tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512311610334754148.post5039784410494067561..comments2023-04-20T12:46:11.858-06:00Comments on The Ancestry Insider: Where have all the Mailing Lists Gone?The Ancestry Insiderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02490682912125335188noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512311610334754148.post-21991514669051434882008-02-03T03:30:00.000-07:002008-02-03T03:30:00.000-07:00"It may be that mailing lists powered by genealogy..."It may be that mailing lists powered by genealogy companies may one day soon disappear entirely."<BR/><BR/>Insider,<BR/><BR/>Are you presaging a move by TGN to dump some components of Rootsweb like their mail lists?<BR/><BR/>There are problems with many of the lists, and mostly that have to do with inactivity. The message boards through the common gateway of ancestry/rootsweb, have taken a lot away from the mail lists. But this only highlights the overall problem, which is that TGN, through its ownership and continued support of the mail lists, ancestry/rootsweb message boards, and the genforum boards, has diluted all of them so that no one form of communication has a critical mass of sustainability for many locality or surname topics.<BR/><BR/>There are actually many mail lists that are vibrant and very active, and which mainly seem to be on specialized topics. The locality & surname mail lists however, are the ones that seem to be suffering.<BR/><BR/>I think that if the genforums site was dumped and available in archive mode only, that such would increase the traffic of the ancestry/rootsweb boards. And as to the mail lists, often the only thing that gives an illusion of activity for many lists is the ability of the admins to gateway message board posts into their mail lists. If that ability were removed, meaning the lists had to sink or swim on their own, not only would needless redundancy of storage be eliminated, but users would have to face a choice of which venue to use, meaning that one was more likely to come out with decent traffic, and it would probably be the message board.<BR/><BR/>Having said that, there is an awful lot of good material in the mail list archives, which I would hope would always be maintained as part of Rootsweb.<BR/><BR/>MikeAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com