What's New With The Ancestry Message Boards Message from the Ancestry Home Office by Jake Gehring, Executive Producer Wow, what a week it has been. The messages have really been flying. In an effort to improve communication from Ancestry to you (and vice versa), I will be sending out a message every so often which addresses current issues on the Ancestry site. The Ancestry staff has received lots of questions since the merger of Ancestry.com and RootsWeb.com last summer, and I think there's a general need for our users to have regular information on Ancestry's efforts to provide valuable services to the genealogical community. I also want to make a few comments about our new message boards system which was launched last week. We're grateful for the excellent feedback many of you have provided. The feedback has been generally positive when addressing the value of the combined datasets and the increased search functionality. However, I also recognize that any significant change requires some getting used to and may create some temporary inconvenience and frustration. I would like to address some of the concerns we've heard from you, the users. By popular request, we will shortly add the ability for users to filter by message category within a message board (for queries, obituaries, deeds, etc.). For the benefit of the message board administrators, we are extending the board re-adoption deadline from July 15 to July 23. There is some confusion about Ancestry's position regarding the ownership of messages posted on the boards. Let me clarify by excerpting from the Acceptable Use Policy, which reads, "When you post messages to mailing lists, message boards, and other facilities at Ancestry, those posts remain your property under copyright law." The same is true for those using the message boards at Ancestry.com. In short, if you posted it, you own it. As far as the message boards or any other Ancestry features are concerned, if you're not happy, we're not happy. Please continue to give us your comments and concerns at the Suggestions Message Board or at http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/help.cgi