Genealogy Chat

Wow.good discussion everybody..my suggestion was perhaps to recognise tha the "History" and "Surname" Boards ar so full of ancient entries...People like Ann of Green Gables and many other waste their valuable time by saying "This is a very old Thread PM the person" etc.. and Satnav, who appears not to like my suggestion, lists how many pages there are in current use.on those two boards............well compare those figure to the other boards....there is no comparison.
So many Boards are very messy..and either copies or slight variations of the same enquiry appear on different Boards.
"Trying to Find" is a good board providing the enquirer makes clear what he/she is looking for.

The fact is that many of us have special skills and knowledge.and resources that are local to areas or to counties.........that something like a Counties board would speak directly to individual specialsts.

and if Satnav thinks there are too many Boards..ok..lets just have a Trying to Find Board.

and whilst we're ranting on....why have we got a Chat or a general Topic Board on what is essentially a Genealogy site?

Those who know me will of course realise that I ma playing Devil's Advocate here..at least in my last comment..so don't hate me!!

Derek

I agree about the overhaul, pigletspal, but hope they tell us if they do, good stuff might be lost!

Have to agree with the County idea. Either as the subject of the query or a preset box on the reply button where it has to be entered before the query can be typed out.
I often wish I didn't have to waste time searching for information for areas I am not familiar with.
I think one of the problems with introducing a new idea to computer information is that the program has to be redone,I was told that by the IT dept where I used to work, not sure how accurate that is-JLe(Yorkshire)

This is something which I used to do every day.
Go to"Search Trees"
"Surname Summary"
You can set the activity anywhere from all to one day.
You will find any post about the surnames in your tree.
Unfortunately,some while back the idiot programmer substituted the General board for the Surname board but you can find many contacts.

While you're at it Derek, can you suggest a "Living Relatives" Board as separate from "Dead Relatives"?

The former seem to have attracted a lot of posts recently. I have suggested it to them, but they said "We have had no demand for such a board".

Derek


don't forget that TTF was not threaded until the changes in 2007 .... so we have no idea how many responses were received, as they were all sent by pm.

Surnames is now joined to TTF for some reason. I don't know whether it was before 2007

I'm not sure that the threads that are being raised are redundant ........... after all they are being raised becasue someone is looking for just that name. They have entered the name in the Search facility, and up has come that thread.


The problem is that we now do not know how many repsonses had previously been received.




There is a point in maintaining surname threads and boards in the archives, just in case.


The problem comes in trying to contact the original poster.

As GR does not notify people that new posts have been added to threads, and as those posts were made in the days before anyone expected to be able to look back at the thread ..................... then most of the people who started those threads prior to about Febrauryy 2007 have absolutely NO idea that they could be getting a reply.


AND if they did not get any responses "back then" .... they may well be among the millions who no longer use this site, and have probably not updated their email address(es) with GR.



So ..... it basically comes down to GR's lack of proper maintenance on this site.


It comes down to the lack of information they provide


............. it should not be up to members to notify people who post on old threads that they probably will not get a response because no-one will know they have posted what might be vital information.



In short .................. I don't agree with you that Surnames or History or TTF boards should be removed, or are redundant


I do agree that a County Board might be very useful .............. except how it would be organised might be very difficult.

It seems to me that GR's arrangement means that there should be one board for each county to allow for different threads to be psoted ....................... I've never been successful using the Search facility to find information within a thread. Imagine having a thread on Lancashire or Derbyshire, with 300 or so pages and trying to find that one piece of infromation!



sylvia

Dear Derek

Hello

Sound like a very good idea.

People could 'pool' their information about different areas, some of which no longer exist so that there are more details on local history.

The history of an area is the backbone of family research because it shows what employment was available and how national events could influence people at local level.

Hope it works.

Take care
Very best wishes
x

I'm in favour of having 'county' boards, as local knowledge is a great thing, and it would save having to trawl through loads of stuff of no interest to me. For example if you are researching Dorset families, the on-line parish clerks have got loads of stuff on the Dorset OPC site, from BMD to census', photos of villages, not a lot of interest to most people, but if your in Scotland and researching your Dorset rellies it's very helpful. Also if you have local knowledge you can often help with the location of a small hamlet which has been swallowed up over the decades.

Satnav,,what i am responding to is the large amount of "History" and "Surname " Boards that include well meaning people saying "This is an old entry..contact whoever by Pm"..............Which to me is evidence that they are largely redundant.........On Records office.Tips Board and Trying t Find..you never see "This is an old thread"..thus it is self evident that they are much more successful and widley used boards.
My suggestion about a "County" Board would replace them..and I bet t would it wopuld be more widely used.
Not looking for conflict in this matter..was merely a suggestion...offering a platform for debate.
p.s thank you Nina..and several other positive thinking peeps!
Derek

Well I still find these boards totally confusing. I love tracking the research going on, but unless I add to the thread I often can't find it again! There's bits here there and everywhere. So as far as I'm concerned the fewer boards the better. And I can never seem to get a 'search' result, there may be useful info hidden away in the board's archives!

Are you suggesting that the Surname and History boards should be scrapped?
So far this year;
Surname board 38 pages
History board 18 pages
Now if you are suggesting that we need more boards.
All I can say is that Genes grew at lightning speed from 2002 to about 2007 with only three threaded boards.

Brilliant idea Derek,unfortunately common sense dosn't usually equate with big corporations, so I wont hold my breath.

Great idea Derek, anything is better than both those boards as they are. I rarely look at either, there is very little of interest on them for me.Why people put their own name on, is something I have never understood.
Julia in Derbyshire (but near to Nottinghamshire)

Derek


why don't you contact GR and see if you can persuade them to add a new board?

I think it could be a good idea .................. but I haven't known GR to accept many, if any, suggestions in the 6 or so years I've been on this site!


I'm a pessimist as far as they are concerned!!



The only problem I could see would be that it could be another board for duplicate threads to be posted lol!!



sylvia

Hi Sally..you're an Angel.x

hello derek what a smashing idear but you are always a star and one of the helpfull people on here
sally

Nudging because I think this is a good idea

LOL - I knew you'd say that!

you calling me simple Birdi????? lol (joke)
Derek

A County Thread - what a brilliant idea. They say the simple ideas are the best!

Rootschat does County Threads and I always peep in to my local area to see if I can help.

Birdi