Ancestry Improvements - Family History & Genealogy Message Board

Re: Badges please?

mrhis2ry — 2013-05-21 16:05:37Z

I fully agree with your thoughts on the matter. I would like to use some "badges" or other images to help me keep track of certain events like what war an ancestor served in, but I do not think it should be shared as a hint to clog everyone's recent hint suggestions.

Re: New Search Result Page Visual Updates

adamr2 — 2013-05-20 02:49:40Z

I don't have FTM. It worked a lot better for me today. I skipped back & forth from Old Search and New Search.

Re: New Search Result Page Visual Updates

jeffjahn — 2013-05-20 01:45:53Z

Glad I wasn't the only one haven problems with that. I have been figuring out the new search some but have had to do some searches from the web site instead of ftm where the old one will stick.

Re: New Search Result Page Visual Updates

DelorisWilliams87 — 2013-05-19 17:24:40Z

The Ancestry Tech people are usually off on weekends so probably won't drop into this thread, but by Monday, maybe one of them will see this thread and pop in with some replies. If not, I would advise to start a thread addressed directly to the Staff, someone usually notices and at least takes a look.

Re: New Search Result Page Visual Updates

jwardh — 2013-05-19 03:45:07Z

For some reason now, selecting "Old Search" is not sticking in FTM. Each new search requires me to work my way back to old search. In the past, it would stick from search to search.
Not happy.

Re: New Search Result Page Visual Updates

DelorisWilliams87 — 2013-05-19 02:00:43Z

As Burgess has said, it sounds to me it's your FTM and not Ancestry.com that is the problem. Generally, one can get to Old Search by clicking onto the "Search All Records" option under the SEARCH tab at the top of the Ancestry page. Once you get to that Search Page, "Old Search" shows (in very small letters) to the right side of the page under the Menu Bar. If you are searching through your FTM and it's not allowing you to do that, that's something that needs to be addressed with the FTM software people. There is a Board here somewhere specifically for that, which you might want to check out.

Re: NY Passenger Records no longer on separate reels

cyndi308 — 2013-05-18 21:51:29Z

Got it, thanks!

Re: New Search Result Page Visual Updates

adamr2 — 2013-05-18 20:46:36Z

Katerine is obviously seriously mistaken. This New Format stinks to high heaven. I'm seriously thinking of cancelling. There no mechanism for accessing the old Ancestry Format Katerine like you previously posted here. I just called in for Tech Support and they said nothing they could do for me. Under the old format I could access doing a B-M-D Search hundreds of Results and names which I could examine. Since I'm from Canada I specialize in researching Quebec Drouin Records on my .CA Membership. Today I entered the complete came of a relative born 29 July 1912 in Montreal which by the way is a Birth/Baptism document. I had already seen it in Ancestry and what do I get for my results. 1 person from Saskatchewan, 3 from Ontario, and 1 man from Quebec. So Katerine you tell me why she showed up under the old Format but I get nothing under the new Format? I kept a copy of her Birth/Baptism record as proof. I then tried searching using Marie - Nothing; then Marie Anne - Nothing then Gabrielle and still Nothing. Her name is Marie Anne Gabrielle Laframbroise. Your current New Format search results is trying to tell me that only one man in all of Quebec had the Surname of Laframbroise. There are probably 3000 Laframbroise people who were born, married and died in Quebec. What crap!

Re: NY Passenger Records no longer on separate reels

BurgessDonnelly — 2013-05-18 15:26:16Z

Scroll up - I gave you an email address in the first exchange.

Re: NY Passenger Records no longer on separate reels

cyndi308 — 2013-05-18 15:19:08Z

I can not find a place to submit a tech support ticket. Their help seems to be limited to "ask the community," "search the FAQ," or "phone us."

Unless you have a link to share, I'll phone them next week.

