Expectations, Etiquette, Sharing & Courtesies Using Mailing Lists, Surname Boards & Message Board Posts
When posting to the various mailing lists and message boards on the internet, realistic expectations, etiquette, and courtesies will help you obtain your desired results in your search.
What are realistic expectations from lists and boards? Suggested ettiquette, sharing and courtesies.
1. Posting your exact family names you are looking for, will not in itself, result in getting a response, or an exact match on that person or person's family. Non responses are almost assured if you don't put dates, locations and other helpful data in your requests, aiding the other members to know enough to be able to help you.
2. Along with the full names of the people you are looking for, you will get results to your posts if you ask for help. Provide the full names and dates of the individuals you are looking for. You will find that asking for anyone having information on those surnames in the area you are researching will bring more responses that trying to match with only the full names. Collecting all the surnames in an area will aid you in your quest to find your exact families in that area. Adding in the related families to the surnames is also an aid. In many cases, a reasonable area surrounding the location is necessary to include in your search. For example, Newry addresses are not limited to Newry City, but includes a large area around Newry in Co. Down and Co. Armagh, including several Parish's. You should not expect to receive exact family matches in replies to your requests. These responses do happen, but is a stroke of luck, when it does.
3. You should not expect that someone else will do all the your leg work on your families names. The reality of this happening is pretty slim. Genealogy searching requires a lot of your time and effort and above all, a long time to get the results you are looking for. Message boards, Surname boards and Mailing Lists are only one of the many tools in a genealogists arsenal.
4. Determining your needs at each stage in the search process, will aid you in finding what are looking for. Knowing what your are looking for will aid you in achieving your desired results. If you use mailing lists, surname boards and message boards, limit your request posts to ones you have previously searched yourself and ran out of ideas on what to do next. You will get more responses when other subscribers know you have done your homework before your post.
5. Thank the person responding to your posts. Doing so will aid you in getting further help from that person. You will find a lot of helpful people in the subscribers, however if they continually give help with no thanks, then they may eventually decide not to continue providing help or will drop of in their responses. If you don't get responses, wait a reasonable time, and repost your request. If you don't get a response then, use another means to search.
6. Utilize the internet, local sources, and more global sources that are available to you and do your best to know where to find the things you are looking for. It is not hard to search and find likely data sources, using the online search engines. When you find something of interest, make a list of and or bookmark the ones you like. People on the boards and lists will provide some or all their sources and data to you. If data is readily available on the internet, then reluctance to share data is less likely. Be sure to look first to see what is there.
7. You will get the most responses to your posts if it is done in a friendly way, along with a little humor thrown in. It is best to state what you are looking for ......... and the precise need that you have. It is OK to name the source or sources that you need a lookup from, if that is the nature of the request. If you know someone has offered to make the lookups from a data source they have, make the request of them in a non demanding way telling them to do the look up when they can fit it in their schedule. If you turn people off by the requests you make, responses may not occur.
8. You will get the most responses when you also join in contributing things you may have or you also join in and help others using the information or knowledge that you have. There isn't one person out there, that doesn't have at least one thing that they can share and that will help others. Making occasional contributions to the boards and lists, helps you get more responses. Thanking the responder for their help will help maintain that persons feelings of being appreciated and encourages them to continue providing responses to you and others.
9. When responding to other subscribers, look at what you have written before you send it, and above all, look at who you are sending it to. If sending something that is not informative to others on the list, send it only to the person you want it to go to. If something is personal in nature, send it only to the person you intended it to go to. If something is helpful to others on the list, then by all means send it to the complete mailing list. This applies to message and surname board responses as well. Not following these common sense rules, can be embarrassing and harm your credibility with other subscribers or members. Sometimes mistakes happen, but it is best to avoid them, if possible.
10. Use the boards and lists for genealogy and related things like area histories, events, geography or geology of an area, data lists of peoples names, church related data, etc. Don't use boards and lists for non essential posts or for holiday greetings, birthday wishes, etc. Doing so results in others getting unnecessary emails. Once in awhile a subscriber or member gets turned off by all the unnecessary emails, to the point of unsubscribing.
11. Maintain interest levels of others on the list! Continual posts on the lists for requests and answers to those requests, results in a subscriber or members losing interest in the postings, when they become non interesting to them. Using humor and providing interesting genealogy related things of general interests to others, goes a long way in perking up interest on the boards and lists.
Using the message boards, surname boards and mailing lists archives.
1. You not only can make requests and share things on these boards and lists, but you can also search past postings to find "good things" posted before you joined the list.
2. Searching these lists or boards using the internal search engine, you will find interesting and useful information. It may require knowing the posters name, subject of the post, date of the post, or a key word or group of key words, that will lead you to the posts on that subject. You can also search by surname, to find other posts on that name. It is surprising what you can find in these archives.
Other Etiquette Sources
Yahoo Search of Internet Etiquette
Norm Ruddock