Genealogy Chat

Is it only me, but even with the free access there were not that many 'new' posts. And yes it was a completely ill thought out idea, obviously by someone in the office who does not understand how the system works!!!!

And FB page is now just person after person looking for mother/father/son/ daughter etc.

And do not get me started on those who just put in a name, cos that is what the ad tells them!!!!


:-D :-D

DET? I saw that!!

I'm keeping to helping those who are looking for lost ancestors....too many potential problems with living ones!! ;-)

I just tried the people finder - surname and year of birth have asterisks as required fields BUT year of birth also has a tick box 'Not Sure?' option - if you tick the not sure option it still requires a year of birth!!!

GR People Finder on the homepage is just a search of GR records split into 3 categories,

Family Trees, UK Electoral Registers (2002 - 2013), All other records,

The Free use is next to useless, If they are using it to promote the site they should do what others do and offer a free access for 14 days

Roy

Would have helped if there had been more notice to helpers, and the freebie running until the following evening, so that posters had a chance to return and reply to queries ( perhaps after work?!)

I realise they probably included overnight for overseas members, but since most queries probably came on the back of LLF it meant the majority were in the UK and all coming at the same time.

Still a few people have got info they otherwise might not hav got...but one question I have, what happens if a 'freebie' member from last night sends a message which also goes to a non paying member? Will they be able to respond?

Gai - People Finder is a new thing. Thank's for drawing it to our attention. I wonder if that was the cause of the problem over the weekend?

As free members cannot post on the boards outside of the 18 hour 'window'..........how did GR ever imagine this harebrained scheme was going to be of any use?

Did they imagine that these unwitting posters would now rush to pay for membership?

I doubt that most of them will ever return.................

May be we could ask Cyn's to include FLR in her 'contact patrol' ? That way at least she can post a reply on the thread for the 'helpers' who can take over from there.

If she adds the URL to the outgoing message, then it would be easy for her to find again.

We do like to keep her busy :-D <3

As access to the boards was free for only the hours of 3pm to 9am BST, how in the name of sanity are the posters supposed to be able to add feedback if and/or when help is provided?

Another ill-conceived fly-by-night scheme....hoping to cash in on Long Lost Family's transmission................

Has anyone noticed the new People finder box on the home page?


Gai

More posts on Living Relatives in the past 10 hours or so than would normally be seen in a month or more.
Hope the posters are not looking for miracles. ;-)

they seem to be saying on FB ........................ post on the LIVING RELATIVES Board


that certainly has had a lot of posts on it today ........................


I wonder how (or even IF) GR is keeping track of people taking advantage of the "freebie"?

They need to do that in order to see whether it is worthwhile repeating the experiment.

Errr..............Have I missed something - eRRolSheep has got a face <3 <3

No doubt as well Errol...A two week free trial is surely better, although some do not like giving out bank details

Aw just been on Facebook, its only for about 12 hours.

Think it is a strategy to lure in more members.

So membership will still be necessary......

And one comment on there was a woman saying she had found the boards disappointing.

I don't think they want to make it free Jax.

It's pure marketing.

I paid £20 and only use the boards....if they want to make it free I want a refund :-D

Wow that is interesting, especially, to those like me who only use the boards.

Yeah, I only pay a pittance, but as I do not have a tree, then free use of the boards would be fantastic.

Off to FB to see if this is for real.....

How often do we see "Free access" to other sites? not seen one that doesn't even last for 24 hours before

You can guarantee that there will be advertisements during and after Long Last Family.
Now, the cynic in me thinks hmmmm.
There have been a number of adoption requests and threads recently as we know.
So somebody, maybe desperate, will watch that programme tonight and head straight over to GR.
They will post information and requests for help.
However, when they come back tomorrow they will no longer be able to interact so they will HAVE to join.

On top of that the server(s) "sometimes" struggle with the volume of site traffic.
Surely it would have made more sense to rectify the "error message" issue and up the server capacity before trying to attract a sudden influx of "new" visitors.
Or am I just being daft?