Pat and I discussed this offline and agree that places like mailing
lists and forums have died off.  That dedicated genealogy libraries are
disappearing.  And that younger generations have little interest these
days about family history (in general).

There are us old folks who are dedicated to the hobby but when one is
limited on income and restricted to computer emails or sites for
research, it makes it hard to fulfill needs to get through brick walls.

Eric
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Huffstutler, Eric S.
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 10:30 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] Genealgy Future

Pat,  your post sounds a bit bitter and not in the spirit of "fun" and
"sharing" but purely business.

First off, Rootsweb / GenWeb sites were NOT hosted by Ancestry years
ago.  As to why Ancestry is doing well is because it is the largest
holder of databases and so almost constitutes a monopoly.  Those free
county sites we maintained use to have waiting lists of people wanting
to take them over.  Now you can't give them away.  What changed?  I
still say that technology is going to be the downfall of civilization.
Isn't technology supposed to make life easier and to get things done
faster?  Then why do people complain they never have time for anything?
Isn't that a bit anticlimactic?

And Ancestry isn't without errors itself given that in the early days it
was cited as scouting other websites and stealing information itself
including trees.  In fact I just yesterday ran across an error and the
person gave reference to the source on Ancestry!

And as far as posting to mailing lists and forums, I have and either
never get a reply because no one reads the posts there any longer or
when I do get a response it is many years later.  Good thing I still
have the same email address from 1999 or no one would be able to find me
to share!  How often do people change theirs?

No, the hobby isn't dead but in the original sense it was founder on the
Internet, yes it is dying!

Eric 
 
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