Thanks,
Cyndi

Re: NY Passenger Records no longer on separate reels

BurgessDonnelly — 2013-05-18 12:37:07Z

As it is now the weekend, it is unlikely that a staff member will weigh in for at least 2 days.

I still suggest that you may want to submit to Tech Support.

Re: NY Passenger Records no longer on separate reels

cyndi308 — 2013-05-18 04:57:07Z

Wow is that complicated. I looked up all the links from the homepage to the manifests and not one looked like the one you linked to. Steve Morse's site is awesome but this particular part of it is not easy to use.

But even if it were, it would not relieve Ancestry of the responsibility of making THEIR site easy to use.

Now, are we going to hear from a staff person finally?

Cyndi

Re: NY Passenger Records no longer on separate reels

JoelWeintraub — 2013-05-18 04:48:50Z

You start with the ship lists:

http://www.stevemorse.org/ellis/boat.html

find the ship on the date, then use the link on the ship to go to the manifest images.

Re: NY Passenger Records no longer on separate reels

cyndi308 — 2013-05-18 04:45:25Z

Thanks Joel but I just checked it out and it's not there. You can access specific manifests but only if you know the roll number and page numbers. One of his pages will give you the roll number for the date you need. But I'm not seeing anything that lists the ships arriving on that date and/or tells you the page numbers they start at.

Cyndi

Re: NY Passenger Records no longer on separate reels

JoelWeintraub — 2013-05-18 04:38:32Z

That capability of looking through manifests for a specific ship on a specific date for Ellis Island is available through the stevemorse.org website.

Re: New Search Result Page Visual Updates

jeffjahn — 2013-05-17 21:50:31Z

Trying that, but not holding up hope, when I started up ftm2012 today it just sent me to the new search and wont give me the option to use search like your screenshot. I can type in ancestry.com in window and click old search but as soon as I hit new search I am back to the new search alas.

Re: New Search Result Page Visual Updates

BurgessDonnelly — 2013-05-17 21:36:53Z

BTW, since your issue is really more about FTM, you might get more and better answers on the FTM board. There are some quite knowledgeable members of that board, and I'm sure some are using Windows 8.

Re: New Search Result Page Visual Updates

BurgessDonnelly — 2013-05-17 20:22:56Z

Your browser makes no difference - FTM uses a crippled version of IE, which overrides anything else.

I'm using Windows 7 - have not tried FTM in Windows 8.

Re: New Search Result Page Visual Updates

jeffjahn — 2013-05-17 19:59:44Z

was looken for it before since knew where it was located but didn't see it this time will looks again. Am using Windows 8 with Ie 10.

Re: New Search Result Page Visual Updates

BurgessDonnelly — 2013-05-17 19:32:30Z

See attached screenshot

Re: New Search Result Page Visual Updates

jeffjahn — 2013-05-17 19:02:09Z

I am not seeing any option in ftm 2013 to use the old search.

It appears on the website that you can still use old search.

Re: New Search Result Page Visual Updates

BurgessDonnelly — 2013-05-17 18:47:05Z

Old search is still available.

Re: New Search Result Page Visual Updates

jeffjahn — 2013-05-17 18:40:58Z

I most say I really really really hate the knew search screen. Give me the old search anyday was so easy for me to narrow something down to a certain area where the new search is so hard to do it even when you know the location of the record you have to have your i's dotted and t's cross to hope you can find it. The headeache comes in when you search in FTM since it fills in so much data.

put NY Passenger Records on separate reels

cyndi308 — 2013-05-17 13:11:52Z

Sometimes you just gotta go through a passenger manifest page by page. You used to be able to do this by calling up the year, then the month, then the day, and then it would give you a list of ships to choose from.

Now you get down to the day and up pops a record with ALL of the ships from that day, one after another. It makes the manifests several hundred pages long.

This is an issue for two reasons:

1) It's a huge pain to find the start point for the ship's manifest you want. There is no index.

