Question

Is there a place here to post obits for other families to view, such as a message board

Answer 1

Hi Jennie! Sorry, only place is this or to mail directly to a profile manager. Try to put your message here, and I'm sure it will be seen!

Answer 2

I see many choices for this:

1. Enter the obit or a link to it directly into the narrative of the deceased person's profile.  
2. If you don't have editing access, post obit or link to it in the Comments section of the person's profile.  Not advisable when the URL link is long as it will mess up formatting of page and I haven't seen a way to make hyperlinks on comments.  
3. Use the personal memories section of the deceased person's profile.  I have never used this feature so don't know what permissions are required to use it. 
4. Use "Ask a question" and link to a g2g post here that contains the obit although that is somewhat of a hijack of g2g which was designed to be a place for questions.  (But I, for one, would support such a use.) 
5. if the obit is not already online, create a Free Space page and place it there then link to that page from the profile.  

In all cases, be sure to avoid copyright violations. 

Comments

I think the best options Jillaine has put forth are 1 and 5. Either one allows you to link an obituary to each person named - I often treat tham as a sort of a genealogy checklist, making sure I have accounted for each person mentioned, although sometimes grandchildren are given but not linked to their respective parents.

I think option 4 is my least favoured option; we already get alot of G2G questions that aren't questions as it is.

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Re: #2, you can make a hyperlink in a comment using HTML. Eg. <a href="http://www.wikitree.com">WikiTree</a>

Answer 3

Judy Russell had a nice entry on obituaries and copyright in her blog, The Legal Genealogist:

http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2012/09/12/copyright-and-the-obit/

I have always followed a similar approach on here, in that I type out the text of the obituary in the biography section of an ancestor's profile and then I include the newspaper and the date.

My experience has been that it is challenging for many people to find specific obituaries and death notices from old newspapers.  By providing the text of the obituary or death notice, I am able to provide the facts without having to get into the debate over the legitimacy of linking to an image of the actual newspaper article (although, I do include newspaper photographs of ancestors when I find them, although they tend to be fairly rare). 

Answer 4

A Question and possible answer.  Are you referencing the fact that these people may not be referenced in somone elses tree and that you are looking at transcribing a list or set of obits that you just happen to have such as from a newspaper or book.  If so what about creating a person that is not linked to your tree with all the details from the obit such as birth, death, etc. so that if or when that person might later be added to someone's tree they woudl then be able to request linking to the original person with the obit?