Any ideas for contacting somebody who made just one post here ?

[kob3203]

Has anybody else run into this sort of thing ? You find a message in a RootsChat topic that's been posted, apparently, by an unknown relative of yours. So you excitedly start typing your response... but then you notice that the post was made a couple of years ago, and it was the only post that the user ever made. You investigate further by checking the user's stats: it appears that they joined RootsChat solely to make that specific post (date registered was just before the post was made), and it looks as if they were watching for a reply for maybe a month (their last login was about a month after they registered).

Being an optimist I'll start by assuming a couple of things:

• the person is still around
• they didn't fiddle with the settings when they set up their RootsChat account, so they'll receive email notifications from RootsChat for certain things
• they still use/have access to the email address they used for registering at RootsChat
• they are still interested in family history

So the first two things to try are those that'll prompt RootsChat to send them an email notification, i.e.

• Post a reply to the topic. Assuming that they have email notifications set then they'll get an email from RootsChat.
• Send a PM (personal message). Although it is generally understood that a user must have made 2 or 3 posts to be able to use the PM system this isn't quite true. A test done way back in 2009 (so it's possible that things might have changed) by Tati and Geoff-E (linked from here) indicated that you were able to send one, but only one, PM to a user who had only made a single post. Although they would be unable to reply via PM, they'd get an email notification that they'd received a PM

And then wait for at least a month to allow for holidays, catching them at a bad time, etc.

It's been a little over a month now and there's been no response (My particular person in question is user 105802020 who posted reply #13 on PS73's "Corbet /Sweeney /Martin cousins" topic).

So does anybody have any more ideas for contacting somebody who made just one post here at RootsChat ?

[Girl Guide]

Why don't you ask Sarah or Tristan if they have a means of contacting this person.  They may be able to access the poster's email and direct them to the relevant post.

Just guessing here, don't really know if Sarah or Tristan can do that.

[Wiggy]

I suggested that kob3203 do the same thing GG - via PM, yesterday.   
 I don't know if they can either, but worth a try.

 Haven't heard anything so . . . . . . . 

[Ruskie]

I did too, as I didn’t know if it was a good idea to suggest contacting S and T for fear of them being inundated, and it does entail a bit of time consuming to-ing and fro-ing.

Presume Kob received the PM but I haven’t heard anything from him/her.

[Biggles50]

I did not see that I had a private message about a thread of mine.

Sarah sent me an eMail to advise of the PM

I am now in contact with the writer

[Wiggy]

Thanks for letting us know that contact has been made.       Nice to know.

Wiggy

[kob3203]

Thanks for the suggestion everybody. That's something that had already crossed my mind, although I haven't actually got round to asking an administrator yet.

[aghadowey]

Not sure about the situation now but when I was a moderator I could not access email addresses of members.

[sarah]

Most folk reply to the topic first, this will send an email notification to the member to let them know of a reply, if there is no response after a week or so then drop us a message by pm and we can check further for you. We are not able to spot individual posts so they would likely be missed. Regards Sarah