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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.)

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: 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.

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.

The wiki has two ways to add/edit text:

Graphical User Interface (GUI) ... defaults to the Visual tab
Advanced Edit/Formatting (uses wiki "code") ... click the Source tab to access the Advanced editor

GUI editing

Click the Edit link (pencil icon) beside a topic. The editor defaults to the GUI editor / Visual tab.

The GUI editor has a button bar with buttons (left to right) for:

To delete a row in a Volunteer table ... i.e., if you don't want to volunteer anymore.

Sign in to the wiki.
Once in the GUI editor, find your name in the table.
Right-click the link for your name.
Select Row
Select Delete Row.
Fill in the Edit Summary field, indicating why you are deleting your entry.
Click the Publish button.

To hide a row in a Volunteer table ... i.e., if you are taking a vacation, family issues, etc. where you can't accept research requests for a period of time..

Sign in to the wiki..
Coming ... rest of instructions

To add a row in a Volunteer table ... i.e., if you want to volunteer for research.

Sign in to the wiki.
Coming ... rest of instructions

Advanced Editing

Click the Source tab to access the Advanced Editor. The Advanced Editor is similar to using Word Perfect and peer into the reveal codes.

The Advanced editor shows the coding applied behind the scenes when someone creates/modifies something with the GUI editor.

For anyone with HTML experience, you can also use most HTML codes.

The Advanced editor has the following buttons to assist in formatting:

Bold (highlight your text and click this button)
Italic (highlight your text and click this button)
Internal link (links to a page w/n the RAOGK wiki)
External link (links to a internet page)
Level 2 heading
Embed a file
Link to a file
Mathmetical formula
Ignore wiki formatting
Insert your username signature and timestamp (for signing an edit)
Insert a horizontal rule (use very sparingly)

User Page

If you created an account on the RAOGK wiki, you can create your own user page by typing: "User:username" in the wiki search field.

Your user page is linked in the top right. More importantly, others will see links to your user page from various places which assist wiki collaboration. This includes the “Recent changes” and “page history” displays (See Help:Tracking changes).
You can also link to your user page within text of a wiki page, which is mainly useful on talk pages when you sign your name.

A user page is a page about a wiki user. Think of it as a “profile” page, where you can leave describe info about yourself, if you desire. You can also use your user page as a scratchpad to try your hand with wiki editing.

User Page(s)

Sandbox Page(s)

See the following articles about wiki editing. Wiki editing is NOT hard.

If you've used Word and created documents with Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, Heading 4 ... wiki uses the same thing for the major headings and subheadings.o Wiki editing is similar to using the GUI buttons in Word 2007.