Ancestry Reduces Features on RootsWeb

RootsWeb.ancestry.com has been a fixture of genealogical research since the earliest days of online access. I simply cannot remember a time when I was not using RootsWeb and its vast interconnected web of user contributed genealogical data. Here's a description of RootsWeb from the Ancestry.com wiki:

RootsWeb is like a forest that has grown up without much pruning or thinning. It has been and continues to be created by a worldwide community of online and mostly amateur genealogists. It contains huge and tiny databases (including more than 465 million names in family trees), libraries, articles, how-to tips, personal websites (more than 30,000 independently authored websites containing about 9 million pages), archives, and all sorts of surprising treasures and tools tucked into its nooks and crannies. RootsWeb also provides numerous vehicles for the free exchange of information pertaining to family research—such as 30,000 mailing lists—and it sponsors many of the largest volunteer genealogy projects on the Web. Many genealogical and historical societies call RootsWeb home, as do various family associations, special-interest groups, and projects you might never have heard about. Most of the different areas of RootsWeb are built and maintained by dedicated volunteers who are avid, friendly genealogists often willing to go out of their way to help you.

I recently spotted the following announcement at the top of the RootsWeb startup page:

We will be discontinuing the Guestbook and Calendar features on Friday Oct 13, 2017. RootsWeb users who use Guestbooks or Calendars on their Freepages, WWW, Virts, or Homepages web sites should remove Guestbook and Calendar references from those pages.

I certainly hope that this does not presage an erosion and possible discontinuance of the RootsWeb community. RootsWeb is probably not a significant revenue source for Ancestry.com and may go on the chopping block along with Ancestry.com's previous discontinuance of Family Tree Maker.  This would be a significant loss to the genealogical community.

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