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Archiver > GEN-NEWBIE > 1999-11 > 0941470749


From: "Gus Carroll" <>
Subject: Re: Delete
Date: Mon, 01 Nov 99 09:39:09 CST


Although I'm not Gen-Newbie Admin, I think I may be able to explain this, while using an example:

Rootsweb has an excellent search engine, where you can search a particular list or all posts. Many folks use it to look for occurances of surnames, then read the found messages hoping for a "hit" for their family.

Let's assume that you have a 5th cousin, twice removed that you've never heard of who is also searching for your gggrandfather Abner T. HAYS.

If you are using a signature block like you show below in ALL your message, when your cousin searches for HAYS, she will NOT make hits on ALL your posts.

If you do a roll call message for Abner T. HAYS, with born/died/married/children, etc. then the cousin WOULD make a hit on ONLY THAT POST of yours. She could then email you to check further on your common relative.


HOWEVER, if you are using a signature block with the name HAYS in plain text, then EVERY MESSAGE OF YOURS would be a "hit". After the 3rd or 4th "hit" on your messages where the only occurance of HAYS was in your signature block, the cousin would get rather disgusted with all the false hits and promptly start to ignore ALL of your posts, including the one where you do the roll call for ole gggrandfather Abner. The cousin and you would never make contact.

Since one of the primary reasons of posting your information on the Web is to make contact with long lost relatives, why would you want to do something to make such contact more difficult?

L8r,

Sarge aka Gus


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----------
> I would much rather be able to just type surnames in all caps, but when I
> started including them in my signature I got replies form several lists
> saying I needed to do it this way. Something about people researching the
> same names might possibly get hundreds of hits on their e-mail just because
> my names are included in my signature. Typing them this way disables that.
>
> Would someone at Gen-Newbie explain this further to this person. Thank you.
>
> Janie Brown Hinton
>
> Surnames researching: B*R*O*W*N, S*C*O*T*T, H*A*Y*S,
> M*A*S*S*I*N*G*I*L*L, B*U*R*N*S, C*A*T*E*S, C*O*L*E*M*A*N,
> D*U*R*H*A*M, H*I*N*T*O*N, L*I*N*D*S*E*Y, L*O*W*R*Y,
> M*A*R*S*H*A*L*L, P*I*E*R*C*E, R*A*W*L*I*N*S*O*N, F*U*L*G*H*U*M,
> R*E*Y*N*O*L*D*S, H*E*N*R*Y

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