General Chat

I can understand members being angry about the name change taking place without you letting us know in advance, personally I don't care what the site is called. I come on here to communicate with the many good friends I have made, for the help that so many offer and it is the first place I look when I come on line. Not so often lately but that has nothing to do with GC. I have only just renewed my yearly subscription, so I'll be staying for the next year at least. I don't agree that all our emails are answered, a couple of mine haven't been. I agree too that the slowness is a pain and should be sorted out, because this tends to send us all off elsewhere. So keep improving the site, but keep us all informed too. Thanks. M.

Hi Steve I have been a member on this site for almost a year now and have only praise for a great site,which represents great value for money and most of the time great generous hearted people willing to help others in their research.As far as I am concerned it is OUR site it does not belong to a few but to all of us who use it and if some people do not like the name change and leave then it is their loss. I have never had any problems with slow running or lost info.Let us all appreciate what we have on this site and continue to help each other as we have in the past. Thanks Steve for a great site. Mary

I am really impressed that you have taken the trouble to tackle the problem head on and I like many of the members here really enjoy a good debate and am willing and interested to hear the other side. I now feel GC/GR has its personal friendly side back thanks to your messages. I for one was just a bit worried that the essence of this geneaology site was going to change to a find your old friends and long lost (alive) relatives and that we would be pushed out. I may well join one of the new breed of geneology sites that have been mentioned here recently, but it will be in addition to GC/GR. I suspect this will remain the most prominent one for many of us. And hey I,m not averse to Tescos one week Asda the next I love choice! With regard to the GC?GR business well its your baby and I will get used to it (but I love a good moan/gossoip I'm afraid) I think its just we were all so fond of GC. Its like a trusted best friend. Thanks for a lovely site I for one will be renewing. Penny

A couple of things learnt whilst studying business (many moons ago!) Good PR goes a long way, bad PR goes even further. Attracting customers is the easy part, keeping them is harder. Sue:-)

I am so sorry that you are shocked, Steve. Well, I just wanted to say that sometimes a name can matter. Also, although I am supposed to receive a monthly newsletter I have never received one. And I have not received replies to more than one feedback I have sent. Also, if you look at the home page you will see, I believe, that it is mainly about finding lost people in the here and now. That is not what genesconnected is about, or so I thought. Finally, I have been pleased to pay my subs for friends reunited because I was interested in contacting a former schoolfriend. I was also pleased to be contacted by former schoolfriends. I was happy to subscribe to genes connected in order to connect, and, hopefully, to help others (and I believe that I have done this) because I have been fortunate enough to have a lot of help from fellow family historians. But to subscribe again later on to genes reunited - that I shall have to consider at the time. Just as a point of interest, I would be interested to know how many subscribers were consulted. Thank you. sincerely Joy

Ken Point taken - I'll see what we can do - maybe a regular thread like this one.

Joy Not sure on the numbers but I'll try and find out. In terms of not receiving emails I have thought of another problem people have sometimes had on FR. I'm not sure if this relates to you but we have found that some peoples company or personal mail servers actually block our emails and treat them as spam. That is why we introduced Site Mail on FR so that all emails are stored centrally on the site. We plan to introduce this into GenesReunited as part of the site re-structure. This will mean you cant loose any emails and also allow you to see when other members have read your email to them which is a big complaint of GenesReunited

i think this site is brill its not the name that important but our families,and any site that charges only £7.50 a year as got to be good compared to most sites and there prices. we've got a good site here where we can help one another i've had only one reply from all the e-mails i've sent to people on this site,and then people have the cheek to complain, if you dont like it go or stop moaning and just get on with it after all you get a lot for £7.50, and make a lot of friends that you wouldn't have if you didn't have this site. so lets either stop whinning about the site and get a life and yes i know some of you will rant and rave, tough.

My last post for the night I'm afraid. Thanks for all the support and sorry if you are still not happy but we are listening. Steve PS - Don't know if I am related to an Emily but Anthony Adolph is looking into it for me and he is getting very close!!!

