Ancestry bought out Rootsweb two years ago. Without the merger Rootsweb.com would no longer exist. Not enough users donated for their free services so Ancestry stepped in. The merger allowed for free services to continue and to have a user pay portion also. The meger between Genconnect and The ancestry family history boards maintains the FREE USE of the boards. You don't have DON'T have to pay to view or post to the Boards. Ancestry requires that the user chose an id and password to give the user the ability to edit their mailing address for board messages they posted and eventually to edit the messages that the user has posted. The apperance of needing to pay for the boards is an issue that we have raised. However, Ancestry doesn't have an alternative way to proved the user the abilty to change addresses or edit previously posted messages. Broken Mail links was one of the major complaints with Genconnect. If anyone has anymore questions holler. The system still is in flux, and they have found some glitches but expect them to be solved in the next couple of weeks. Deborah Byrd