Ancestry.com has launched a Community Support Site. THe site will “focus mainly on getting started with family history, product questions, How-To discussions and general help related topics.” This sounds to me like an excellent move on Ancestry’s part.
The following was received this morning from Matthew Deighton at Ancestry.com:
We’re pleased to announce the launch of Ancestry.com’s new Community Support site. This will be a place for community collaboration and will focus mainly on getting started with family history, product questions, How-To discussions and general help related topics. While the Ancestry Message Boards are for finding people and places – our new Support Communities is the place to go to get answers to product questions, and to find tips and solutions submitted by community members.
The Support Community is designed to maximize collaboration and encourage members to engage with each other to share similar real-world experiences and ideas. If the knowledge from the genealogy community could be put into print, it would fill a library. Since a library is impractical, this online archive is the perfect location for the community to collaborate, share and learn. The nature of this online collaboration venue allows for the information to continually update, improve and grow along with the industry’s trends.
You can access Community Support by clicking on “Get Help” at the top of the Ancestry.com homepage. Once on Online Help, you will see a button for “Ask the Community” on the right hand side. That link will take you directly to Ancestry’s new Support Communities.
To help recognize those members in the community that help the most, we are introducing a points system. The system rewards the active participation of loyal members who volunteer their time to help others knock down those brick-walls and get the most out of family history research. Points are accumulated by creating posts, commenting, having your comment selected as the best answer and more.
The community needs to be a safe place in order for proper collaboration to occur. So to ensure a healthy community, we’re also introducing a Community Moderation program that encourages open and frequent communication between members, honors our core beliefs, and ensures respectful behavior between members.
