FamilySearch Forums to be discontinued?

The following announcement appeared on the FamilySearch Forums startup page:

FamilySearch Forums will be discontinued after December 31, 2012. We are transitioning our Forums into a new question and answer tool, and these tools are in testing over the next month. Learn more, or join in the testing of this new tool here.

Clicking on the link brings up the following explanation:

Dear FamilySearch Forums Member,
At FamilySearch, our goal is to help you in the way that makes the most sense for you, while ensuring that we have the resources to provide the best experience possible. Due to user feedback, we are discontinuing these forums as of December 31, 2012, and researching alternate tools that will allow us to better give help in the future. If you utilize these Forums, please continue reading to know how you will be able to get help in the future.

Research & Consultant Help

You are welcome to join our Research Facebook groups, or our FamilySearch Facebook group, to ask questions or help answer others’ questions about family history.

Product, Indexing, & Family History Center Help

To receive help with your FamilySearch product, indexing, and Family History Center questions in the future, there are many options for assistance - contact FamilySearch over the phone, chat, or email with your questions. For indexing help specifically, in addition to the above you can visit a community-run forum site, or talk with your local stake or group indexing director.

Testing Community Software

If you are interested in helping us test other community software tools, join us in one of the following areas:
Google Groups - simple online discussions that you can subscribe to by email or view online.
FS Groups - more robust community software that allows individuals to create groups around topics they are interested in.
Google+ Community - a community group that allows for categorized discussionsWe are testing these for the different types of functionality they provide. There are other possibilities we are looking into as well that provide similar functionality.


We apologize for the inconvenience that this will cause for those of you who have come to enjoy your collaboration with each other on these forums. We hope this gives you enough time to search out alternate means of discussing those questions about your family history work, and the products that you enjoy. Feel free to ask questions below.

There were several comments to the announcement, all which were negative and especially about re-directing inquiries to Facebook Research groups.

I have noticed a decided decrease in activity on the Forums for the past few months and it does not come as much of a surprise that the site is being discontinued. It seemed to me that it had mostly been bypassed as a method of communication for FamilySearch.

There are those of you, of course, who are saying "What are the FamilySearch Forums?" and I suppose you won't miss them at all.