Suggestions

Quite :-)

Sure its not beyond the capabilities of the Tech team to have these notices in bold colour ! and a -***-check you are posting on the board that will benifit your request the best, if unsure please read each board heading for its intended purpose ***

laying down hard fast set in stone Rules and T&C and the kitchen sink demands is bound to send new posters in a tiz not knowing if they are right or wrong and made to feel like they are breaking the law or something equally bizzare,after all,its only in part a genealogy site!!

Kathryn,

I am sure that you are right, there will undoubtedly be people who will simply click and press on. However I still think that if it is important that an attempt be made to instruct people on the proper use of each board then every effort should be made to ensure that people are aware of and hopefully read those instructions before they make their post.

As things stand the instructions *PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING* are in a passive position, easily overlooked or ignored . If they were more prominently displayed as I have suggested then there is at least a chance that they may be read before a New Topic post is made.

People will simply check the box to get rid of the screen and then post what they were going to anyway. Call me cynical, but the people who care and who want the help are those who will tend to try and work out where they will best get it. Those in a rush or who don't really invest the time and intellectual & emotional energy in their research really won't care.

Hi Pat,

Almost but not quite there yet (lol).

It is actually to celebrate the one year survival of the thread below despite someone's attempts to get it deleted by referring its first post for review.

http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards.page/board/ancestors/xx/thread/1228199

P.S. Pat, the birthday cake was consumed during last night's party so I am afraid that for the time being at least my "Mug Shot" has returned. It is recommended that those of a nervous disposition should avert their eyes.

Is the birthday cake with One candle significant?
Happy Birthday, Jonesey.
100 years young today.

Very good idea Jonesey. I hope Phil reads this.

Kath. x

I know that GR has made an attempt to get its members to know on which message board they should ideally post their queries and what the rules of the board/site are. They have done this by placing a stickied post entitled *PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING* at the head of both the Genealogy Chat and the Find Living Relatives boards.

Although the information GR's posts contain is sound, judging by the number of views those posts receive it looks as if not too many people are actually bothering to read them. Ignorance of how to do things correctly more often than not leads to things being done incorrectly.

I wonder whether GR might consider taking things a little bit further by perhaps having the instructions automatically appearing in front of anyone who was about to post a new topic on a message board. There might also be a box at the end of the instructions that had to be checked to confirm that the reader has read them before allowing them to proceed to actually writing and making their post.

This is much the same procedure as is common nowadays when anyone is obliged to acknowledge that they have read and agree to abide by terms or licence conditions to use any computer software or join a website before they are allowed to proceed to the next stage. It is a procedure with which most people are probably now well accustomed to.

I accept that even after such a routine there will still be some posts that may be on the wrong board or potentially infringe some rule or other but hopefully there will be fewer than there currently are.

Just food for thought.