Suggestions

I really think this board is not serving its purpose in most cases.

It is no more private than any other board, just seen three posts by the same person just giving names??? then what? ten people then send a pm asking for more details...week later maybe get a reply and you then wonder what it is all about.

Complete waste of time

jax

Gotta agree.

That board is really just another internet bulletin board, and that has never been the function of this site.

Early in my days here, late one night, I caught a post by someone in California looking for her dad's birth mother in England. He had been posting the same message all over the internet for five years.

I got on board and actually *looked* for the person, finding info in English records (her parents' deaths, for a location) and on websites in England (found references to planning permissions she had applied for, and info about her brother).

By dawn California time, mother and son were talking on the phone.

The way to protect privacy here isn't to prevent other members from posting replies to a search request. The exact opposite is true.

Many of these posts on Find Living Relatives contain far too much information about the private lives of people who don't even know they're being named and talked about on the internet. And all other members can do is report the posts as "abuse" if we feel third parties' privacy is being violated.

I don't know of many members here who are going to take on a search posted on Find Living Relatives when there is no indication of what information may already have been provided to a poster and so on.

I don't think that board is going to enhance GR's reputation as the go-to site for finding family at all.

There's also the whole duplicate-thread business.

There is no indication on the Living Relatives board that searches should not be duplicated on the Find Ancestors board.

(If you're looking for the birth family of your parent, who was adopted, which is it? Many people decide it's both.)

There have been numerous instances of such duplication already. Any member who undertook to help on a Find Living Relatives search would have no idea that searches had already been done on the other board.

Not fair to the paying users who spend so much time helping other members.

I think "ten people send a pm asking for more details" is over egging the pudding slightly. If you look at the living relatives board, most of the posts barely get 10 views, let alone 10 replies. If they make more than 30 views, they are doing well! If you take out of that the eagle-eyed board monitors, scouring each post for breaches of privacy, the number of people actually looking at the posts is very few.

With regard duplicate posts, most people posting to the living relatives board are not frequent board users. Their use is more likely in the tens, rather than tens of thousands of posts. Couldn't they be supported towards better practice in their use of the boards if they do not understand the guidelines, rather than using the instances that infringe the guidelines as a reason to do away with the living relatives board altogether?

And no one has to help anyone to find a living relative. If they do not agree with the principle of the thing, they are free not to help. I guess that is what makes it 'fair' to paying members; if they don't want to do it, they don't have to.

I think the number of people using the living relatives board since it was started shows that there is clearly a demand for it.

Oh, I do love the vague undirected nastiness:

"If you take out of that the eagle-eyed board monitors"

There are only two of us in this thread, so I guess you're talking about both of us.

I confess to having read about 6 posts on that board, and reporting one for egregious breaches of privacy.

"Couldn't they be supported towards better practice in their use of the boards if they do not understand the guidelines, rather than using the instances that infringe the guidelines as a reason to do away with the living relatives board altogether?"

So what is your own constructive suggestion to this end?


"And no one has to help anyone to find a living relative. If they do not agree with the principle of the thing, they are free not to help."

Just as you and anyone else are free not to comment on threads on tihs board!

:rofl:

If you do choose to comment, perhaps you'd choose to say something germane. Whoever you are. (And yeah, when someone with a grand post count of 2 has so much to say about the workings of the site and about other users of the site, I'll comment on post count.)

The issue of privacy on the internet is not somebody's idiosyncratic hobbyhorse.

Whether someone is concerned about it, and who is concerned about it, has * all to do with this issue.

There's a fallacy known as attacking the speaker rather than the speech. You provide an instructive example of it.

If you don't believe that the people whose family laundry is being aired on the Living Relatives board are entitled to privacy, just say so!

Quite a few of the posts have nothing to do with living people for a generation or so....therefore I do not see that they need to be there in the first place.

When I said ten I could have said a hundred just as a figure of speech..but more than likely there could be three people replying which is two too many .

jax

I thought this board was for people needing help to trace living relitives not people who have been dead for years

And where is our trying to find board gone?

To me, the main thing is that the new board defeats the very purpose of this site.

All of those people could be getting the kind of help the board is rightly known for if the were posting on a regular search board here.

Many of us could name dozens of people we have helped find birth families, for instance (I know I could).

But without a thread in which I can say, or read someone else say, "I am PMing you the birth details of Person X" all the way up to "current contact info found for Person X and PMed", nobody I know is going to get involved. (Note that lots of the posts on that board are not "sensitive", they're actually just looking for possible fellow descendants of the same ancestor, misplaced uncles and aunts, and the like.)

This new board appears to have drawn in a whole lot of new paying members, and that's the only effect it has had as far as I can tell.

I have to say the find living relatives board could be a real asset to the site if done properly and in a sensitive manner to all concerned ie the seeker and the person being sought.

This board needs to be private and posts not show up in general internet searches and then operated in much the same way as the other boards. By doing this then helpers can ask questions, and see what information has been sent by private message for example, Birth, marriage of person being sought,

However, before the person being sought is contacted by the seeker some kind of mediation should take place and the person contacted on the seekers behalf. The person being sought may not wish contact for a number of reasons but could be left with details of the seeker for them to reflect upon but on the other hand may be delighted.

I think consideration needs to be given to all parties concerned and hope for happy endings.

I absolutely agree with you on this Janey.

