OHMAHONI-L Archives

Archiver > OHMAHONI > 1998-10 > 0909138275


From: Mary May <>
Subject: [OHMAHONI-L] Obitituary and Biography Boards
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 10:24:35 +0000


Hello everyone,

While I thought I had announced the creation of the obituary page, I looked
back over the posted messages since the beginning of September and could not
find it. My sincerest apologies!!! In the all-too-busy beginning of the
school year, I got swamped and overlooked posting the message to this list.
Well, I suppose better late than never, so here is the official announcement:

In September, I created two new boards for posting obituaries and biographies.
Obit URL...http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/Oh/MahoningObits
Bios URL...http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/Oh/MahoningBios

SOME TIPS FOR POSTING:
In the subject line, please enter the name of the person the obituary or
biography is about. You can also add the date of death for the obit, or the
approximate date the biography was written, to give the reader a time frame
when looking at board index.

At beginning (or end), please list as much information about the source as
possible. This can save you a number of e-mails from persons wanting to know
where you got the information. If you don't know, as sometimes is the case
from clipped articles, state "Source unknown".

If you submitted a posting and find an error, or would like the post deleted,
please contact the new county coordinator, Mary Ann Hetrick.

Fortunately, I've already received and responded to some feedback about the
GenConnect boards, so I will post my reply in FAQ format. This may ease some
frustrations, hopefully, to those who are not familiar with GenConnect, or may
not like the setup:

* * * * * *

1. Why can't the name of the person the obituary or biography is about show in
the index? Nobody cares about my name.

If the subjects name is put on the "Subject" line, instead of the word
"Obituary" or "Biography", most persons will assume that the posting is about
that person. While the appearance of the poster's name may not seem
important to some, someone may choose to contact the poster. Addressing the
person you are writing to by name is more friendly.

2. A person would have to look at every single message containing a surname of
interest to find the ONE message/obituary they wanted.

There are several ways to get around this, and I'll list them best first:

* You can customize your display for each board. For obits, the URL is
http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/Oh/MahoningObits?reconfigure.
Here you can search for specific names, search for postings by a certain
person, and by date range. This should help quite a bit if the list has a lot
of postings.

* All postings are immediately indexed through Surname Helper where surnames
can be searched at http://cgi.rootsweb.com/surhelp/srchall.html.

* The postings are listed last first, so if you check the board periodically,
you need not view the whole board.

* Your browser should have a "Find in page" search capability...you can
search for your name(s) this way if you do ever run across a page that's
unbearably long and unindexed. This is my least favorite method, but it works.

3. The date of the posting is meaningless. If the date of the death or the
obituary would show, that would be helpful and interesting.

In the "Subject" line, you can include the date of death. For example: Obit
for John May, d 12/12/1908.

* * * * * * *

If you have any further concerns, complaints, suggestions, please don't keep
them to yourself! Voice them on the list or ask Mary Ann. Sometimes the fix
is very easy, either from the entry side, or from the county coordinators
side. We can help each other make these boards great sites!

Best wishes,
Mary May

This thread: