Genealogy Message Boards are a growing resource that are aimed at helping Genies overcome the deadends that they invariably reach during their research. The Boards provide a forum for posting your queries for other researchers to peruse, and answer if they can.

Most Message Boards resemble a Newsgroup archive in html format and allow visitors to browse the existing queries, post answers to the listed queries as well as allowing them to post their own questions. A search of the Internet will bring up boards that cover specific geographic areas as well as surname related Message Boards.

One of the longest existing Message Boards is The Isle of Man Genealogy Board. A visit to the IoM board will show that upwards of 80% of messages posted actually receive responses. My own research was supplemented by a few well worded postings to this board. The results of these managed to extend two of my lines back a further 4 generations (about 100 years).

The increasing popularity of this style of information request can be demonstrated by one of the newer boards on the net. The Australian Genealogy Message Board was put on-line 4 months ago and over this time has received more than 4900 hits. Currently the Australian Board has a query answer rate of approximately 35%, due primarily to the newness of the board. It is envisaged that this rate will increase as more people become aware of its existence.

Most of the Genealogy Message Boards have common guidelines e.g. that any messages posted must be relevant to the topic of the board, that references must be specific. Most boards are moderated and messages are only left on the board for a set amount of time.

Some of the more common Message Board FAQ's are:

Q What information should I include in my message?

A You should start off with a meaningful Subject Line. A subject such as "Family History" or similar is not very helpful, whereas using "John Kelly, died Kirk Michael 1726" immediately lets others know what your posting is about without having to laboriously view the contents of each posting.

You should include enough information for people to be able to offer answers or other assistance. A message consisting solely of "Trying to trace descendants of Peter Cain" is not much use as people will need to know other details such as country, area, time period, etc. before they will be able to reply.

If you are trying to obtain information about people residing in countries other than that the Message Board was set up to cover you should make it obvious what the relevance is to the Board subject otherwise your message might be removed.

Q Can I put HTML tags anywhere in my message?

A No. HTML tags are not allowed. The Message Board will remove anything in <>'s. (This seems to be common with all Message Boards)

Q Why didn't my message show up?

A Your message most likely did not show up because your browser did not reload the page, it simply pulled it out of cache. Please reload the relevant page in your browser and it should then appear. (This can also occur if the Board is moderated. Messages will not appear on the list until the moderator has approved them.)

Q Why has my message been removed?

A Your message has most likely been removed because it was not obviously relevant to the subject of the Board or because the Board can only store messages for a set period of time.