Genealogy Chat

Recently I have seen alot of posts from kind people offering lookups, in their posts that state exactly what they can offer or look up. What I don't understand is why people chose to ignore what the person has stated they can look up and ask for all kinds of lookups. It must really frustrate some the person who made the post So a little tip to members, if you are posting a request on one of these post make sure that it is actually what they have offered. I have seen posts from members offering census lookups, stating that they must have an address and then you see someone asking for a lookup of something totally un census related in that post, with no address and very little information. So please please make sure you thoroughly read posts, before you request something. It then assures you don't waste other peoples time or your own.

Hi Can I add another thing to this aswell please? Check if it says that PM's are welcome or Not.... PM's = Private Messages that go to the persons Inbox if you click on their name and not the message..... It fills up your inbox and gets VERY confusing.....I make a point of putting that I dont want any PM's on my First Message BUT they still send them.....Arggghhhhh lol Lesley :~) Going loopier when people still send PM's

Hi And don't you find on many occassions that people don't use what is offered. Namely thread searches and the like.If i had a pound for every time the question of full age on a marriage cert,or how do i find birth/marriage from 1830 or the like. And when you look a little closer the same question posted twice in five minutes. Granted that sometimes a thread title may be misleading,but recently there has been a rash of how to find irish rellies questions,and the posts are placed without even checking if a similiar thread exists. I often find more info threadsearching than posing the question as people get fed up repeating a very detailed answer. Glen

Totally agree. At the risk of turning this into another 'moans' thread - why do people ask for BMD lookups, and when offered suggestions that don't match 100% they disregard them out of hand? I'm thinking of a case where someone asked for a birth lookup - she couldn't find it on FreeBMD, several people looked on the Beta indexes & couldn't find it either. The only details she could give were from the 1901 census (birth around 1892). There were a couple of near misses with the name & place, but she was adamant they were both correct. [don't ask how she could be so sure - there were four or five other kids & they all had different places of birth, from all over the country] I ventured the opinion it might be missing from the GRO index, and she should contact the local register office & ask them to search. A week later she was back, asking for the same look-up [with the same result, obviously] And there have been several others where slight mispellings of the surname have also been dismissed out of hand. If nothing else, this hobby/obsession should teach people to be flexible with spelling & open-minded about ANY information they are given.

I'm very open minded about information given, and that includes anything from my own mother! I think a lot of the time people are new and don't realise what they are doing, Also have to remember that places changed counties over the years and sometimes I get confused as to what place was in what county at what time. I'm still very new to this and am sure I will make plenty of mistakes along the way Linda

We all make mistakes, its part of learning. Yes, there are people who ignore what you say, and sometimes you read requests that you know were answered ages ago. Other people put up requests for info and never seem to return to read them. Some people send me pms thinking that somehow I'd love to undertake a lot of private research for them, totally ignoring the resources I've told them about. On the other hand, many people on this site are fab and willingly give their time (and sometimes money) to help, and lots of lovely peeps have been very grateful for the help I've given them - most of which I only have because others have helped me earlier. It takes all sorts to create our multi-varied multi-coloured world. nell

Yep people do make mistakes, and yes there are alot of very helpful people on here. But sometimes kind lookups threads are full of requests which are totally unrelevant to what the person has offered. Which is because the person hasn't bothered to properly read what is being offered and this often means that the geniune requests are lost in all the others. It doesn't take long to read a thread. So all I advise is when posting on a lookup thread, is just make sure you are asking for something which they have offered. i.e. if they say they cannot search a census without an address, why then post a request without an address. It makes everyone life easier and especially helps all those kind people out there who do the lookups.

to get back to the subject of the original posting... I suppose the people who expect they can do this all from the comfort of their armchair have NO IDEA what its like to actually search parish registers, or census pages that aren't indexed. 'I'm looking for John Smith born somewhere near Wigan about 1820-1825 please' To do this properly (ie check EVERY parish) and not stop when you get the first ''Hit'' could take DAYS.

I was asked to find the parents of a founding boy born somewhere in central London around 1800, on my thread offering pre-1841 Wiltshire Census records!!! I think that takes the biscuit, esp when the person got stroppy when I pointed out how near to impossible his quest would be!!! Merry