I've been experimenting with the search facility and it looks as though it's going to be much more frustrating to use than the old version. I tended to use the "find messages posted by a particular person" option, and that's no longer available. It's going to be much more tedious to find the exact message I recall reading from weeks or months ago, having to plough through a long list of possibilities which get thrown up by the search.
One new feature I definitely don't like is the "Recent Searches" display which shows what other people have been searching for. I know that it's going to have an inhibiting effect on me in deciding what combinations of words I'll try searching for, knowing that other people will read them. I can't see that this could be a useful addition to the board, and I'd be very happy to see it scrapped.
Thinking about the new problem of replying to messages from Archive 1 and Archive 2, if no better solution is forthcoming we could paste an entire archived message into a "New Message", including its title, name of poster, and date posted. eg:
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Paul Taggart m Eleanor Quayle 1815 Malew
By:JC
Date: 7/1/2009, 12:12 am
I'm searching for the maternal ancestors of Jane Taggart bap 27 Dec 1824.
Unfortunately, most of what I've found in the IGI is patron submitted.
The Jane I'm looking at definitely had a father named Paul. So tentatively, I've got Paul Taggart ( bap 1789, buried 3 July 1885 Malew age 96 ) married ( 15 Jan 1815 Malew )Eleanor Quayle ( bap 1792, buried 1 March 1875 Malew age 83 )
Does anyone happen to know the parents and grandparents of Eleanor Quayle ? One possible set of parents is William Quayle and Eliza Kermod who married 15 Aug 1789 Malew.
Jean C
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..... and then anyone wanting to see the old thread would have the right combination of words to enter into the search box.
But that wouldn't solve the problem of new users of the board (people who've googled a name, found our messages, and want to reply) who would try and reply to the archived message and not know how to go about it.
Jean C