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It has obviously come to your attention that the DISCUSSIONS feature (a revamp of the old Surname board) has caused great upset amongst many of your most loyal and experienced members.
These are the members who help to create the 'successes' of GR.
During the last week, there have been several unfortunate and upsetting postings flying around which have caused some distress. I have been involved in that distress.
All the upset has been caused because an unsuspecting member used the DISCUSSIONS feature without realising the implications of responding to old threads.
This scenario may be replayed time and time again in the future causing the valuable Community boards to gain the reputation of being an unfriendly place to visit - which is far from the truth.
Over the years, it has become very obvious that most new members are simply not reading the guidelines within the Help Section nor the stickies at the top of the FA board. This is a fact.
You have told me that I have the largest mail box on the site. I state unequivocably, that this is because new members are floundering, have not read the guidelines and do not know how to find their threads again. I send them a pm to help them - over 20,000 to date - that speaks for itself.
Most of my Inbox is full of messages from people saying 'thank you...I didn't realise how things work.....I have printed your guidelines out". I have over 13,000 such messages and recently deleted several thousand more.
Again, over the years, many long standing members have made suggestions as to how things could be improved to make the site more user friendly but, sadly, a limited number of their ideas have been acted upon.
It seems as though your team come up with what they think is a good idea but, having no knowledge of the site and possibly none of genealogy, do not realise what havoc some ideas will cause. Things are imposed upon us without warning.
Many of us are not against change at all but cannot see the point of 'change for changes sake'. We would welcome with open arms anything which improves things to make this site more user friendly.
Maybe it would be possible for you to post a thread stating what you are thinking of improving and ask for experienced comments and thoughts. You can then see which is the most popular and practicable and act upon it. That way, you would keep the members goodwill and their invaluable experience.
Thank you.
Cx
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