Find Living Relatives

Back to to where this should be !! :-P

nudge to bring it bacjk to the very top....

Have mailed GR Team about having it done as a sticky to keep it at the top of the board.

Hi Chrissie

Nudged again this seriously needs to be at the top of this board

Is it possible to get this thread stickied as sadly i dont know how you do it

because the two posts I put on the first page were both reinstated after they were reported before the first one was reported again

I am going to assume that the first post was also acceptable and repost it here

the final line is important to what I was trying to say




not all living relatives requests are 'genuine'

I recently receive a message about a request posted here

I had been a little concerned about it so a related person contacted me to inform me

the person who posted the search was acting in very bad faith

that person knew the history and the reasons for the estrangement and that there were serious reasons not to contact the person sought

but of course did not inform the members of this website of any of that

the person was provided with contact information before the family became aware of the situation and had the message here deleted

please be careful, fellow helpers, especially when someone is looking for a relative of a young age, even if an 'adult'

there is no point in saying in this post 'please do not try to deceive us when you request help here'

but maybe genesreunited should include an instruction to posters not to post here if their situation has involved any kind of legal case in the past .....

nudge

Hi Lindsey

Thank you mate i am not surprised Chrissie put this up

Because as stated above i am not only surprised but i am also quite horrified by how easy the information is being given

I get the feeling that GR think if they ignore a problem it will go away on it's own, but I remember your duplicate thread debate Ice , where we all agreed to tell people nicely they had made a mistake.
That certainly worked , so the same can be applied to not giving out living details , on the board or by PM ,on FR , if we all agree ?

Hi All

I really wish genes would re instate the opening post on this thread

Because i have just read a couple of threads and to see information being given with out even people asking some simple questions first quite alarming infact quite worrying

Because just to give out information without even knowing the reasons why the search is taking place or in fact why the want the information could lead to heart ache for everyone concerned

In fact for example to put A in touch with B is this wise as sadly unless you have met the poster who is searching then the reasons are not known

I mean there could a be a genuine real reason / legal reason why A is not allowed contact with B

Hope this make sense

Any responsible person should not supply names. addresses and phone numbers for living people.

There is no way we can be certain that this will be used for the good, and could quite possibly be harmful.
Of course we like to be amateur sleuths, but we also need to respect the fact that some people do not want to be found.

There are a couple of threads (both added by the same poster) currently near the top of this board, which are a good example of the kind of request it would be better not to try to fulfil, other than to guide the poster in the direction of the online sites which could be checked...............in my opinion, anyway.

I agree Lindsey

I would rather say try 192.com plus all the other usual places then see address's and phone numbers just given out willy nilly. I know I would'nt like it if my address was just handed out without a second thought

jax

In the absence of clear guidelines from GR, could we agree only to steer people to other sites , not provide actual records ?

From the onset I did ask GR that a list of usual places to look should be at the head of the LR board ,
We can't see or know the motives of posters , most are genuine, but I would feel responsible if it all went wrong.

nudging this back to the top, because i think it is time GR did something about reinstating the original post!

Chrissie you have given us food for thought, I do not know why your original point was deleted as i doubt that anyone could have taken offence to it :o)
Maybe somebody on GR has become trigger happy again, there was a time when loads of threads where deleted for no reason and we wondered if someone at GR had their find constantly on the delete button ;o)
What you say may make us all think of what we do now, Gr is no longer just an ancestry site there are several of them around, but but by adding things like chat, quizzes and games, it also give members a chance to do so much more.
I do think with the access we have to info on the inter-net , we have to think a little more about we find, not just about finding living relatives. through our searches, no doubt many of us have found skeletons in the cupboard, and we have to be wary of even putting some of that info on our tree, even when we have these people in out tree and do not make or public , there have been glitches on here and tree access have been sent to other members in error.
But threads like this do make us thinks of consequences to out actions , which has to be a good thing :o)

Chrissie do not be sorry for "starting" us all debating.

It is a good thing for various points of view to be aired and debated. Everyone is sticking to the argument, no one has made a personal judgement on another.

What you have done is create a very good forum and given us all food for thought. I hope that since the first post on here is being checked out again that whoever in GR is looking at it might look at our ideas/opinions and rethink the ideas behind this board.



I rightly or wrongly believe that giving this board the title "Find Living Relatives" had brought more and more people into doing just that. Before they were obscured in "trying to Find" and I don't think there were as many people carrying out or requesting such searches. GR in giving the board this title or maybe members suggested this title has resulted in it reaching its target market very well indeed.

The thing is, is this what GR wants.. or is it to be an Ancestry site?
What sort of impact will it have if it is removed?

Persie

thank you for your replies again

and again, I am not suggesting we not help with living relative searches, as you can see I do that myself quite a bit now that I have renewed my subscription and found this new board where all the action is :-)

it was very particular kinds of searches I was talking about, those where we might step back and say 'why is this parent or grandparent or uncle or aunt not in touch with this young person ?'

I was not talking about adoption situations but rather situations where it seems there have been family problems and we do not have the benefit of knowing what led to the estrangement ... and we are not being told

in those situations the estrangement may have been for a child's protection ( or the child's parent's )

and even if not, even if the estrangement is no fault of the person asking for help, these are situations that it is probably best for outsiders not to involve ourselves in

and I'll note again, I have not always been perfectly cautious myself, and I benefit from reminding myself from time to time too :-)

Chrissiex.

You have a valid point in your first post and I Thank you personnally for putting this on the board for helpers to take a step back and THINK am I doing the right thing in sending info to the OP.

It has started a very good debate about the rights and wrongs of people looking for living rellies.

Maybe GR are getting more members through having this board on the site but are they going to take respsonsiblity if anything goes wrong..

Chrissiex Thanks from the bottom of my heart for this thread.


Sue

Hi Chrissie

I did not see your original post , but have a rough idea of what it was about, some very good points have been made on here, but we also have to realize that the Living relatives thread has come about as a result of members suggestions.
GR also are happy to have this thread on here, if you look on the success board there are many posts from members who have found living relatives though this site, which can in turn be beneficial to them to encourage new members :o)
There are very many reasons why families have lost contact over the years not all of them sinister, that said I do worry about people who jump in feet first and give all sorts of info out in the excitement of having found it, personally I normally pm with people about their situation, before giving and major info to them. I think a lot of the older posters on here do this,
I think it is wise of you to urge caution , but on the flip side of the that , it worries me that if we stop assisting people with these searches a lot of peoples lives will not benefit from it. :-)

I am sorry I really did not mean to start a debate here, my first post was intended only as a caution in very particular circumstances really, where there might be or might have been family situations that have resulted in a parent not being in touch with a child ... that a poster is not disclosing all the facts of

there are maybe some other situations that we should be cautious about too ... people looking for ex spouses and partners ...

both of those situations are uncommon I think

I really did not mean to start a debate about the concept of looking for living relatives itself ... there are arguments on both sides and it seems to me that each person must follow their conscience in those situations