FreeREG and FreeCEN are two projects run by Free UK Genealogy CIO (a Registered Charity in England and Wales). Free UK Genealogy provides free access to historical data of interest to family historians and others. Over twenty years, thousands of volunteers have so far transcribed over 400 million records. The databases, search engines and user interfaces have largely largely designed and maintained by volunteers, who have been supported by a number of contractors and, more recently, a small team of support staff. FreeREG uses mongodb, Ruby on Rails, and Refinery CMS. FreeCEN is transitioning from mysql to mongodb, from php to Ruby on Rails, and does not have a CMS in its old interface (www.freecen.org.uk).
For FreeREG, we are planning to use the summer to finish work on Version 1.5 Coordinator Enhancement - these are features which allow our volunteer coordinators to support the transcribers in their teams, and to monitor and maintain the quality of the transcription work. We hope to have finished the tasks relating to the development of new communications systems (but there may be some bug fixing to do) and be working on improvements suggested by the coordinators.
For FreeCEN, we are also planning to use the summer to work on features for Coordinators - but this is at an earlier level. Using our learning from FreeREG, we need to enable Coordinators to move on from outdated (and unstable) software for quality control, and undertake this using online tools. We are also beginning to explore how to offer the same functionality as www.freecen.org.uk (lots of ways to search!) on freecen2.freecen.org.uk - perhaps using AI.
- Twitter: Please sign up to our Slack channel (https://goo.gl/forms/C8FptJ1rgjxnDDcz1- scroll to the bottom of page).
Our mailing list is for a newsletter that every two months lets volunteers, users, and supporters know what we are doing - have a look at the archive (https://www.freeukgenealogy.org.uk/about/pages/newsletter-archive/) We’ve written a blog which explains how you might get involved with an Open Source project - including ours - and some more about our projects https://www.freeukgenealogy.org.uk/news/2017/12/30/how-to-get-involved-with-open-source/
We’d like you to work on an issue that uses your current knowledge, and also expands your range. Please see our ideas page, but you can also take a look at the current issues on our waffle boards https://waffle.io/freeukgen/freecenmigration (building the new FreeCEN) and https://waffle.io/freeukgen/myopicvicar (FreeREG) - if you filter by ‘SoC’ you will see the stories we think might interest you - but feel free to ask us about anything that is sitting in ‘Defined and Prioritised’ ‘Product Backlog’ that interests you.
You are encouraged to try out our websites as a user before or during the summer - maybe even become a transcriber - so you can suggest new ideas and paths which you can work on as well.
Upfront: could you help out with one of the ‘good first issue’ tasks from our waffle board? If you can replicate a bug - can you look at the code and suggest where the problem might lie? Suggest a solution?