General Chat

More and more over the last few month, I am receiving no reply to enquiries concerning possible relatives on other peoples trees.
Is this a matter that these people no longer want to be contacted or they no longer subscribe and my messages just go into a void. If the latter can we possible have an auto reply to say so, or the former, can people put a block on their information so I am not sitting here waiting for replies. :-(

John Martin

Hi John....

When did you send your messages, sometimes it does take time . I had the same problem but after time I got one of my messages answered and I found my relative on here........ :-)

I think people often lose interest after a while and don't renew their membership - and some people only do their trees in widely time-separated batches. I remember once getting a reply many months later - he apologised and said he only did his tree in winter.

And there is no way GR could make such an auto-reply if they had no notification from the tree's owner - the tree remains as someone's record regardless

As trees can be put on Genes for free there is no such thing as no longer a member...unless they delete their account or change their email address without contacting GR or have died

As a test I sent messages to my dad and daughter who both have trees on here...but never paid but could reply to messages sent to them

Neither replied.....so they either have a different email address's or they didn't know who Jax Chan was, so didn't bother reading it??......or of course they may just delete everything from GR?

Never bothered asking them which it was

Have you checked in your sent items to see if the messages you sent have been opened?

Some people only come onto the site very rarely and may not take any notice of emails sent by GR to say they have messages waiting for them.

I once waited 8 months for a reply. It's been suggested many times that there should be some way of finding out how long it is since a member was active on the site but I can't see this problem being addressed any time soon.

Kath. x

People leave, people loose interst, people may be ill and others may have die

Unless people remove their tree before any of the above then they remain on the system,

I has been suggested to GR many times that they add a "last active" date to peoples account details when others view their trees so prescent members will have some idea IF they are likely to ever get a reply, GR so far have not done anything about this situation and are unlikly to do so in the near future, Possibly because it would highlight the truth about just how many people are active on GR

On the plus side, IF the tree owner has not changed their email addy that they are registered with and are still using that email addy then they will recieve notification that they have a message.

Roy

I sent a message to someone on Ancestry a couple of weeks ago...according to her profile she has more of less used the site daily.....not had a reply although have been in contact in the past.....think I may have upset her :-D

Thanks to all those that replied. Will wait in antisipation.

John

"The last active" is impossible to assess as many of us don't log out or in when visiting, just use a shortcut on their desk top - so GR couldn't possibly know The same applies to Ancestry - someone's record says "not for six months" when I am picking up on an entry made by them that very day.

With my particular person it says last log in over a year ago....but if I click on her profile it says

Last signed in today
Profile updated a year ago

It says the same for my profile

Elizabeth2469049, Last active is not impossible even if you don't log out GR know you are not active the second you close your browser It's your PC and the cookies, saved passwords plus history stored on it that auto logs you back in when you come back to the site.

On saying that GR don't seem to be able to sort some of the tech probems people have with the site on various browsers so they may not be able to make "last active" work anyway

I have subscribed to several sites in the past that have use the "last active" facility and always appears to work just fine even when members don't log out.


Roy

'Last Active' is already up and working, to a degree....! Have a look at 'My Updates' and you will see recent activity for all those members in your Contacts List. So, once you have made contact, you can click on the name and see what they have been up to.

I am sure that it would be a fairly simple change to enhance this so that when selecting a member, for for sending a pm it can display a message on the lines of 'last active dd/mm/yyyy' using the most recent date in their activity log.

There appears to be a limit to how long activity data is held - mine appears to go back to August 2013 - but it could be that it goes back much further and GR only choose to display about 6 months worth.

Thanks for that, IPG,

Didnt know of that feature!!


Bob

I thought that feature only worked if they shared there tree with you?

I have 100+ that have shared with me.....not that I want any of them

Also whilst you may have found a name on a tree, there is no way of knowing just how large that tree is!

When I had my tree on here I had access to several trees which only had between 2 - 20 people in them, one only had 3!

This is an old and long standing problem/annoyance and there is very little if anything that can be done about it.

I think we have all tried to contact others on here and never received a reply. I put it down to experience. :-)

It is possible to work out quite a lot about another tree without any contact with the tree owner. Just use the search member trees feature and use filters for place, date and family name. Start with somebody you know about and others will soon appear. You will also see other people researching the same families. If the person searching is called, say, "John" click on details and you will get the family name too eg Smith. BTW this works whether the people in the tree are living or not.

This thread is about people not replying when sent a message Rollo

Maybe if Genes didn't advertise they have 13 million members when infact they onlyhave a small proportion of active members out of that

People complain that they don't get replies when they send a message about a given person or family. The reasons for this have been posted an nauseam.

I was just pointing out a method of extracting data from genes trees that does not rely on any contact with the tree owner. It will work with all trees whether the member responds or not, whether the member is active or not, whether the member never uses GenesRU anymore and even if the member is deceased.