Find Ancestors

Claire

I'm with you on this one, although I will now leave my replies on for one week before I delete them. I have answered at least 10 threads today and not received one reply to my questions, if you are going to ask someone to help you the least you can do is hang around for half an hour to help, or at the very least get back to them within 24 hours. I think some people ask the questions then go on their annual holiday and hope it will all be done for them when they get back!

I'm with you both. I don't have the patience NOT to wait 30mins or so for a reply - especially as if it is not answered in that time it probably won't be at all as no-one knows the answer. I eagerly wait to see if a further reply has been put on a thread I have answered!

I would like to say a big thank you to all the people that have helped me this week as I have only just started on genes I could not believe some of the info people have found for me like the address of my late fathers step sister I did not know existed AGAIN A BIG THANK YOU regards eddie

Eddie

People like you are more than welcome to whatever help we can give - its nice to know the information you were given was relevant.

Why bother at all if you feel like that?

I haven't read the whole thread ... but impatient and intolerant and roooode as I am, I have some understanding of people who post and don't stick around.

GR encourages them to look at their "surname boards", in the various annoying emails they send out. So people look at their surname boards.

What they quite often see is a bunch of nothing. Posts that are three years old that have no replies -- because it wasn't possible to reply in thread form back then, only by PM.

So they stick a post on their surname board. And they go away, figuring that some day in the distant future somebody related may get in touch with them.

They don't know to "remove that filter" and venture outside that cave, because *nobody ever tells them*. and *we* can't, because we only see them after the fact.

The only party that can fix this is site management, and it steadfastly refuses to do anything at all.

So I don't delete anything I put in request threads. I have no way of knowing whether the person has ever used the site before, has any clue how it works, even knows that a thread might magically sprout from their post.

I keep meaning to go back through old threads and send form letters to people who never replied, just prompting them to use the blasted "My Threads" function that most of them have never noticed ...

Yes, people should explore a site before posting a request on it. Yes, people should find out for themselves how things work. I did when I first discovered these boards. They don't. C'est la vie. When there are so many of them like that, they are kind of the norm.

Ann, were you speaking to anyone in particular? Have you read any of the thread? Do you really feel entitled to speak that way to people who devote their time to helping other people here, no matter how annoying they sometimes find some of those people?

I'd wonder why you do, if so.

we all still continue to help though, don't we??

I try to tell people how I am finding what I'm finding, and where they can go to do the searching themselves.

But it's hard to teach that indefinable "gut" feeling that this is the guy, even though the birth place or birth year is not what was expected!


and some people are soooooooooo rude in dismissing anything which des not fit into the rigid criteria!



sylvia

'Why bother at all if you feel like that?'

I 'bother' because I actually do enjoy helping people with their research, I actually care about people enough to want to help them. All I ask is that they acknowledge the information I have taken the time to look up, surely thats not too much is it?

I was new to this myself once upon a time, I know how difficult it can be when you dont have the resources etc to find things yourself. I have helped some lovely people in the past on this board and its been a pleasure to do so. Most people who help on here are very, very patient and tolerant with others, they understand that a lot of people are new to this and I have the greatest respect for them.

'Why bother at all if you feel like that?' wouldnt help the ones who are genuinly trying to find information would it, and its not a very helpful contribution to this thread.

Pamela

I dont think any of us 'moan all the time'. I will also continue helping people, this thread is to try and get others to acknowledge information sent to them. Wether they do or not I will help as much as I can.

If someone gave you a gift, would you just toss it to one side?

If someone opened the door for you, would you walk straight through without a thanks?

It all down to manners the same as acknowledging the help that's been given although I admit that GR could make our life a lot easier with some better instructions for newbies.

I agree that gr could be a bit more helpful ,A guide on how to use the boards would be a good idea

Am giviing all info have got on people in my tree

Pam

but we don't have to like the rough

....... and we don't have to do it for those people, nor do most of us!!


I think most of us have got a black list of people we don't help because of past experience(s) with them!



so you see, we are trying to educate people as to how to use these boards, something that GR has failed miserably at doing ............. and I'm afraid as far as I am concerned that does mean acknowledging the fact that I may have spent literally hours searching for that missing piece of information.


Others spend their own money in going on other sites.

I use all the sites to which I have subscriptions to help others, but I refuse to pay per view to find information for other people ..... but I will tell them that I have looked at this or that site and there may be information that they can find if they put out the money for pay-per-view.


Isn't that worth a thank you, or the acknowledgement that a posting has been made??


That's really all we ask.




sylvia

A fine example of what we are up against.

Picked up a query looking for info with only the sketchiest details.

Requested more information as noone drops from mid air in the mid 19th century.

Got sent a little bit more info, 1/2 of it wrong

Spent our time finding what we could but certs required to get back further

16 hours later got a pm saying "thanks, I had all that"

My favourite for the day -- the one who kept repeating that she knew her person's parentage, in reply to three people trying to tell her the only way she was going to find his *descendants*, which was what she wanted, was to identify a marriage *with the same father* as the one she already knew.

I pointed out that someone at GR seemed to have the person whose descendants she was seeking in his/her tree here; no response.

I also gave some fairly detailed info about what might be findable if a marriage was identified (children, children's marriages and children, children's post-1984 deaths, etc.). And quite gently pointed out that if you want to "find" someone, you quite often have to *look for* them.

Her response? promptly deleted her thread.

Just like the one last night who took quite unkindly to it being pointed out that her second thread about the same thing, without any of the info provided in the first, was inappropriate.

But then there was the guy whose post was incomprehensible, both because it related to some other thread and couldn't possibly be understood outside that context (the "surname board" phenomenon again, I think) and because of the formatting (one giant run-on sentence), who took my reformatting and my suggestion that he put the new info in the old thread, and posted it in his previous thread and thanked me!

I am eternally grateful to all of you who are so kind as to help, when people get stuck. I put out a request for information on my maternal grandfather a while ago and got three replies within ten minutes! They had found his Army papers and a letter from my grandmother to the Army about his pay. Sadly, she died when my dad was only four. I wish I had started doing the family tree when my parents were still alive. My siblings and I were always taught that it costs nothing to say please and thankyou, which I did immediately to these wonderful people. I do have 'Pay per View' on both Genes and Find My Past, but sometimes it is very difficult when you don't have all the dates you need (or thereabouts) so I have much admiration for your perseverance on other peoples behalf. I have been looking for the death of my great aunt, have looked from 1952 to 1959 and still no luck.I even rang the Council in the village I believed she was living in when she died but there were no records of her. I am going to have another look and if I have no luck, then maybe I will come back and ask for your help. Please don't get too disheartened by the ignorance of some, there are hundreds of us out here who are extremely appreciative of your help.
Regards,
Pat.

Oh, Patti, not pay-per-view on GR! Never never never. ;)

Save your pennies and buy a subscription to Ancestry.

Even without a subscription, you know, you can still do searches at Ancestry. You won't be shown details like birth dates and places in some cases, but you can still use it to take a stab. I do this with US censuses all the time, even though I don't pay there.

If you're wanting to search 1950s death records in the GRO, you can even take out a 14-day free trial subscription at Ancestry and download all the images and scour through them in an afternoon. And save up whatever else you might need to hunt for, and see how far you can get in that time -- and of course ask for help if it's needed along the way!

Thank you for the advice about the Ancestry site Katherine, I will try that now, haven't got the funds for an annual subscription to anything at the moment but hopefully that will change in the not too distant future.

n