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This is a followup to Improving the weekly chat and The Genealogy Conference: topics for focused chats.

I'd like to make a new proposal that we have a permanent topic for the Conference Room and the Weekly Chat -- namely, that we talk about what new records have come online at sites like Ancestry, FamilySearch, findmypast, The Genealogist, and/or to talk about new websites which are coming online.

In The Genealogy Conference: topics for focused chats it was set up so that community members could propose their own topics for the chat. You can see for yourself how many topics were proposed as answers to that question.

I am willing to post in the Conference Room the new arrivals from findmypast and Ancestry to get the ball rolling, but I'd like to not be the only person talking every week.

Ideally I would like us to be able to mine the chat for possible Q/As -- e.g. this week findmypast has introduced a large number of British Army collections.

You may feel that it's more appropriate to post that kind of news in Roots, which is also underutilized. In that case -- what can we do to revitalize the weekly chat?

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I wonder about possibly having the Conference with a standing topic of 'Current Activity' -- brick walls, work in progress, new records, what's going on in the world of genealogy. I'm not sure new records on their own would provide enough fodder to keep it lively.

Or we could fold it all back into Roots and put the effort into keeping one chat room alive...

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  • Upvoted, but I wonder -- if we put all 'Current Activity' in the Conference Room, what's left over for Roots? The original plan was to have the free-for-all in Roots and the specific-topic material in the Weekly, wasn't it?
    – Jan Murphy Mod
    Commented Nov 19, 2017 at 20:28
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    @JanMurphy I think the original plan was constructed when we expected more chat activity full stop. My preference would be to move everything back into Roots... and revisit if the activity becomes unmanageable.
    – user6485
    Commented Nov 20, 2017 at 7:36
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    I like the concept of cleanly separating specific and general topics, but in reality the chat volume means there's little chance of parallel chats getting mixed up. And scrolling back, @JanMurphy tends to look rather lonely in the Conference. I agree: condense back into one room.
    – AndyW
    Commented Nov 20, 2017 at 10:15
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I like the idea of having an indefinite period where the topic used in the Genealogy Conference Room is the latest records that have come online.

One suggestion for the title of this Meta question, because it serves as an advertisement what what's happening in the Genealogy Conference Room, is that perhaps a title like:

Improving the Weekly Chat, 2017 edition

may not get noticed as much as something less used in other Meta question titles like:

Chatting about genealogical records and websites that came online this week!

On behalf of the site's users I want to thank you for all the time you volunteer to try and ignite the Genealogy Conference Room chats with new topics.

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    This question has already been upvoted, so it has gone out on Twitter. I wanted to talk about what we can do to revitalize the weekly chat -- the idea I proposed in the question was only intended to be a springboard for discussion. If someone sees the question on Twitter, it's far better to have a title of "Improving the weekly chat" than one that looks like an ordinary chat topic.
    – Jan Murphy Mod
    Commented Nov 19, 2017 at 20:32

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