Suggestions

Well hmm. I find a copy in google's cache of a Chat thread from 25 March that was added to for a few days after that (I can only see page 1) and then deleted.

I searched for a thread I know was deleted in August 2010 that I have a copy of, and there's nothing in the cache.

And I searched for one that was deleted in February 2011 and there's no trace of it.

So ... two months maybe? ;)

When you say: "Only I have gone on Google and pulled up threads on people 2 and 3 years after they were first posted on here, or Rootschat, FamilyTreeForum etc." -- that's because they still exist. They haven't been deleted. Google scans constantly, and they are recached whenever it hits them.


The odds actually are very low that someone born in 1926 is still alive. Now, each person's odds of reaching the age of 85 increase with each year they survive. If you're 84, you have excellent odds of making it to 85. But if you were 65 in 1990, your odds of making it to 85 weren't as hot.

Average life expectancy for someone born in the mid-1920s is/was under 60.

An example of current estimated life expectancies:

Male. A 65-year-old man has a 41% chance of living to age 85 and a 20% chance of living to age 90.
Female. A 65-year-old woman has a 53% chance of living to age 85 and a 32% chance of living to age 90.

BUT -- first the person has to have made it to age 65 today! And that's for people who are 65 today.

The chance that someone born in the mid-1920s will still be alive today really is very low, but if the person was known to be alive at 65 or 70, the odds of them being alive today are certainly way better than average for their age group.

I do hope Genes are reading this, it's a very strong argument to put the Living Board on hold until this is resolved,as with the Help Clinic, it didn,t work, it wasn,t wanted , it caused more problems than it solved ,.so let's scrap it.

Very similar to the Help Clinic -- it excludes members from helping.

Kind of counterproductive. ;)

They dont seem to read the comments I have made on FB it just turns into a slanging match between ex and barred members and a few others who use chat, so completly loses the point of the thread

jax

At least the exes are slanging elsewhere.


GR please read, What is Friends reunited for if not to put living people in touch with each other ?

Janey, As I said on the 10 May we will have to agree to disagree.

As I have said before, more consideration should be given to the person sought. Although I suspect that most are genuine, there may be a proportion that are not and whether information is found and then posted in a thread or by pm there is no way of knowing which the seeker is. At least if there was an intermediator or such like then anyone not willing to use this could be deemed as not as truthful in their quest.

I personally would like stricter restrictions put on data pertaining to living people and the recently deceased. It is one thing to find information for oneself and quite another to have it just handed over by a stranger to a stranger. I also wonder who would be deemed responsible if the information leads to devastation in the lives of those being sought and the people around them, the person who furnished the seeker with the information leading them to be found without giving them any notice or the site where the request was made without any or little monitoring or both.

My family research has taught me that life expectancy guides can be very wrong. Walking around an old graveyard shows that quite a high number lived a long way past what the life expectancy of the day was. My mother is 85. I also have an aunt who is 99 and various other relatives well into their 80's and 90's.

Just to answer:

"I also wonder who would be deemed responsible if the information leads to devastation in the lives of those being sought and the people around them, the person who furnished the seeker with the information leading them to be found without giving them any notice or the site where the request was made without any or little monitoring or both."

Neither one. No cause of action would lie whatsoever.

Could make for bad publicity, though ...


"My family research has taught me that life expectancy guides can be very wrong."

No, it doesn't. It teaches that many people outlive the averages. That's the nature of averages.

Obviously, a century and more ago, average life expectancy was heavily influenced by deaths in infancy and childhood.

Nonetheless, the fact that someone born in the 1920s lived to 60 simply does not mean that they then even had even odds of living to 85. They didn't.

Out of my four grandparents only one died of natural causes at 91

Two died in a road accident and the other suicide...so I wonder how long they would have lived otherwise?

jax

Straying way off track here, aren't we?

Average life expectancies are what they are. Nobody's ancestral ages have the slightest effect on them.

My one grandfather died at 65. The other died at 75.

My one gr-grf's first wife died at about 25. His second wife died at about 45. He lived to his 80s.

And we can conclude from this ... what?

For one thing, the very fact that they are one's ancestors means that they lived to adulthood in order to reproduce ... when so many didn't. And *as I have said*, the longer one lives, the better one's odds of making it to the next year or next five years.

Obviously, the chance of someone aged 65 making it to 85 are a whole lot better than the chance of someone who died at 45 doing it ...

The *fact* is that a very small percentage of people born in 1926 are still living in 2011.

From what I see, many of you are capable of such fantastic research - I wouldn't know where to start. There are a couple of examples in in this thread. Whilst terse comments about 'not getting a response' to individual posts whilst almost certainly insightful, they are unhelpful.

