General Chat

Naughty Bro! lolol

I don't know how many staff you think these boards pay for. I reckon there is at most 300 who use the boards and most are paying less than £20 per annum. That's about £6,000.

Most of the effort they do spend on the boards involves adjudicating on the silly reporting that goes on.

It's not a question of how many people post on the boards though is it Kense? that is a tiny fraction of the alleged membership... what is relevant though is that however many staff there are they are not fixing the problems to a service that is being paid for and not just by the £20 a year subscribers, like problems on trees, problems with the advanced search, even the home page which new subscribers see first is hopelessly out of date.

That's not down to the people who might have to deal with dodgy threads and posts, it's down to the tech/s who have been shifted off GR and onto FMP ( or at least so it would seem).

I am not blaming the small GR staff for anything. But I do think Brightsolid should either sort some of those problems or come out with it and say they aren't going to bother.

Well they do not exactly do that and as for the maths - there may only be 300 using the boards (I paid a lot less than £20 for a year's platinum membership) but there are vastly more members than that.

The site only really needs about three people to run and maintain it in its current guise.

EDIT - sorry RR that was not aimed at your post

All the fuss about FaceBook. Even less people on there than on here!!

Very few genealogical queries, much like here.

Both these Boards and FB, to my mind, seem to be used less and less.

:-)

When I joined in 2005,I thought it was fantastic.i had some brilliant hot matches,found 2nd cousins I never knew existed and shared info with them as they did with me.

I just look in on the general board mainly now and add to a few threads with people I have become cyber friends with.

I have met a few in the earlier years when there were more meets,but after my husband became housebound ,my time was taken up.

I too wish it would go back to how things were.we didn't seem to have the arguments that go on now.we disagreed maybe,but nothing really nasty causing some good friends to leave.

faceache appeals to a certain sort of person but it is not for me - I am not interested in how many times my "friends" (are they really?) have been to the loo or what they ate for lunch.

There was a time when organisations thought it was the way to "engage" with the masses but it is becoming increasingly apparent that it is not the way forward if you want to appeal to your buying audience.

Am I the only poster that likes GR the way it is? :-S :-S :-S

I have a tree with nearly 4,000 relatives on. I have all the records to back it up, both secular and Parish mostly from my GR Platinum/Parish Subscription. I would hate to lose the records.

I have these records attached to my relatives on my tree, and have also downloaded them to my computer and printed them all out.

I have also made extensive notes to each person on my tree and uploaded photos etc to my Keepsafe.


And then I discovered the boards! :-D :-D
I've made some really lovely friends here.

The way I look at it, is that it's a genealogy site, but with entertaining extras :-D

So basically, I like GR the way it is! :-D :-D :-D

Brightsolid, is no longer in control of GR, it is Findmypast that is the controlling company..

That is one of the things that needs to be updated on the web pages.

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Five years ago new members were joining at the rate of a million per year, now the rate is about a quarter of that. I have no idea what proportion are free members, standard members and platinum members. Another loss of revenue must be that there are no adverts now.

Hopefully they have sufficient resources to keep the site ticking over for a while yet.

FYI ...................

A couple of months ago, I was told twice by GR staff that they were in discussions as to how GR was to be managed and the direction in which it would go.

I was told once on FB after I had made a derisory comment about never seeing the Community Manager on here and how announcements wee always made on FB when they should be on GR

I was also told the same thing in an email


I would like it to go back to how it was before 2007 ................. ie, trees that worked and could be access for free, and the Boards accessed for a small subscription.

The help given by members was fantastic, people were happy with their trees, etc etc

I think one of the reasons that it is all taking so long is because of the Competitions Board ........

...... BS had to get permission from that Board to buy GR because it meant they would control 3 or the 4 major genealogy sites in Britain. They had to assure the Board that GR would not be diminished or lost.

So, what do they do???

Run it down, or allow it to run down, so far that membership falls so far that it is no longer sustainable?

Turn it over into FMP, and fight the battle with the CB?

I don't know what kind of penalties the UK CB can apply if a company ignores? or countermands an order made by them.




Jem ............. I'm always surprised at how much you yourself have found on here ................. GR carries no records of its own. They have never transcribed any records. The records that you access are all available elsewhere, probably now mainly from FMP, but others that you pay for can be found for free. Others complain bitterly about problems with the Platinum sub, and I see nothing there that I cannot access elsewhere!