The living persons searches are the ones I most enjoy doing but since the board changes I haven't done one......for exactly the reasons you have stated in the above post. As it is now, I have no way of knowing whether anyone is already helping the poster, nor what info has (if any) been found for them.

So for me now I'm not doing any searches...........and I'm Bored!! :-(

Mary

Edit to add: TootyFruity, I also made that suggestion about it being a private board i.e. not picked up by a google search to GR but it seems they preferred not to do it that way for whatever reason.

Post currently on the first page of Living Relatives:

"Trying to find XX Family who lived in XX Thanks"

Who wants to place bets on the outcome of that one?

On a regular board, someone would immediately ask for further info -- not even personal info about living family, just *when*, for starters. What has the poster done to find them, what is the poster's connection to them, etc.


I disagree with TootyFruity on the mediation etc. I don't think that's what this site is set up for, and I don't understand how it would work, since the other members provide info directly to posters.

I tend to agree that posts on the board that actually relate to sensitive searches should not be findable by internet search engines -- which of course defeats the purpose of a "bulletin board", which is all that board actually is, and the obvious purpose of drawing new paying members to the site.

It seems to have done that, but at the same time sharply reduced the number of posts on which other members actually can and are likely to try to help. The net success rate for postings at this site is going to decline precipitously.

The only appropriate and useful approach, to my mind, is to make it a board like the other one, where questions and answers can be posted in the thread -- and for Brightsolid to spend a tiny fraction of its millions on someone to monitor the board for privacy problems, and respond quickly *and consistently* if other members see such problems.

Basically there has never been any purpose in segregating boards for different purposes here.

It's too hard for people to tell what category their search falls into, and too many don't bother deciding, they just post everywhere they see.

I am with you there CM I am bored too

So bored I have gone back to doing my own tree instead

jax

Hah Jax! I beat you on that one.......I'm so bored I actually did some work today. :-))

At this rate I will be up to date with my work and then what will I have to moan about! LOL

Mary

This post (as edited by me below) currently appears on the Living Relatives board. It is the user's first post. Obviously the user has been brought to this site for this purpose only, by some ad campaign or other.



MY DAD WAS CALLED Mr. C AND WAS MARRIED WITH DAUGHTERS. HE LIVED IN city IN 19xx. HE WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN A SELF EMPLOYED BUILDER OR AN ODDJOB MAN. HE WAS AROUND 40 ISH WHEN I WAS BORN IN 19xx. IF HE IS STILL WITH US, HE WILL BE IN HIS MID 80'S NOW.

HE KNEW F. AND D. P ESPECIALLY D. AS F. WORKED AWAY ALOT IN THE FORCES.

HIS DAUGHTERS'S USED TO HANG AROUND WITH Ms. AND Mr. P's DAUGHTER F. AND THEIR ELDEST DAUGHTER R. USED TO TAG ALONG WITH THEM, IE TO SWIMMING ETC.
MY MUM USED TO LIVE AT address, city AND MY DAD LIVED VERY NEAR TO HER..IF ANYONE KNOWS THE FAMILY'S WHEREABOUTS OR ANYTHING PLEASE CAN YOU GET IN TOUCH. THANKS name.


Do those daughters really want their parents' marital circumstances smeared around the internet like this????

One has a very unusual name. I have already identified her birth and likely marriage and several children to that marriage. Who knows what someone with the same basic skills and resources a perverse attitude might do with that information??

Why is this corporation not managing its website in a way its users are really entitled to expect of *this website* -- a way that respects individuals' privacy?

I think some mediation is necessary because the fall out from making contact can be far reaching not only for the person being sought but for the people around them. Not everyone wants to be found and consideration should be given to their wishes which cannot be done without some kind of intermediatary.

Just read one on Genealogy Chat...so it just goes to show not everyone wants to get in contact with the children they have given up for adoption.

As we have seen on this" Long lost family" someone else contacts the person being searched first...they are not handed an address and told to get on with it as such

jax

Adoptees are not offered a contact service when they get their adoption information so sometimes they only have a self help option and the fees charged are out of their reach, the waiting time within the department for SS can be many months before it reaches the right person to undertake it then often it gets passed onto an agency,,,,,,,,,with a high chargeable fee......!

But TF, this site is simply not a family finding and mediation service.

How could mediation possibly come into how this site operates?

Would I send my info first to ... whom? ... before it is given to a poster?

Janey, to be perfectly honest I haven't a clue how it would work but without it nobody is taking responsibility for breaching the privacy of another person. The information is in the public domain but it is one thing to find the information for oneself and quite another for someone to find it for you and serve it up on a plate. The seeker may breach privacy in their request for the information but surely the provider of that information is also breaching that persons privacy by supplying it.

The person being sought is being denied the chance to come to terms with someone wishing to make contact. The person requesting the information needs to be prepared that the person being sought does not want contact. This does not take into consideration the people around the seeker and the person being sought.

For me it is just not good enough to supply a place to request information about living people without having the support in place to help with making first contact.

"not everyone wants to get in contact with the children they have given up for adoption." - this applies to estranged family, for whatever reason, not only adoptees and birth parents. The Salvation Army's Family Tracing Service would always ask a person that it has found if he / she wanted to have contact with the person making the search. If the answer is no, then that is that; if yes, then someone would act as an intermediary with the family.