The question is from your knowledge and experience, what do you want this board to be?

I am surprised when I see posts from people who have clearly not tried to find a record - which is a point raised here - but when an individual has clearly done some research and has hit a brick wall - how do you help them to get a bit further?

Gregory

I see you posted on that board and I did reply as what you were asking could be done on the find ancestors board as you were looking for decendants from someone born 1840s

Sending private messages not knowing what anyone else has found is a waste of time for all concerned.

If you need help why not place your request on the open board and once living people have been found they can then be sent privatly

jax

Janey I like conversing with you because even though we don't always agree you always raise good points for consideration. :-)

Jax,

Blunt and to the point: "Sending private messages not knowing what anyone else has found is a waste of time for all concerned". But not helpful.
In many cases, what other people have found are individuals with the same name, born in the same year, but scattered the length and breadth of the planet. Enquiries to the most likely matches has so far revealed nothing of value.

"If you need help why not place your request on the open board and once living people have been found they can then be sent privatly". This I can work with.

Which board do you suggest? I was under the impression other boards were to help find long gone ancestors - and are extremely useful and helpful in this regard. If there is a board for "Long lost living relations", I would be happy to post there. All I need is a pointer. In my naive innocence, I thought a board for tracing living relations was just that.

If this board is designed to help those with adoption issues, which appears to be the main topic of conversation on the thread, then perhaps it is mis-labelled?

Greg

According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2009 there were approx 1.4 million people aged 85 or over in the UK.

Gregory I have just looked at your post on the living board and agree with Jax you would be best to post on Finding Ancestors. Although your ultimate goal is to find descendants there is a lot of work to fill in the gaps from the 1840's to the present day of people long deceased.

Once information about people living today is found this would be sent via pm. However without the groundwork it would be an impossible task

I think what that board was designed for was for looking for paticular people that is what most of us thought

What are you expecting to find with your post ? unless you expect anyone related will see your post you could be waiting a very long time.

As I mentioned in my message to you is to try the search trees as a start. Most of the regular helpers would rather search on the open boards so they can see what others have found. If it is a living person then we post "details of marriage or birth sent by pm" so others will know what is going on and not send the same details.



jax

As a matter of interest Gregory have you had a lot of help from other members regarding your request?
If you have then maybe it is working

jax

Gregory says: Blunt and to the point: "Sending private messages not knowing what anyone else has found is a waste of time for all concerned". But not helpful.

How so, Gregory? You don't think it's helpful to know that none of us is going to send messages to someone about a post on the Living Relatives board? Since you can see we're the ones (some of the ones) who know what we're doing and are worth having on one's case, how is it not helpful to know that?

I've replied to one post on that board, the one referred to in this thread. I didn't put my back into it until she posted on Ancestors, and I've found just about all the answers in a complicated search now.

Your post on LR has been viewed a grand total of 16 times. It's now on page 2. How do you imagine that anyone who is actually related is going to run across it? Why would it not be better to have help from other members in doing the searching? As jax says: are you getting that help from your post on LR?


Gregory's questions certainly do illustrate the problem though: people are interpreting "Find Ancestors" absolutely literally, and the searches for collateral relations -- descendants of one's ancestors -- are being diverted from where they would actually have a chance of success.

More counter-productive.


The posts on Living Relatives, for the most part, illustrate my criticism of how most people set about these things.

One finds people by *looking for them*, not by posting a message someplace and waiting for *them* to find it.

Janey, What is helpful is being guided, not castigated. I can see that there is much expertise here, and I for one greatly value the help I receive. I do take your points on board. I think your insight is useful - perhaps this isn't the best place to search for descendants - I imagine most of us follow our nose when we start trying to tie down a family tree - clearly, many of us do not have your skills in genealogy research or knowledge of best to use this site.

Tooty Fruity, Many thanks for your message, it is appreciated. To my simple mind, it is counter-intuitive to expect to post on an 'Ancestors Board' when you are trying to find more recent family, many of whom might still be alive - as you rightly point out they are descendants. I need to look at this aspect - I just don't want to overwhelm the volunteers on the site - there are a lot of people I need to track down and I should be able to do much of this myself. Or should I be posting a message about each one???

I have found the census records to be invaluable in trying to trace back through ancestors. Perhaps it is because the census stops at 1911 that I am finding something of a brick wall in tracing descendants - how many John smiths or Bob Jones do you have to send a message to before you find just one that may be able to shed light on some missing part of the jigsaw? You might tell me hundreds - and that is fair enough. I know I don't receive hundreds and it seems sensible to try to contact someone who seems to offer some semblance of a match - or have I got it wrong?

Jax, your replies border on rudeness.

I cannot see anything rude to be honest but if thats what you think I will not bother to help anymore

Good luck