Suggestions

I think the new board names are confusing.

My ancestors are my direct-line relatives, who I descend from.

If I want to find information on the marriage of great grandfather's siblings or their children, do they divert onto Genealogy Chat?... They're not my ancestors.

A re-think of names is needed.

Sorry Gwyn but I like the new board names as I think they are easier for newbies to understand.



I presume that GR are trying to differentiate between living rellies and dead ones so your gt. grandfather's siblings would come under Find Ancestors.


Genealogy chat I take to be another tips board where we can discuss ideas, share tips and ask for advice on genealogy in general.


General chat is just that.....general, everyday stuff.


Find Living rellies is obvious but I am not sure how well that is working!



No doubt we will all get used to it soon :D

Well the alternative of 'dead relatives' might not be appropriate either.

How about finding ancestral family?

How about Request a lookup ? one place for all record searching ?

Living relatives should divert people to Friends reunited and suggest other professional sites.

I wouldn't actually object to "dead relatives" :-)

I joined this site specifically to research my family tree and so think that "Finding Ancestors" is quite a good title. This is where I would go to post a request about a specific person (ancestor) assuming that I hadn't made contact with anyone by first searching the trees. If splitting the living and the dead relatives makes life easier I'm all for it.

It's just my personal opinion, but I don't feel comfortable replying to requests for information on living relatives as I do when helping someone to find information about the dead ones.

As far as census lookups are concerned, we are still talking about finding ancestors as the latest available information would be dated 1911 (in England at any rate).

I do still find it difficult to plough my way through the more general boards of Genealogy Chat/Suggestions. Although to be fair when we had the Tips Board and two different types of chat boards, the subject matters used to get mixed up and you could often come across people "twittering" about all sorts of things (TV programmes, the weather, etc. etc.) that had little to do with actual research tips or suggestions of where to go for genealogy advice.

I suppose, like most things in life, you can't be too prescriptive and people will interpret and use the boards as they see fit.

As the old saying goes: you can please all of the people some of the time and you can please some of the people all of the time but....you can't please all of the people all of the time!

I agree with Gwyn.

There are gazillions of posts appearing in Living Relatives where what people are actually looking for is unidentified descendants of a mutual ancestor born in the 1800s.

That isn't what the board was supposed to be for -- it was supposed to be for searches like on the television program this corporation is sponsoring (the real reason for the Living Relatives board: to attract new subscription fees off the back of the publicity) -- people looking for their birth parents and like that.

Dozens of people so far are missing out on all the help they might get from other members because they've decided that looking for descendants of their great-great-grandparents is a Living Relatives search.

Gwyn's right, it isn't an Ancestors search. So who can blame them for their confusion?

I have always supported
- amalgamating all the random "History", "Surname Info" and "Trying to find" boards, where people already posted randomly and multiply
- having a separate board for real living-people searches

But making the Living Relatives board one where no one can reply in a thread, which is
- doing absolutely nothing to protect anyone's privacy, and in fact making it more likely that inappropriate info will be posted, since no one can add to a thread to suggest removing personal info
- reducing the chance of someone getting help in their search to about zero
just does not make a stitch of sense.

I think the whole thing should just be combined into one. One big board, for people looking for their ancestors, their ancestors' descendants, and their living family.

I don't agree with it being called "lookup" anything. I don't do lookups, myself. Search, look for answers to mysteries, solve puzzles, yes. Lookups, no.

I certainly prefer the Find Ancestors board to the old History, Surname and TTF as it's definitely made the way I help on here much easier.


I consider the Genealogy Chat to be almost the equivalent of the Tips board and the others I only look at now and again.


As for the Find Living Relatives board it certainly needs something doing to it. I wonder if the GR team have listened to some of the suggestions made since the last changes but don't actually have the experience of genealogy on how to set it up properly.


Their current concern seems to be focussed (one 's' or two?) on encouraging people to look for missing loved ones in order to make a tv programme or two!


:D

I am nudging this up because there has been a recent posting under Success Stories which is actually a question relating to a certificate!

I can't believe that someone would actually post a question under this board heading and so wonder whether something is going wrong......I mean going wrong ON TOP of all the correspondence about users not posting on the correct boards.

I wonder whether it is something as simple as this:

A new user decides to look at the success stories for background interest. Then, without bothering to change to the appropriate board, simply posts their question and HEY PRESTO! their request appears under the heading Success Stories.

If this isn't the reason, then I will also be bald before too long!!

Under the Success Story Board, right underneath the one about a marriage certificate,is another about how to email......!!!

People have always posted requests on Success Stories. Yes, it is gobsmacking to see how little attention they pay to their surroundings.

I have PMed people I've seen do that, to let them know they won't get any help there, and how to post properly.

One thing this phenomenon does show is how attentive the alleged moderating of that board has ever been.

For staff to read that kind of post, not send a simple message to the poster saying they need to go to X board with their request, and just press the button to add it to the Success Stories board ... gobsmacking, again. A pretty good indication of what the site's owners are really interested in. That would be the fees, of course.

As Tom Lehrer "quoted": Vonce ze rockets are up, who cares vere ze come down; zat's not my department, says Wehrner von Braun.

Vonce ze subscription fees are paid, who cares vere ze posts come down?

I must admit I took the liberty of replying to them suggesting that they use a more appropriate board for their request. Hope I wasn't acting out of turn? Just a thought, if someone else had already informed them, how would their original posting be deleted from the incorrect board?

They can delete their posts from Success Stories.

Anyone I have offered directions to in the past, to the appropriate board, has appreciated the tip.

The trouble is that if they don't delete their posts, they are likely to get even more people directing them elsewhere. Still, I suppose if they get inundated with similar messages, they are likely to be a little more careful in the future.

Ah Vell, Gutten Nacht (with apologies to Tom Lehrer!).

I just went over to have a look at that post and I know she posted the same question on finding ancestors plus yet another thread about the same family earlier this afternoon

jax