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To Alison, I could take offence at being called a holier than thou - I am no such thing. My concerns are simply that although you only release information when you choose to, I have living relatives that would become very upset to know that I have published their dates of birth and other personal information especially as some of them are currently serving in the military, therefore when I do publish my gedcom to the site, I will have to spend time stripping out the information for living family members, this is something I don't want to have to do every time I reload, which for me is usually weekly. Other Gen sites provide the automatic stripping facility and I was only making a suggestion that this one does too. As to the other things I mentioned it is important that proper FAQS are available, I would be happy to offer anyone any help they need and do so regularly on the mainly gen mailing lists I belong to. Looking on the message board it is plain to see that there are lots of interested people making the first steps into researching their family, many making the classic mistakes we all have at some point, now if FAQS were available they could restructure their questions in such a way as to get some sort of response. The most tragic outcome of this would be that having made the first baby steps, they don't receive any help and think 'forget it' and don't move on forever saying 'Oh I tried that site but nobody answered so I gave up' So putting my money where my mouth is here are a few do and do nots 1) As previously mentioned, please CAPITALISE all surnames, it does make things easier to read 2) When asking for help or publishing interests, please frame your question like this ARTIS, James - born possibly Hitchin, Hertfordshire abt 1848, married Sarah GOLDSMITH, Pirton, Herfordshire 1875, died Barrow in Furness 1922 - Looking for any information regarding James or Sarah, blah blah blah This gives other researchers a time frame and location to try and offer help, obviously there are going to be plenty of occaisons where you don't have this much information but setting it out so it is easy to read is the first step to getting an answer. 2) Please don't expect someone to answer your questions directly, some people may and this is great but usually you will get answers along the line of "Try the 1881 census or look in St Catherines Index", these type of replies are trying to guide you in the right direction, if we spent all our time finding information out for other people we would have no time for our own research. 3) Use a good search engine like google and type in "Beginning Genealogy research UK", this will take you to lots of sites which will give you lots of ideas and research sources to try 4) Start small, try writing down all you already know, your name, your parents and grandparents, dates and places of birth for these people. Then if you don't have access to their certificates, you need to buy a copy, these are available from the Office of National Statistics (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/nsbase/registration/FRC/frc_certificate_obtain.asp)but cost £8.00 a certificate and usually take weeks to arrive but if you know the location of the event you can apply to the local registrar for £6.50 a certificate. Hope this brief guide helps somebody after all we are all here for the same thing we want to find out who we are and where we come from!!!!!!!!!!! Regards Joanne