Quote : “Discussion on research methodology, DNA, surname help, other companies or products, or other general genealogy topics is not permitted. Off-topic posts will be deleted without warning.” Unquote
My question is : Why?
I understand the “other companies or products” exclusion but not the rest. I can’t help thinking the forum admininistrators/moderators are being somewhat over-zealous in quickly closing off general topics of discussion - we’ve seen over the last few days. I think this Community could be about more than just how we can make the software do what we want it to do. Finding out how our ancestors lived their lives, and sharing information which shines a light on the world they lived in can only help us become better family historians.
So my question remains - why shut these discussions down? Surely they’re not “off topic”, but actually very much on topic. If RM don’t want to ‘clog up’ the Roots Magic Category with extra content, why not create a new separate Category for general genealogy topics? I realise the more posts there are the more moderation there may be but surely it wouldn’t be time-consuming. No how-it-works questions, no technical feature requests, in fact nothing more than the policing of normal good manners between members.
I agree with Steve, we all have little bits of knowledge with regard to finding those ancestors of ours and increasing our knowledge of them. I can’t see a problem with some sharing of that when people have issues. BTW @TomH just love people who use the correct Latin plurals.
Context for one’s questions can be important and perhaps help others to help solve their issues. It is easy for people new both to RM and similar programs, and ways to approach genealogical research to confuse the best approach to solving what to do when.
The people answering technical questions often seem to miss the fact that some questioners are new to genealogy in general and need to provide more context with their answers.
We lost a really good resource with the closing of the Rootsweb mailing lists a few years back. They were accessible and easy to use and covered so many useful topics. " Albert" had one for RM that was excellent and bridged the issue Steve.Turner raised.
I don’t think that people answering technical questions have missed anything. RM put this community forth as one of their product support channels, the product being their software. This was never touted as a basic genealogy how-to group or anything of that nature. As was pointed out, there are many other places to get the ‘general’ knowledge aspect of genealogy, which once they have, may lead to how to questions within the software. At that point the can ask how to do ‘X’ or how to do ‘Y’ in the software itself.
I still think RM are missing a trick here. Online resources like Ancestry, FindMyPast and The Genealogist all provide historical and research information to enhance and enrich users’ experience. They have clearly concluded that doing so adds value to the service they offer their customers. RM is a different type of product of course but neverthless has to compete in the same marketplace. Therefore I genuinely don’t understand why members of this Community are discouraged from freely sharing similar types of information - it would surely be to RM’s advantage.
I’d rather we didn’t clutter up this website with things about other products, even if they might be useful to some people. Items about RM’s interface connections with other products is OK, since I don’t use those interfaces, they do clutter up the site for me.
Also I’d rather RM spend its resources on product development so I get a better product.
Don’t these other products have their own web sites where these issues can be discussed?
craigg, That’s not what I’m saying. I am not suggesting using the Community to discuss other products, I’m merely making a comparison. What I am suggesting is a separate Category where users could share useful background information or historical detail - social history - that may inform and give context to BMD, censuses, wills etc etc. It would not ‘clutter up’ your experience; if you don’t want to see it don’t go into that separate Category.