2) Sometimes you know the name of the ship but you aren't sure of the exact day (and sometimes what Ancestry deems the day of arrival is off by a day or two from the day you found in other records). Seeing a list of ships is a good check for making sure you have the correct day.

Is it possible for Ancestry to go back to the old method of only showing one ship's records at a time? If not, my second choice would be an index of each set of records with a simple list of ship names and the page numbers on which they start.

If this isn't the board Ancestry staff reads, please direct me to the correct one. Or the correct place to put this request.

Thanks!
Cyndi

Re: NY Passenger Records no longer on separate reels

BobNY — 2013-05-17 13:10:58Z

I was the original poster and I put it in Ancestry comments rather than here because:
- I didn't want to refer to what they had done as an "improvement"
- I didn't want to run the risk of offending she-who-must-not-be-named with a post that was not to her liking on her board.

Re: NY Passenger Records no longer on separate reels

cyndi308 — 2013-05-17 04:44:35Z

I have not followed the board issues, though I'm aware of the jist of them, but do want to say I think of the "improvements" board as the place to suggest improvements.

So is anyone from Ancestry seeing this? Is this a bug? A deliberate change? Can it be changed back? Will you?

Cyndi

Re: NY Passenger Records no longer on separate reels

BurgessDonnelly — 2013-05-16 22:54:15Z

I don't disagree. I just happened to remember that post, because I have that board as one of my favorites that I scan every day.

BTW - there had been some issues with posts suggesting improvements being deleted from the improvements board. Since the staff member said this board was an acceptable place for such posts, the issue seems better. (Being careful about what I say.)

Re: NY Passenger Records no longer on separate reels

cyndi308 — 2013-05-16 22:51:28Z

Thanks. I posted there as you suggested but I think this thread is a better location for a discussion since the other one has a nondescript subject header so most people won't even see it (I hadn't). Anyway, it's in both places and hopefully Ancestry will take notice.

Re: NY Passenger Records no longer on separate reels

BurgessDonnelly — 2013-05-16 22:33:43Z

A staff member has previously indicated this board is read by staff. You might also try sending a message to support@ancestry.com.

There is a previous recent thread on this topic at http://boards.ancestry.com/topics.ancestry.ancsite/12785/mb....

You might consider adding your voice to that thread, rather than possibly diluting the message by posting on this board.

EDIT - took 3 attempts to post a reply to this board, because the message board returns errors when attempting to post. UGH!

Re: Badges please?

TeriPettit — 2013-05-16 14:56:41Z

Since there are so many different ways that clip art photos are used in profiles, it seems like a "badges" feature would be unlikely to substitute for more than a small fraction of them. (The occupation photos are popular, and I've seen people who use solid color chips for apparent coding purposes known only to them.)

Rather, why not just put a checkbox option when uploading or attaching a photo to "Notify Member Connect listeners of new photo", defaulted to whatever it was set it to for the previous photo attachment to that tree? Then when someone is going through a procedure of attaching a bunch of clip art to their tree for decorative or coding purposes, they could turn the notification off.

Re: Blocking

TeriPettit — 2013-05-15 17:42:25Z

Re: "I know that you don't "create friendships" by unimpeded data import from another tree. You do that by personal communication. A public tree owner is no more likely to respond to a query than is a private tree owner...arguably even less so."

On the responses, you may well be right. A public tree owner may, though, be far more likely to RECEIVE an initial contact request from Burgess Donnelly than a private tree owner, due to quite reasonable concerns with efficient allocation of time.

I do not maintain a tree on Ancestry.com, so I care not a whit about importing anyone's data. But what shows up on the search results list for matches that occur in private trees typically does not give enough information to be able to tell if the tree owner is a person I would be interested in contacting or not.

Looking at a public tree often allows me to ascertain whether our research interests are likely to overlap. Often examining the tree allows me to tell that the match was partial, and the hit was for an unrelated person. Even when it is the SAME person I'm researching, I typically do not bother making contact if we each know the same info and are unlikely to be able to help each other, or if our interests come in from sufficiently different collateral angles.

