Genealogy Chat

1. every time I log on I see "4689 new surname matches". As everyone knows, this number means absolutely nothing. Why can we not decide on the criteria used to display that number? Personally, I'd want to see (for example) all close matches for the surname Barrow, in the city of Liverpool, from 1780-1895. And I'd enter this info for all my names. Then that number would actually mean something. 2. I never know what to do when I don't get a return email from a member (or former member)- email again? forget it? wait? Would it not make more sense to know if the person you are emailing still has an active account? This would make things so much less frustrating. And if that former member gets emails, GR could email them personally to tell them to register again since they have x amount of correspondences. I've sent these suggestions to GR- but no reply yet. Any other suggestions?

I never even look at that figure. I do check regularly (every day if possible), the Names Summary and go through a couple of my main surnames. There is a tendency to get contacts from people with very little information. Often I just get a request to view my tree with no explanation of why they want to view the tree. What is needed is for GenesReunited to stop the stupid policy of corrupting EMail addresses and URLs. Also leave formatting of messages intact. This message is split into a series of paragraphs for ease of reading but GR will probably make into one long paragraph. Forgot this is the third message in a thread so it will not be corrupted! I often paste a report from my family tree program about the part of the family that interests someone. This is made almost unreadable by GenesReunited for no good reason. I also use a MyFamily.com website and their system for displaying my family tree is far superioir but costs more. Martin Briscoe

Hi, It would be a good idea to put a alphabetical bar on the top of large trees, It would save scrolling through many pages, to find sernames at the end of the Alphabet. mine has over 500 sernames, it must be a nightmare! Eileen

The numbers of new entries for my surname also mean nothing to me. In two years only 4 people have ever replied, two with possible matches and another two have replied saying that they never put that surname on GR, yet I have recently checked and the surnames are still there as being submitted by those two persons. I did contact GR re this problem only to be told it was probably in the persons tree but because their tree was so big that they had forgotten!!! I check every day in the hope that I will have a message from a matching contact, but I doubt I ever will. Pat

I can understand that people did not know that surnames were in their tree especially if they have imported data from other people. I re-exported a GEDCOM to GenesReunited yesterday and have had many queries from people about names that I did not know where there! I have always replied and given them as much information as possible and I have made a few useful contacts. I never reply now when I get a request to view my tree with no explanation about why they want to see it. MB

I have been a member for nearly 2 years now and I am still waiting for them to change their program so you can show 1st cousins marrying! Jeanette x

Has GR ever mentioned how many of their millions of names are actually "active"? I will try that "Gencircles" site mentioned by M G H S, though. Thanks for the lead!

Yes, I wish they had smart matching like Gencircles. I have uploaded my gedcom to that site and came up with 11 matches.

One of the biggest problems I find is with big trees. I haven't found any easy way of going straight to a name and sometimes give up with frustation in not being able to find what I am interested in. Or am I missing a trick? Another annoying problem is whenever you update something, say within "your Contacts" instead of just going back to where you were, you go right back to the start as though you had just gone into that option. I also think that I should have control over whether or not my email address is made known. There should be a box to click on the message screen. This nonsense of having to send your email with () around things is all abit silly and usually wastes at least one message each way. Peter

Hi, I was going to add gencircles addy, but see Stu has done it already. It will be a great site when more people have uploaded their gedcoms. By the way, I expect you all know this, but if you click on View trees on the left hand green margin you go to a choice of looking at a tree (which can drive you crazy) or click on the contacts relative list - which can still be a pain but at least you get to the name you are looking for.

My suggestion is when reading replies to have the latest replies come up first. Makes more sense don't you think?

Now the site has got so big a new way to search names is definately needed. The search system needs either to be able to recognise spelling variations or enable us to use wildcards. And it would also help if the way names were added was updated. If I want to search for Browns in Cambridgeshire, I have to think of all the possible ways people have spelled the county name, including spelling mistakes. Also many do not bother to add a county. It would help greatly if there were drop down boxes for country, which then offered the different English counties. This would lead to a more standard format and eventually improve the search facility. Maybe this could be extended to US states, regions of France, etc.

Health warning about gencircles. Some information on there is directly copied from incorrect data from the IGI. Two of my families have been put on there and they are wrong in a lot of places. I've emailed the person who submitted the info several times and been ignored. Gwynne

Gwynne Same here! There's a woman on Gencircles who has my family on there but half of it is wrong. She has been informed by me and my 5th cousin (whose personal data she has included!) where she has gone wrong, but refuses to change it Jeanette x

How about a decent chat room. One that has different 'rooms' that you can go into. You could then go into the 'research' room for example if you want to discuss genealogy and to the 'coffee' room if you want to discuss cats etc. At the moment it is so slow and seems to be full of people who know each other well. I'm sure they are all kind and helpfull but it can be hard to ask a question when people are discussing where they are meeting up for lunch.The site that only lasted a couple of months last year had a great chat room.

How about asking GR to make the Getting Started section on the Homepage visible enough for people to actually see it? Sarah McLean's Essential Genealogy Advice thread is fantastic but I'm not sure that a lot of people have read it because they're still posting requests for look ups containing very little relevant information or asking for info that would be easy enough for them to find themselves if only they knew where to look. I'd been a member of this site for almost 6 months before I even noticed the Getting Started section was there Lou

Paul, Even former members of GR still get an email from GR to tell them they have a message (as long as they haven't changed their email address) and they are still able to read and reply to the message, even if they don't subscribe to GR any longer. Kath. x

Kath Not sure if you can reply to messages now if you're not a subscriber. Over on friends reunited you used to be able to reply without subscribing (you had to subscribe to inititiate contact) but that has now changed so you just get an email saying there is a message for you and when you go on the site you can read it but if you click on reply, it asks you to subscribe first. I'd hazard a guess that its the same on here cheers Helen

It seems to me that the more money they make, the more money they want! I honestly don't think this is worth £7.50 a year when you consider that there's very little information actually offered by the site. Everything that's available is thanks to the members. The number of names means nothing to me, either. I don't much care about there being 237 new matches for one of the surnames in my tree in the past 7 days, either. It's a common name and agree that what's needed is something that tells us both forenames, surnames and locations if it's to be of any use at all. There ought to be more links in the links section, too. The links thread here has heaps of helpful sites listed but the site itself has hardly anything. Again, we're paying for what the members are offering. And if it wasn't for the fact that clever folks have found a way around www address corruption, we wouldn't even have that! ~Sharon

It would be really good if the site sent an automatic e-mail to let you know that someone has allowed you to see their tree. I have been allowed access to their trees by people who haven't actually replied to my queries, so I often don't find their trees until much later - then it seems very rude if I haven't thanked them!! It would be very useful to have the view relations option next to the view tree option on the contacts list as otherwise you either have to keep several browser windows open or keep going backwards and forwards. Alternatively, to have the surname that you were enquiring about next to the name of the owner of the tree on the view tree menu would be helpful. Caroline