# CuriousFox village entry: free "who remembers" query for Llandough / Penarth

Date: 2026-10-29 · Status: GATE. It's outward (a public post under an account), so it waits for the project lead's GO. Free tier only; zero spend.

## What it is
CuriousFox (curiousfox.com) is the UK and Ireland **village-by-village contact site** for family and local history. It's a small husband-and-wife business run from North Cornwall. There's no advertising and no affiliate links, and the whole site is geocoded.
Every place has a page of entries. These are short queries ("looking for anyone with information on …"). Members reply privately through the site's messaging, and email addresses are never shown.

## Facts read 29 Oct 2026 (help page, terms, live pages)
- **Free vs paid:** anyone can join free and post entries.
  - In any message exchange, at least one side must be a paid member. Paid members' entries show a green envelope and anyone can message them. Free members' entries show a red envelope and only paid members can message them.
  - Paid membership costs **£6.00 a year**. It adds a profile, the ability to edit entries, a link to a personal family-history website ("restrictions apply"), and an email when new entries are added to a saved village.
  - In the help page's own words: "You are far more likely to get a response if you are a paid member with a green envelope".
- **The site is active:** the front page showed new entries dated **Thu 29 Oct 2026**, several already marked "Replies from 1 Person".
- **Local pages:**
  - Penarth (vid=45013) has **14 entries**: the Thorne, Brotherton/Hooper, Botting, Angove/Hawkins, Robins and other families, mostly Victorian Penarth.
  - Lower Penarth (vid=38550) also exists.
  - **No Llandough, Llandochau or Leckwith page** shows in the Glamorgan village list. The help page states that if a place is missing, members can email and the site will locate it or add it.
- **Terms that matter:**
  - §8: no messages "offering or publicising commercial services, or that are effectively adverts for one particular website … items for sale". The site encourages "provision of information including a reference to its source but not promotions for a specific website".
  - §12: it isn't a forum. Don't answer another entry with an entry.
  - Message volume is capped per member.
  - No email address in a first message.
  - **§20: copyright in anything posted passes to curiousfox.com.** So post a short query only, never e-book text, transcriptions or research write-ups.
- **What practitioners report** (genealogy-specialists.com thread, 2013–2020):
  - "I made a contact through Curious Fox which helped me solve a long-standing brickwall".
  - "a cousin of mine replied to me … Both of us chasing the same information".
  - "I managed to find a whole heap of Sussex ancestors thanks to one post".
  - One user got a reply years after posting and had to pay to read it. It came from a relative and "unlocked more information".
  - Pattern: low volume, long tail, high-value contacts. Entries stay up as a long-term archive.

## How to do it (when GO'd)
1. **Account:** a free member account on [address kept in the project workspace] Display name "Cedwyn research", never the project lead.
   - Paid (£6) would make replies possible from free members too. That's a spend, so the project lead's GO.
   - Without paid, only paid members can reply. That's a smaller but more committed pool.
2. **Place:** ask CuriousFox by email to add "Llandough (near Penarth), Glamorgan" first. Sending that is also outward, so it's in the same GO. Fallback: post under Penarth, titled with "Llandough near Penarth".
3. **One entry, about 80 words, research-first, no link, nothing for sale:**
   > Title: Williams family, Great House Farm, Llandough (near Penarth)
   > Looking for anyone with family links to the Williams household at Great House Farm, Llandough-juxta-Penarth. John Williams farmed about 110 acres there in 1871 (census RG10/5368), with wife Mary and children Janet, Ellen and John. Also interested in photographs of the farmhouse or farm before 1960, and memories of the farm in the 1930s–50s.
4. **Optional second entry** (after 8 weeks, only if the first gets a reply): Rees family, Llandough Farm. It's a neighbouring household and builds the one-place picture.
5. **Replies:** move the conversation to the Cedwyn contact form or email only after the other person replies (site rule). Log each contact as a HubSpot note. Ask consent before anything they share is used publicly (reader-memories-call-ugc-consent-local-history.md).
6. **Check:** once a week, as part of the inbox routine. Messages arrive by email from [address kept in the project workspace], so allowlist it.

## How we apply it to Cedwyn
- **Purpose:** sourcing, not selling. Find descendants and photos for the Great House Farm record. Any sales effect is indirect: a contact who later reads the e-books.
- **Fit with tonight's work:** the 1871 entry, the younger John born about 1867/68, and the open question of Amy after 1853. Those are exactly the questions a descendant could answer.
- **Rules:**
  - Never name the project lead.
  - Banned words list applies.
  - No accusations, no case talk, no BP v Buckler in the entry.
  - Nothing about family holdings.
  - Living people are never named.
  - No outbound or shop link in entries (terms §8 and our own rule).
- **Measure:** replies per entry, contacts that yield a record or photo, time to first reply. **Kill rule:** 0 replies in 12 months means delete the entry (entries persist, so leave it up longer than usual before giving up).
- **Not checked:** the exact link "restrictions" for paid profiles (terms §14 only covers paid aggregators). Whether CuriousFox will add Llandough as a separate place.

## Sources
- curiousfox.com ; /uk/help/help.php ; /uk/pages/terms.php ; /uk/counties/Glamorgan.php ; /uk/r.php?vid=45013 ; /uk/r.php?vid=38550 (read 29 Oct 2026)
- sassyjanegenealogy.com (2015 overview; price then £5.50)
- genealogy-specialists.com (user testimony 2013–2020)