Tuesday, July 26, 2016

RootsWeb Mailing Lists are Not Accessible. Why?

I was demonstrating how to use the RootsWeb message boards and mailing lists in my OASIS adult education "Beginning Computer Genealogy" class on Monday, and could not get into the Mailing List page to subscribe or browse the archives.

When I checked it again today, I still could not get into the Mailing Lists.  I could see the available lists, but when I clicked on one to subscribe, I got the error message again (and again and again - I checked about 10 mailing lists just to be sure).

Here is the opening page when I click on the Mailing Lists tab on the Rootsweb main page:


I put "seaver" in the field for "Find a mailing list" and got this result:


And I got it many more times also for other mailing lists.

What has happened here?  Is Ancestry.com aware of this failure on Rootsweb?  Did they just move the mailing lists somewhere else or delete the whole database?

As always, this may be happening to only me - could other users please check this for me?


=============================================

The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2016/07/rootsweb-mailing-lists-are-not.html

Copyright (c) 2016, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Share it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest using the icons below.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

14 comments:

Interested Observer said...

The RootsMagic list archives have been missing for over two weeks.

Robbhaas said...

The FTP Servers are down as well- Message from the Help Desk on 25 July: "We are performing maintenance to the site which is causing issues FTP'ing into your site and accessing your File Manager.  We don't have a time frame as to when this will be complete but we do appreciate your patience and understanding during this time."

Geolover said...

After the protracted server failure and mostly-recovery, there was an announcement that Ann Gillespie Mitchell was being put in charge of a major Rootsweb overhaul / upgrade. Possibly she can give some more satisfactory explanation of present status.

Geolover said...

It is true that the Mailing List Archive is presently inaccessible. However, the list of lists begun in 1995 by John P. Fuller and
Continued by Linda Lambert and Megan Zurawicz is still there

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jfuller/gen_mail.html

The mailing lists continue to work, although maybe not functional to the extent of accepting subscribe and unsubscribe requests.

As for the FTP servers, the major (oh, so useful) database /Chronicles of the Scotch-Irish Settlement in Virginia/ now has an announcement posted with a link: "NOTICE! Until the ftp access is fixed by Ancestry, you can go to the following directory to view the files: TEMPORARY ACCESS". The temporary access link is to (ferinstance)
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~usgenweb/va/augusta/court/volume-3/

So there is work going on, and some workarounds available.

Dona said...

I've found I can access specific pages through a Google search. Awkward, but at least I get there.

Joe Lowry said...

I'm a Rootsweb admin for the Lowry surname list and I am still getting daily spam notices, so I know that messages sent to the list are still being acted on. Odd.

Enno Borgsteede said...

No luck here either. When I search for benelux, I see 3 lists, but their indexes are not there.

William said...

Response (Kevin) (07/27/2016 12:28 PM)
Dear William,

Thank you for contacting RootsWeb in regard to the locating and access of the Mailing Lists.

We are sorry that you are encountering a problem accessing the lists. We will do all that we can to assist you. The Roots Web site is undergoing maintenance. Some areas of the site and its associated data is not currently accessible as a result. This includes the Mailing Lists. Once the maintenance is complete these issues should be resolved.

We expect the maintenance to be completed by the end of the week. We apologize for the inconvenience.

If there is anything else with which we might assist you, please let us know.

Kevin
RootsWeb Support Team
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com
Email: helpdesk-post@rootsweb.com

Unknown said...

Speaking as someone with 30+ years in the IT field, I find "maintenance" that takes a week, with no idea how long it will take, to be completely unacceptable. This is not reflective of an IT staff that has any sort of clue. At the very least, there should be a development system on which the work and testing is being done, then a brief outage while it's cut over to production.

We should get a better explanation than we've gotten so far.

Unknown said...

Hmmmm, well, this is weird. I put in www.rootsweb.com. Got to the home page, which looks different.

I went to: Search Engines and Databases
RootsWeb Surname List/RSL (Surname Listings) and typed in seaver. It went directly to the right page, listing seavers. Got this: search the RootsWeb Surname List
Surname (required)
Use surname;surname to see submitters researching both surnames
Location (optional)
Enter province, state or country abbreviation
Select type of search: Surname Soundex Metaphone
Soundex and Metaphone are for sounds like matches
Updated during period: Any Last Week Last Month Last Two Months

Got this:


Surnames matching seaver
New entries are marked by a +, modified entries by a *, and expiring entries by an x. Clicking on the highlighted code words will give the name and address of the researcher who submitted the surname. (If no names are listed below this line, then none were found.)

Alternate Surnames (Click for a detailed list of alternates) See the seaver resource page for more searches You might have to scroll left or right to view all of the information
Surname From To Migration Submitter Comment
Seaver 1608 now ENG>Roxbury,MA,USA>Westminster,MA,USA rjseaver
Seaver 1609 1777 London,ENG>Roxbury/Sudbury,MA,USA chandler
SEAVER 1634 1850 MA>CT marensea
Seaver 1743 2004 VA>PA>MO>CA LVMY72 Sctt>Pa>Metz>Blackwell>LosAngeles
Seaver 1743 1825 BotetourtCo,VA>IN Bansea
Seaver 1770 1870 dublin,irl>aus celto Nth. Co. Dublin, Ireland
Seaver 1777 1870 MA.> NY sloop35 M.> Lemuel Twichell 1801
Seaver 1789 1992 MA>VT,USA nbussey
Seaver 1814 1880 EssexCo,NY,USA perk007
Seaver 1815 1922 Corinth,MA>Chelmsford,MA,USA szturn
Seaver 1847 Smyth Co.Va>USA sheiron1
Seaver 1850 1912 MA,USA whsmith
Seaver 1900 now IA

Am I looking at the page you want?

Janet


SAMPUBCO said...

Obsfuscations! Some staffers do this.

Truth be told, they are in middle of moving mailing lists to new servers with different operating systems running new servers. Archived messages are still off line.

As of July 30, 2016

http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ is off line right now.

admin pages for the list admins are off line right now.

Marian said...

My experience is similar to Dave Liesse's, and I agree with him. Someone in the organization told that team that their work didn't matter.

Did they decide to work with online, production data when they did maintenance? Didn't they begin by backing up what they had, so that they could revert to it in case of a problem? I think this might be "planning to fail," intended to get us accustomed to NOT having it.

Regina said...

FTP to my site was up and working fine this morning. I was able to update about 200 pages.

aaronjhill said...

Most mailing lists are still inoperational, as of November 5, 2016. I just tried subscribing to ROOTS, the very first list ever created, and the message bounced back. I am looking for a new host for my lists. Any ideas? I am so disappointed in Ancestry and RootsWeb. Ancestry should relinquish control to FamilySearch or something. It's ridiculous.