Suggestions

does anyone else find this really annoying or is it just me?

i have searched for years for a marriage involving a Smith, right out of the blue there was a suggestion by a relative - its come down a couple of generations of who this person married.
Not a very common surname, found her birth on Free BMD shes not on census for 1911 though (born 1902))
found what could be the marriage, but if you think of a name and put it with a Smith odds are cne will come up anyway!!
Then = joy oh joy - a member on GR has got this lady in his tree, i have now written twice with no reply. is he ignoring me?, is he still a member?, i wish there was some way of knowing.
i think im correct in saying that if a member lapses then they can no longer answer messages they receive - what is the point of leaving them on here?
maureen

First check your sent box. If the message you sent still has a purple envelope icon then the person hasn't read it.

They can still reply to you even if they no longer subscribe. Problem is people die or lose interest but their trees remain. There are several threads about the problem but no real solutions.

Thanks Ken i didnt know about the coloured envelopes - only been member sice 2003!!
its gone white so i suppose thats one good sign, ive now asked to look at his tree, maybe he will respond to that.
maureen

That's promising, I hope they do respond. Good luck!

Ken

Maureen

This site has been going since 2003, as you know.

Membership was then free, it was not until the next year that facilities were added that made GR decide to start charging a fee to access certain features.

However, the free membership is still one of the options. In fact, if you are a paying subscriber and fail to renew, then you are dropped back into the free category.

The question really is, ..........................

who is to decide that a tree and its owner should be removed?


On what basis?

The number of years since additions or deletions were made to a tree?


I have not made changes to my tree in about 5 years ....... yet I am on the Community Boards, helping other members, almost every day


What about the members who have died, or become incapacitated?

There was a thread on a board yesterday asking how could a son access his father's very large, well-documented tree on here. Father was now incapacitated, and unable to give his son the necessary passwords. I don't know how long that tree has been untouched ........... but would you deny other family members the chance to recover a tree when they realise that there is one available?



As Ken said, the change in colour of the envelope indicates whether or not it has been opened.

All you can do then is hope that the other member is interested enough to contact you ........ and that you gave them enough information for them to be sure that the contact is real.



Of course, you also have to remember that one reason why an envelope made not be opened, and thus you have no reply, is that the other member has changed their email address and has not notified GR of this fact.

That means that GR is sending the notification of a waiting pm to an email address that does not exist!


That member may still be interested although relatively inactive on the site. They will be unaware of pms unless they actually log on to the site.




sylvia

There is no such thing as a 'Lapsed Member' therefore it is not possible to remove them....!

i was not aware that membership was available on here without a fee so maybe the term 'lapsed member' i used was incorrect.

'inactive tree' maybe would be a better description, i am not talking about months or even a couple years but from what has been written above, in say 50 yrs time if things dont change most of us are going to be pushy up daisies and there is going to be a whole lot of info on here taunting the life out of people because it cannot be accessed./ exactly the description given above about the family that want to access a family members tree who had been incapacitated.
A different reason i know, but the same outcome - there it is looking you in the face and you cant do anything about it.

as i have said before, i wasnt aware about the difference in coloured envelopes so that has solved my problem
maureen

I would guess that the majority of members on this site are 'Free Members' who have the same rights as subscribed members, with the exception that they can not initiate messages or board postings (but can reply to PM's sent to them) nor view trees.

For more info as to member types have a look at the site T's and C's, link below.

I have more than once suggested the following scenario

The membership is stated as over 11 million members ....... that includes both free and paying members

That number is cumulative from the start of GR

I once estimated that perhaps 10% are "active"

that means about 1 million (free and paying)

or maybe it is only 1% ........... which means 100,000 (free and paying)


Of those perhaps 5,000 are aware of the Community Boards


and maybe 200 or so post regularly .......... and those have to be paying members, as free members can only read the threads.


It has been interesting to see in recent weeks (now that we can see the number of posts a memebr has made) how many long time members are posting for the very first time on these Community Boards.




sylvia

You could well be right, but as ever with these things it is but pure guesswork.