Steve - thank you for your "Shocked" thread. l personally think the site is great - but communication with us all is important, even if its just to warn us of something new. Your staff have always answered my emails (thank you). One thing of great importance is the fact that this site is not ours, it is yours,which means you can do as you wish - although you have created the site for us!!!! Jude:o)

Thank you for having the courtesy to reply. I appreciate it. I had felt that 'the powers that be' just weren't interested in people and seemed very distant! You see, it does make a difference when just one person - so far, you! - actually bothers to say something instead of the standard letter that some people have been receiving! People matter - people count - people connect! By the way, I do check the Wanadoo website for mails in the junkmail folder that shouldn't be there, and I can tell Wanadoo about ones that should be sent to me, so they've not slipped through the net that way! Also, I stil have not received a monthly newsletter! Thanks again for replying. Joy

Steve I for one appreciate you taking the 'personal' touch by posting this thread and adding appropriate messages along the way. I have only been on this site for a few weeks but it is certainly unique; I have found many ancestors already, including one that my family weren't aware of, and I've also made contact with a living uncle from whom my birth was kept hidden. Added to this, there are some really lovely, kind and helpful people on the site, and a bonus to my hobby has been making some great new friends. These friends supported me hugely in a recent bereavement. I've actually paid two lots of subs so that I can have two separate logins - I'm running a 'birth family' tree and an 'adoptive family' tree, so my commitment and enjoyment is clear. However, my one frustration (and it's a huge one!) is the speed at which the boards sometimes operate - it's so annoying to be on the chat board, which is supposed to be instant, only to find that messages take minutes to load and then seem to multiply. If you could get this one sorted out, you have a happy customer, and I'm not too bothered what you call the site! Thanks again for becoming involved 'in the front line' !! Best wishes, Mandy :)

Hello Steve I would like to say how much I admire your coming to the front on the matter of the name change. You have explained your side of it quite well, but I am sorry to say that you still do not seem to accept that Genealogists - either indepth or just as a hobby, joined your site for what it offered. i.e an excellent research facility backed up by some really helpfull people with identical interests. Recently the site has become garbled by the influx of people trying to trace 'living' rather than dead relatives, this in my opinion clearly demonstrates the reason for a clear and fully understandable name. Calling it Reunited only leads to people thinking it will Reunite them with Lost Pals etc. Communication is the main theme of this complaint and it is obvious that the News Letter which should be the ideal platform for you to raise points on, does not get curculated as it should. When I joined Genes Connected it was like taking up 'family membership' as everyone was willing to help each other, so changing the name of a family has become a big thing! Owing to the type of work I do which takes me abroad for days without notice far too often, I cannot get 'stuck in' to any serious research, therefore the help I've received from members was a boon for which I am eternaly grateful. Recent times have shown that because of the amount of those seeking the living rather than the dead, trawling the boards has become very laborious and time consuming. There has to be a clear distinction between these two very different persuits in my opinion and that is why I got 'heated' thinking that we were beginning to loose out. I recently sent an email asking for your staff to consider a set of Advice and Guidance Rules for new joiners to adopt, the use of which would make their 'pleas' on the boards more inteligible, but I have not yet had a reply. Finally, I don't want to fall out with anyone and I do admire what you have achieved and would appreciate it remaining as GC with a clearer guiding distinction from your staff to new members only seeking the living. Sincerely Jim

Secetary Bird I cant quite understand why you paid two subs. You can have your tree on here without paying, but you cannot post any messages. But you having two trees you only needed to pay for one cause you dont need 2 to use the message boards.

"A rose is a rose, is rose!" As one of the first members of Friends Reunited I was delighted when Genes Connected came along. One of my happiest moments was when I was REUNiTED with a cousin whom I had not seen for 40 years! I was not even looking for him at the time - it happened because I was trying to CONNECT to other family members. Thanks for the posting - I would be shocked too! No matter how hard one tries one cannot please all the people all the time. "Ancestry' has never asked ME when they wanted to change their board - and I wouldn't expect them to - after all - they started it and they do the work. I have never had problems with access or slowness - maybe the problem is the UK servers - mine's fine, thank you! Keep up the good work - I still need to find my relations - which hardly ever appear except on a UK site (on all the others the US predominates - so I will be here a while!