There are usually WAY too many search hits in private trees for me to bother sending 50 tentative contact messages just to ask if the hit might be someone I'm interested in. (Or in making lots of detailed related searches to scope out who else may be in their tree - that also takes too much time to bother with.) Also, about 95% of my contacts are initiated by way of my correcting information in someone else's tree or providing additional information to them. Without examining their tree, I do not know if they have errors or missing info that I might be able to provide.

So it is very rare that I bother contacting the owner of a private tree. The likelihood that our research interests do not significantly overlap is usually too high to bother with. I typically just treat hits in private trees as black boxes, and ignore them. I probably initiate contact with owners of public trees 20 to 30 times as often as I do owners of private trees. Burgess may have a similar communication pattern.

Note that I am NOT complaining about people making their trees private! It is totally fine with me; I am not hurting for contacts; I have more than I can keep up with anyway. But I do think you are overreaching to assume that someone ELSE does not know their own research patterns well enough to have a good idea as to whether the public vs private standing of a tree makes a significant difference in the likelihood of their making useful contacts.

Re: DNA Results Filtering

scwbcm — 2013-05-14 13:54:21Z

It might also be nice to have a symbol indicating that the private tree owner will respond if contacted. This could go next to the lock. I've noticed quite a few people have put directions on their profile that they want people to contact them and that they will respond. It would make it easier to determine which private tree owners are more open to communicating.

Re: Put Web Links in Timeline Events

BrklynBridge — 2013-05-14 13:50:56Z

David, the new direct links to non-ACOM sources within the "source information" sidebar is quite a creative invention. Kudos to whoever for the concept.

Hopefully the URL errors generated will be fixed sometime soon.

Re: Re: Put Web Links in Timeline Events - Citation Web Links Corrupted!

BurgessDonnelly — 2013-05-14 13:19:34Z

The corruption is in the way the original source is converted in the new process. All uppercase characters are converted to lowercase, making the link unusable.

Several detailed reports have been made to Tech Support, but no repair has been made.

Re: Put Web Links in Timeline Events - Citation Web Links Corrupted!

Shillaker — 2013-05-14 11:54:45Z

I see that the Source Information list in the bottom right of the profile page has acquired direct links to the web addresses that are placed in the citations. This looked like a step in the right direction, sort of half way there.

Sadly I have to report that this process is corrupt. Consider this example.

The first screen shot is of a citation page containing a link that I placed.
The second is what my web server reported when I tried to click on the new link provided in the profile page.

See clearly that Ancestry has corrupted the link during the process of copying it from my citation to the profile page, by lowercasing it.

Re: Dual Dating

BarbaraTaylor7777 — 2013-05-14 06:23:42Z

If you enter the date as 1620-21, it will take it.

Barbara

Re: DNA Results Filtering

BarbaraTaylor7777 — 2013-05-14 06:20:10Z

There are quite a few comments and threads on the Autosomal DNA group http://boards.ancestry.com/topics.dnaresearch.autosomal/mb.a...

Barbara

Bulk reject/refuse/ignore function needed

McComberdescendant — 2013-05-14 05:48:39Z

It would be very helpful to have an "ignore all" or "reject all" button for the suggested connections, hints, etc., in a tree.

Re: DNA Results Filtering

babs689 — 2013-05-13 22:22:29Z

I couldn't agree more and your suggestion about the private trees is a great idea.

Re: "View relationship to me"...still room for improvement?

BrklynBridge — 2013-05-09 10:44:14Z

"I agree with both of you that the ultimate goal should be the flexibility and functionality described here; what an improvement that would be!"

