Shared message boards with our International members has been a concern in the past due to the language barriers that it presents. We have received positive member feedback on this topic, and are now ready to merge a select number of message boards with our French and German websites. With the continued and exciting global growth of family history research, the barriers of language communication is nothing new to genealogists, researchers, and our message board administrators. It is our hope that our volunteers will continue to encourage growth and work with the new challenge of languages on message board posts.

Here is a list of the message boards being considered for the merged:

Merging with ancestry.de -German localities of Central Europe for categories:

-Austria
-Germany
-Liechtenstein

Merging with ancestry.de -German localities of Western Europe for category:

-Switzerland

Merging with ancestry.fr -Localities of Western Europe for categories:

-Belgium
-France
-Switzerland

We know that as administrators, you have already been working with these types of posts, and you are doing a great job. Many administrators have been using on-line Internet translators to view the content of foreign language posts and to determine if the content upholds the community guidelines. To help in this we will be adding administrator help content in our knowledge base articles and updating administrator duty resources.

We welcome your feedback on this change to message boards; your comments will help us to better serve you.

Sincerely,

RootsWeb Support Staff