My First Post for many (many) months. FMP - I really hate this website, and let my sub lapse in Jan this year, because I felt I did not get any value from it, and also that the FMP website is very hard to circumnavigate sometimes.. And I thought I was tech savy. BUT. They recently released Australian NSW Wills from the 1800's to around 1950's. To get a transcription agent in NSW Australia, to obtain a copy of a will, costs $A 40.00 minimum for one (1) will. Unless you can get to the NSW records office yourself in Western Sydney - which is located in the middle of nowhere, to look & copy the record yourself. So for the price of what it would me to obtain copies of 5 or 6 wills, I actually can obtain unlimited copies of wills in all my family lines, for a much less cost, by subscribing to a sub to FMP. This I see as good value. FMP also have some great UK Parish records, that one can download, from scans of original registers. I have not delved into their Irish records that much, because I agree, many are available free from other sites. But as much as I hate FMP, I have certainly found & downloaded records that ARE NOT AVAILABLE elsewhere - free or paid for, and found the value to be good. FG Listers need to evaluate what their requirements are and what they hope to achieve in their subscription, before out laying the $$$ to FMP. ANCESTRY - I also keep my sub, because sometimes, I actually find some pretty serious researchers who may or may not have a connection to some of my family lines. I have contacted a few people via the ancestry.com message system; those who are serious in their research have replied. Those who are not, have not replied. It sorts outs the people who are genuinely interested in their research. It's not a huge deal. On MANY occasions, I see ancestry trees that are copied from others, and again and again. With no research done, no records and no citations. And also with incorrect info. I don't bother to try and correct someone with 50,000 in their tree. BUT sometimes I come across others, where people are ultra generous, who have done the hard yards and share everything. And it has helped me break a wall or add something to my own lines. Whilst we all appear to be guarded, me also included, it is those trees where people who have done the hard yards and have *shared* freely, that we all learn something to help us out on our own. I so often read on this list, that some lister's just build imaginative trees to try and learn * hints * for their own trees, but aren't willing to put their own trees public online, so others can learn from them. At the end of the day, I still don't get it.