month column to lime green (used for adding sourcerers badge), repeat from 6.1
7. If, while doing tracker totals, a number is already in the monthly column, that means the person used both the tracker and the answer post.
   1. Add the two numbers together unless they told you in their answer that they had added all the thread ones to the tracker.
8. Debi will award Sourcerers' Badges to all the people with Lime in the month

Sample Post

Hello, Sourcerers! If the clock has rolled around for you, and we are in the new month it is time to start sourcing! Prior month Owl Stickers and Sourcerers Badges will be posted soon.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please “answer” here (not comment) and let me know if you will be using the tracker or if you will be listing your profiles here in your post. Either one is perfectly fine.

To participate:

• Review the Rules
• If you are new to the Sourcerers' Challenge, click the "answer" link (not the comment link) and tell us you are participating

You only need to answer this month's post if you don't already have the Sourcerers' Badge. You are welcome to add an answer to ask questions or offer encouragement.

If you have a problem with the Tracker let us know by adding a comment to the question that opened this thread.

USING THE TRACKER

The tracker should only be used when the profile meets the Monthly Challenge definition of Unsourced (see the Rules). Add a comment to the question if you are unsure if something counts as Unsourced. You can use either the Unsourced Profile Category or the DBE Report for Unsourced profiles to find profiles that will definitely qualify.

After you save an edit, a green banner appears at the top of the profile edit page with a dark “button” labeled Challenge Tracker is a link to the Tracker page. Click the link and, on the page that comes up, select Sourcerers challenge and click the appropriate hint in the right column (or fill in your own if none of the canned answers fit what you did). Click Add Action and you are finished. The Tracker tracks the number of profiles to which you have add sources. You can see the results for any monthly challenge using this link. The current month is at the bottom

https://plus.wikitree.com/Challenges/SourcerersChallenge/default.htm

Remember, your sources need to be as full and specific as possible, so others find them useful. That means, if the source is online, you should link to it. If it is a page from a Help:Sources#Book book, the page number should be included so others can easily see where you found the reference. Some books and magazines have free-space pages to help with citation formats. Find them in the Source Category.

When you can, it is great to do a bit more while adding sources, like clean up the gedcom leftovers or help the formatting from older profiles. Sources are important, but if you cannot find them among all the other stuff, they are not helping as much as they could.

The Orphaned profiles category is another great place to look for unsourced profiles.

If you attempt to add sources to a profile and cannot find any, please add a note under a == Research Notes == section (click the link for examples and instructions on placement) giving where you tried to find records. Something like "Looked for John in the US Census records for 1900-1940 and could not find him on FamilySearch or Ancestry" would be fine. Or, "Searched google for an obituary and did not find one." That way the next researcher knows where to start. Do not remove the Unsourced Template and do not use the tracker to count in your tally.

The Monthly Challenge runs from the first of the month and ends on the last day of the month, GMT time. If you were awarded a sticker and would like to post it to your profile, you should receive the code in an email. However, some email programs translate the sticker code to the actual sticker. If you don't receive your code, send a private message to the person who awarded your sticker. They'll send you the code in a private message.

The Current Challenge Tracker Results Page has up-to-the-minute stats for those of you using the Challenge Tracker.

https://plus.wikitree.com/Challenges/SourcerersChallenge/default.htm

Ask any questions here in the thread, otherwise, SOURCE!

Recognition Stickers

... ... ... reached the Blue Skies milestone by sourcing 50 profiles in the ??MONTH YEAR?? Sourcerers Project Sourcerers' Challenge.

... ... ... reached the Red Hot Effort milestone by sourcing 100 profiles in the ??MONTH YEAR?? Sourcerers Project Sourcerers' Challenge.

... ... ... reached the In the Money milestone by sourcing 300 profiles in the ??MONTH YEAR?? Sourcerers Project Sourcerers' Challenge.

... ... ... reached the Royal Effort milestone by sourcing 500 profiles in the ??MONTH YEAR?? Sourcerers Project Sourcerers' Challenge.

Golden Owl for full year Sourcerers:

... ... ... reached the Golden Achievement milestone by sourcing at least one profile in every month of the ??YEAR?? Sourcerers Project Sourcerers' Challenge.

Golden Owl for partial year Sourcerers:

... ... ... was awarded the Golden Achievement Milestone for at least one sourced profile tracked every month since you received the Sourcerers Badge in the 2022 Sourcerers Project Sourcerers' Challenge.

... ... ... earned ? Blue, ? Red, ? Green, and ? Purple Milestone Owls while participating in the monthly ??YEAR?? Sourcerers Project Sourcerers' Challenge.