Discussion Groups

So this week in class, we are asked to report on a discussion group that interests us. This task is quite easy for me because I spend a good amount of time in various discussion groups that involve my hobbies. The easiest hobby to talk about would be genealogy. Genealogy is the research of your family tree, to discover where your ancestors came from and what events happened during their lives. To me, it is very interesting to discover the facts of my ancestors lives, how they faced their struggles and how they lived.

There are thousands of websites now-a-days that can help someone tract their ancestry. Some of the main websites include Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. Both sites offer different ways for members to connect, strangely the least used method of communication on those sites are the forums. The posts are usually from people looking for someone to do their research for them, giving a bit of information they know off-hand on some relation they once heard their grandmother claim they were related too. 

I typically go to forums outside of the genealogy research sites when I need help or am looking for tips on finding information. The first one being the Genealogy subreddit on Reddit.com. There are a handful of super helpful people that are always willing to give advise or know where to look for that missing record. The second place I look is Discord. Discord is similar to Reddit but they differ in the fact that Reddit is more of a messaging board while Discord is a chatroom. There is a very large genealogical discord server that lets members post questions and receive help quickly. 

For specific topics, it is best to find a forum or discussion group that caters to the topic than a general forum. I had known for a couple of years that on one side of my family, I had a Jewish ancestor. From my understanding, he had moved to the States in the late 1800s, married a girl from NYC and moved to Chicago to raise their family. What I didn't know that girl was a third-generation Jewish-American. Over that last few years (Thanks Pandemic!) I was able to find the information on where her paternal grandparents were buried and was able to visit the cemetery in Queens, NY. Once there, I realized that part of the headstone was in Hebrew. I was able to upload the pictures I took to a forum on JewishGen.org and someone was able to translate the text, which gave me information I didn't have before. 

I could go on and on about the different discussion groups that are in the genealogical community and their pros vs. cons. And I am sure there are plenty of hobbies that are along the same lines. Although some websites offer excellent options for group discussion, other's do not, so it is always best to try out a few different websites, to find the ones that best fit your needs.