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Revision as of 14:53, 13 March 2012

Welcome to the Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness Wiki

The original Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK) website was the brain child of Bridgett Schneider. Shortly before her death in 2011, she had a computer disaster and the site has been down since. Before the RAOGK site went dark, the global organization consisted of over 4,000 volunteers in every U.S. state and many international locations. The RAOGK wiki is dedicated to Bridgett's memory, to continue her efforts, and to bring back a site researchers and volunteers dearly loved and miss.

The way RAOGK worked was that volunteers agreed to do at least one free genealogy research task per month in their local area as an Act of Kindness. The RAOGK volunteers agreed not to charge for their research time; however, researchers were required to reimbuse the volunteer for expenses incurred in fulfilling the research request (e.g., copies, printing fees, postage, film or video tape, parking fees, gasoline, etc.).

On state pages, volunteers would indicate what services they would perform -- e.g., courthouse/public records lookups, library research, tombstone research, etc. -- and what expenses (never their time) they expected reimbursement for.
Similarly, researchers would locate a volunteer by going to a state page and selecting a researcher from a list of counties and based on the volunteer's description of services they would perform.

Historical Background Info

For now, see the Wikipedia article about RAOGK.

(In time, when all the state and international pages are restored, this section can be modified.)

Bridgett Schneider (Findagrave) Memorial

Getting Started at RAOGK

Welcome to this Wikia, and thank you for your contributions! We invite you to log in and create a user name.

Creating a user name is free and takes only a minute and it gives you greater anonymity if that is your wish. In addition, it is easier for other contributors to ask you questions and help you.

Of course, we hope you continue to make contributions, even if not logged in.
If you are new to Wikia or wikis in general, please visit the Community portal for an outline of some of the main parts of the site and links to pages that show you how to edit.
Discussion of any aspect of the site, and enquiries, can be made at the Forum or on the "discussion" page associated with each article. Please sign and date your contributions there, so that readers know "who to talk to" and whether your message is probably still of current interest.

Research Request Guidelines

Before requesting research help from a volunteer, please read the Research Request Guidelines page.

Info for Volunteers

Before volunteering, please read the Info for Volunteers page.

Suggestion for Volunteers: To reduce spam and to keep RAOGK email separate from regular email, volunteers may want to create a free email with gmail, hotmail, or yahoo to use only for your RAOGK correspondence, possibly even creating a username with RAOGK in it -- e.g., RAOGK_username@provider.xxx. (In creating the new account, do not tie the new account to an existing email account. Thus, if your RAOGK account were to be hacked, the hacker wouldn't have a link to your regular email account.)
Create a wiki account (one-time action)
Sign in to the RAOGK wiki.
Modify your personal User page (optional) ... in the Search field, type User:YourUserName (the name you chose when you created your wiki account) and press Enter.

and/or
Create a sandbox page (to play with wiki text) ... in the Search field, type User:YourUserName/Sandbox

Initially, you'll be prompted to add a page (this is a one-time action) ... click the Add page button.

You can practice/experiment with wiki text on your Sandbox page.

For details on creating/modifying wiki text, see Wiki 101 for RAOGK

Wiki Basics

Here are some links for basic wiki editing ... yes, you can actually edit your entry/information on the wiki page. You can bold, italicize, change the content of your description of services. You can also Follow pages. Suggestion: Click the Follow button below the page where your services appear. Then, anytime the page changes, you'll get an alert.

First, please create a wiki account and
Sign in to the RAOGK wiki.

Once you create an account, you'll have your own personal User page. You can also create a Sandbox subpage, where you can play with wiki text.