5 Quick Tips for Getting Better Results from Genealogy Message
Boards
If you're been researching your family tree for any length of
time, you've no doubt come across (and perhaps even used)
genealogy forums, discussion groups or mailing lists. While
these can be a great resource for essentially putting other
people to work on your research, the results can sometimes be,
shall we say, "uneven." But the problem may not be the board,
forum or list you're using. It might not even be that you're
asking terribly difficult questions, or looking for incredibly
obscure pieces of information. Instead, your lack of results
could be a simple case of not understanding the proper way to
use these incredibly powerful tools.
When you post a query online, you're asking your question of
thousands of people around the world. Amazingly enough,
considering that people are strangers to each other, you'll
often get long and helpful answers to your queries. But if
you're not, if you've been posting lots of messages and getting
infrequent replies (or none at all), it may mean that you
weren't sufficiently clear in the query you posted.
You can often double your chances of getting a response if you...
1. Type surnames in capital letters, LIKE THIS - it makes them
stand out.
2. Are brief, but add important information, such as: dates of
birth and death, areas the person lived, name of spouse, and of
children. Here's an example of a query: 'DENHAM, Harold Edward -
I'm looking for the parents of Harold Edward DENHAM of Ithaca NY
(1855-1909). His wife was Julia Elisabeth KINGSTON, and they had
two sons, Edward, who died in 1900, and John, who is my
grandfather. You can contact me at myemailaddress@yahoo.com.
Many thanks.'
3. Are concise in your query, but add as much information as you
have, and remember to ask for what you want. For example, you
could start your query with phrases like: Need the parents of
(or children, or wife, etc); More information about; Would like
to correspond with anyone knowing... and so on.
4. Can narrow down the region in which your ancestor lived to a
county or a town. If you can, do so, especially if you're
looking for a popular surname.
5. Don't include too much information, and also, don't ask for
too much information. If you want information on several members
of a family, post separate queries for each one. Most people
skim forums, and if a query looks too complex, they'll pass over
it.
Some Genealogy Message Boards to Check Out:
* Ancestry.com's Genealogy Message Boards at
http://www.ancestry.com/share/main.htm
* The Village at http://www.gendir.com/village/
* RootsWeb.com Message Boards at
http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/script/main/rw
* HeritageQuest Queries Center at
http://www2.heritagequest.com/eventcenter/qcenter.htm