Hi Joan,
I am recently guilty (maybe, but I don't think sufficiently egregious to be have several posts removed without any notice. I'm a bit miffed. So I queried the board admin and was curtly told duplicates are not allowed and no notice is required. How rude. Then I posted my question here. I don't want to point fingers at the admin I disagree with but I can explain what I did to see what you think, thinking that you are more experienced, but also knowing that you are more of the opinion that duplicate posts are probably never necessary.

I am researching a mass murder in the 1880's in Texas. My wife's great grand mother married 3 times and was killed with some of her kids by her third husband who had a metal plate in his head. I got the story from my mother-in-law (super at family stories and never contradictory) who got it from her mother-in-law (don't know her reliability). I don't know the third husband's name and I don't know what year it occurred, but I do know the county and near a particular town and the approximate time period. I researched the cemeteries in that county looking for multiple burials at the same time. I contacted the local library/genealogical society/historical society. I have written to the police and sheriffs office. Next I contacted all my wife's relatives that descend from one of the kids that lived. I found one other researcher but she also got the story from my mother-in-law. So I decided to expand the search to all the descendants of great grand ma's brothers and sisters, since the story is quite interesting and may have been passed down their lines. I developed a descendancy chart for each sibling. I then posted in the county where the event took place my query about the mass murder and included the descendancy chart to see if I could find any living relatives that had any info.

Well as can be expected the descendancy chart included women than married into other surnames and parts of the family that moved to other counties. Now the dilemma about duplicate posting came up in my mind. This is a problem for people who only do searching to find potential contacts. But I want to find living relatives via researchers who are not searching but just trawling a board to see what is new and to help other researchers. These area experts are very helpful and sometimes send phone numbers for possible relatives in their areas. Sometimes they provide useful info to research further. Most people search for surnames, but who searches for "murder" or for farmer with metal plate? I figures I had to get the word out so I posted the same message in maybe three or four other counties and in maybe four or five surnames boards. I don't want to break the descendancy chart into little pieces because I am looking for anyone who might know someone who might be associated with someone anywhere on the descendancy chart. Anyway that was my logic to decide this was not a violation of the Community Guidelines.

Unfortunately, in my opinion over zealous, board admin is in the county where the event occurred. This is the most relevant board. I was told that if I post them again she will have them (she sends them to staff and she gave me his name) removed even though this is the primary board. How friendly and supportive is this?

So am I out to lunch? I can break up my lengthy all inclusive post in to nine or ten smaller posts on this board and they then won't be duplicative posts because they will each only have part of the decendancy chart. I don't think this will be as productive but can do that way. I'm frustrated but am willing to work within the system. I just think that some admins in the system are too rigid in trying to apply simplistic rules. As I posted before the FAQ said that sometimes duplicative posts are acceptable. And by the structure of Community Guideline (rules) the FAQs are not rules but only helpful suggestions on how to be successful in using the boards.

Alternatively I can contact the staff person (only know his first name) but since an Abuse message (I'm guessing) may be handled by one of many staff persons this may not get to the person I have a name for. However I'm not sure I can expect these staff persons to know anything about genealogy and only know some simplistic rules to apply without even knowing why they apply them. This seems to be an extreme hassle with little likelihood of success.

What do you suggest?
Oh yes... I have posted this same sort of query with descendancy charts for four siblings of great grandma and also four siblings or her second husband. All of them were deleted with no notice. If I break them all down into smaller non duplicative queries I may have up to eighty queries to post at my primary county board. This is just mind boggling to me that there is no sense being applied here. Just mindless application of simplistic (non) rules. I tried to post in the most efficient way I could figure out but if necessary I can be way less efficient.
Peace,
Jim