Genesconnected is the first site I have ever joined. Everyone has been very helpful and my tree is growing thanks to research and advice given to me by many members. I have joined another site , but will continue my membership with GC. I like the site and I like the people. Karen : )

Janet Re: sample size for a survey Opinion polls are usually conducted on no more than about 2,000 interviews - 0.005% of the electorate - and claim to get +/- 3% on the results, I believe (providing the sample is representative) which is quite accurate enough for most purposes. If this is true, taking a 5% sample would increase the precision of the polling to much less than 1% which, to me at least, seems like overkill.

Thanks for your thoughts Steve and for the personal interest. The site was a great idea and without it I would never have got nearly as far with my research as I have. A name change DOES have ramifications for members though. For a start my computer directories and files may include "Genes Connected". The machine is not going to be able to recognise "Genes Reunited" without me re-naming the directories. Same goes for physical file: rename or keep as GC? On a pedantic note I believe that you can connect trees, you cannot reunite genes without commiting incest. The FR/GC differention emphasised the basic differences between the sites: FR for a bit of fun and interest in contacting old schoolmates/workmates etc. GC for serious research which will be passed down for generations to come. Overlapping the titles reduces that differentation and encourages a mish-mash. Maintaining that separation emphasised by different titles and style helps to focus contributors on the purpose of the individual sites. To be honest, the General Topics and Chat boards would be just as at home on FR as on GC (or even on a completely different site) and the really useful parts of GC are the search facility (which is totally dependent on other members creating and maintaining their trees), the Tips and Records Office boards (which are dependent on the goodwill of members as a body). So yes: what's in a name? A name is an image. Tescos and Sainsburys are both supermarkets, but the names conjure up different images. It's that image and therefore the type of customer which is attractes which is in danger of being lost here.

Steve - I think the thing which annoys me most of all about the way in which GC has gone about the change is the lack of consultation. If you have a million members, you can do good market research. Better still you could have run a poll on the website and found out what your paying users _really_ thought about the idea. Quote from the GC "about us" page > "Our ethos > We ask our members what they think of an idea before we go ahead with it." I think you have a slight credibility issue on your hands here. Most (if any) of the regular board users weren't asked - we just got the jolly posting telling us of a change which occurred within 12 hours. Not good customer relations. Jools

Thankyou Steve for taking the time and trouble to post this thread. GC/GR always has had the dual purpose of ancestral research and reuniting 'lost' family members. I first discovered the site via FriendsReunited and saw it as a great opportunity to find cousins who I had not seen for years. I therefore entered all the names of known family members with as many details (birth dates, places etc) as I could. It wasn't until much later that I started looking into my ancestry - when I discovered the message boards were full of very enthusiastic and friendly people using the site for that purpose. At the time I was confused as I had assumed that the site was for Reuniting families. There is one problem that keeps arising from this dual purpose - below is a quote from the Terms and Conditions; "Important: Members must have, and continue to have, the express permission of any living person to include their details in a family tree. If a Member is asked to do so, relevant details must be removed. Members are the controllers of the information they input relating to living persons, and therefore have obligations under the privacy and data protection laws (such as the Data Protection Act 1998). Genes Reunited may remove all or part of a family tree if so required." If you are using it for Reuniting purposes, the easiest and most effective way of achieving your aim is to include the name of the person you are looking for in your tree! This is because almost any visitor to the site will search for their name first. If their name is there, they are likely to want to contact the person who posted it!! I have fallen foul of this dual purpose myself - as one person I wanted to make a connection with took offence to their name being posted, quoting the above terms and conditions and it caused a MAJOR family upset. PLEASE can you make the NEW site less ambiguous about its purpose. How you achieve this I do not know - maybe split it into distinct sections^%^&?? GC/GR is possibly the BEST site for GENEALOGY, it would be a shame to spoil it by making its purpose even more AMBIGUOUS. That summarises the problem that I have with the name change. All the best Russell