Beginning March 2nd, 2020 the Mailing Lists functionality on RootsWeb will be discontinued. Users will no longer be able to send outgoing emails or accept incoming emails. Additionally, administration tools will no longer be available to list administrators and mailing lists will be put into an archival state.
Administrators may save the emails in their list prior to March 2nd. After that, mailing list archives will remain available and searchable on RootsWeb
Please welcome Shawn Lehman as the new CC for Cherokee County!
If you host a neighboring county, please change the link to:
http://cherokee.thegaproject.org/
I have read hundreds of emails this past week regarding the chaos
surrounding the closing of RootsWeb's mailing lists.
I do not remember whether the lists came before USGenWeb began or after -
they were both active when I joined the project in 1998. The USGenWeb
Project was never the owner of the county mailing lists but we supported
them and used them to communicate with our targeted researchers. The most
active times I have witnessed for the USGenWeb project and the mailing lists
is when we actively used the lists to post notices about items added to our
sites, asked for volunteers to transcribe data with us, shared queries there
that came directly to CC's, etc. It was a busy time for the county sites
and the archives project. In my opinion we are partially at fault for
killing the lists by not working to keep them active.
Before I go further, let me reiterate that CC's have not ever been required
to maintain a county mailing list. We were required to link to them and I
just realized that the requirement to do that by USGenWeb was changed a few
years ago when they reorganized the list of requirements for our pages but
it is a requirement in GAGenWeb's bylaws. We will need to update those but
that's a subject for another discussion.
One of the options I see people in USGenWeb discussing regarding possible
replacements for the lists is Facebook. I am not a fan of it for use in
genealogy. I have visited many FB genealogy pages and am a member of
several. The ones I am a member of are mostly used for sharing photos and
very little research or data is discussed on them. I don't believe it is a
good idea for The GAGenWeb Project to sanction FB pages or groups. If you
personally feel you can benefit your county site by setting one up you are
free to do that but I don't believe the GAGenWeb name or logo should be used
on them.
While FB does not seem to be the way most SC's are leaning if they are even
interested in trying to replace the function of the county mailing lists,
there is a lot of discussion about Google Groups and another service called
groups.io.
In the midst of people saying they were setting up groups.io because they
liked the way it worked better than Google Groups, someone posted that
whereas groups.io had been initially set up as unlimited usage, they plan to
change that immediately to being a pay service over a certain amount of
usage, bandwidth, whatever......so again, in my mind it isn't a viable
option until this push to find an alternative settles down a bit. There is
apparently one person who is List Admin currently for over 50 of Georgia's
counties and she has been posting on the lists that she is not going to do
anything to replace them but I have seen Tim Stowell state that he intends
to set up groups.io for Georgia counties - not sure how many of them. I
know he is List Admin on some already.
I am interested in your thoughts on this subject. You can discuss it on the
list or send your opinions to Trish and I - lblumb(a)gmail.com and
pkashima(a)gmail.com
Again, remember this is not a requirement for us or the county sites but I
really am not sure how well this project will survive or grow if there is no
means of communication with our researchers. One of the more rational
thoughts I think I have had is if we decide as a project to set up a means
for researchers to communicate with each other and for us to use would be to
set up regional lists, rather than one for every county.
Thank you,
Linda B.
Please respond for roll call to lblumb(a)gmail.com
Also, please read next email coming your way regarding county mailing lists
- this is separate from our state mailing list for members.
Thank you!
Linda Blum-Barton
It has been posted to the TXGenWeb list that Elaine Martin passed away in
November. Elaine was a long time member of TXGenWeb and used to host Fulton
County for us. This wasn't known to TXGenWeb until last week and no one
has been able to find an obituary to share or a death notice so that is all
I know. Her Assistant CC in TXGenWeb notified us that she had surgery last
July and apparently did not return home after that and she has confirmed her
death date as November 12, 2019.
Linda B.
So our state mailing list will be moving to the Google group list set up
last year. I will post more information in the next few days.
You need to remove the links on your county sites to the RW mailing lists
also. AS CC, it would be great if you could post this message on your
counties mailing list to let researchers know what is going on and suggest
that people use the message boards.
This is really disappointing for the researchers.
Linda B.
-----Original Message-----
From: RootsWeb Administration <rwmailinglists(a)ancestry.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2020 12:35 PM
To: rootsweb-listowners-announcements(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: [ROOT-LO-ANNOUN] RootsWeb Mailing Lists
Beginning March 2nd, 2020 the Mailing Lists functionality on RootsWeb will
be discontinued. Users will no longer be able to send outgoing emails or
accept incoming emails. Additionally, administration tools will no longer
be available to list administrators and mailing lists will be put into an
archival state.
Administrators may save the emails in their list prior to March 2nd. After
that, mailing list archives will remain available and searchable on
RootsWeb.
As an alternative to RootsWeb Mailing Lists, Ancestry message boards are a
great option to network with others in the genealogy community. Message
boards are available for free with an Ancestry registered account.
Thank you for being part of the RootsWeb family and contributing to this
community.
Sincerely,
The RootsWeb team
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