Rootsweb and Ancestry.com merged their message boards a while back and its
taken us "old timers" a bit to get used to the new system. Message boards exist
for thousands of surnames and locations all over the world, as well as many
special interest genealogy topics. I'm the administrator of a variety of
boards, some of which are extremely active. If you have data that you can share
with others, please consider doing so -- genealogy works best when we help each
other.
When posting a query, make it specific enough that others can recognize the
people about whom you're writing: include names, dates and places if possible.
If you are requesting help, please try to make that clear in the subject line,
"Need obit for John Smith" "Looking for info on Washburn cemetery" "Census
lookup for Mary Jones" or whatever, and select either "Query" or "Lookup".
Try to have a little patience; you may get a response to a census query almost
immediately, as most of us are using the online services to get them, but other
requests can take longer 'til someone is able to help you.
Also, some requests will only get a referral to elsewhere:
Naturalization lookups are given GRSNPs url (
), for example, and assorted queries are given the Lackawanna genweb url (
).
If you request an obit but don't have a reasonably exact date, you'll be told
about inter-library loan through your local library.
People looking for volunteers to photograph graves are told about email lists (
) or given cemetery contact info. Unfortunately, most of us answering questions
on the message board aren't in Scranton & can't help with things that require
presence there.
Most importantly, consider transcribing obituaries, certificates, etc that
you've collected as part of your research, to help other researchers.