The non-optional display of the feature (assuming a "who I am" selection) is simply a non-issue for me (YMMV), though the option would be nice. What is an issue for me is the difficulty in turning off the calculated relationship once displayed in a profile. Am I missing something here? How 'bout a simple reset function (NOT a "recalculate") in the drop-down menu in lieu of a journey to the settings page to delete then re-engage the currently necessary (and utility-stifling) "who I am" selection? As noted by many, "who I am" in many lineages I research is "nobody".

As to motivating ACOM towards development of a more functional design, make it a dynamic, subscriber-only feature (the architecture is already available in FTM) which would bring non-subscribers, instead, to an ACOM subscription ad. That would be, I think, a win-win for all concerns.

Re: "View relationship to me"...still room for improvement?

ryleen1 — 2013-05-09 07:44:04Z

I agree with you about the needless limitation of the "pedigree-centric" approach.

However, the second point you bring up is what bothers me most right now.

Once upon a time not so long ago, we could turn the "view relationship" operation for a profiled individual on-and-off again at will.

It was not only simple, it made common sense. Now I can't use the calculator AT ALL, because I refuse to have this personal information strewn clumsily across the top of the profile pages in my family tree permanently.

I agree with both of you that the ultimate goal should be the flexibility and functionality described here; what an improvement that would be!

But why can't the line of code which created the ON-OFF switch be put back in the meantime? How hard can THAT be?

I'm beginning to wonder if there's some reason why Ancestry WANTS our family relationships public for some reason, but I can't think how it would be of benefit to the company.

So now I'm using pencil and paper to figure out the relationships - no fun. Yes, I know it was a big mistake not to start with a stand-alone program, but what concerns me more now is the attitude which comes across -- that customers can and should be greatly inconvenienced for reasons which, by company choice, are not revealed to us customers even when we politely ask.

To me, that's not customer service.

Re: "View relationship to me"...still room for improvement?

frostfreedet — 2013-05-08 22:53:43Z

I agree that the pedigree-centric "relationship" software is needlessly narrow-minded.

One has the option to change who "you" is in order to determine relationship between two people, but then under the first person selected from whom one performs this operation, the conclusion is shown as a relationship with "you".

Since other tree setups have sensible relationship calculators that show lines of descent from common ancestor for any two persons, it obviously can be done sensibly.

There should be an option to display or not display the "relationship to me" thingie. There are so many trees that are surname studies or created by researchers for other persons, this limitation makes no sense.

"View relationship to me"...still room for improvement?

BrklynBridge — 2013-05-08 12:58:22Z

While I'm unsure whether the most recent iteration of this feature (we now have a small, mouse-over tree icon thrown into the mix) will satisfy prior complaints, it still falls short in regards to maximizing its utility.

It would be, IMHO, programming energy well-spent to make this feature dynamic...allowing a user to select from among any profile currently contained within the tree.

As has been previously noted by myself and several others, "View relationship to 'X'" would be a marvelous feature, unhindered by the tedious, unrealistic restriction imposed by a mandatory election of "self-identity".

Re: An idea for the Public vs Private Tree dilema

sharonsue69 — 2013-05-08 00:43:38Z

the 164,00+ tree was all over the place and not certain surnames.

Re: An idea for the Public vs Private Tree dilema

sharonsue69 — 2013-05-08 00:42:31Z

re "bragging rights", recently I found someone had taken my parents info and added it to their "tree" and they had...now get this...164,000+ people in their tree and the member had been on Ancestry for 2 months. It looked like they were taking people but had no connections for them. Very weird. So I asked Ancestry about it and of course never heard back but I did Block that obvious creep.

Re: An idea for the Public vs Private Tree dilema

LostQuays — 2013-05-07 04:46:01Z

I never ever had my personal family tree up on Ancestry at any time.

I was just shocked that he made it public and then denied that we had a deal.

The only trees I have on Acom - are trees that I create for people that I help.. and then they can take it from there..

But my sweetest revenge here.. this 5th cousin once removed.. added the wrong information on a number of "branches" that he's connected to himself.. and he'll probably never even notice.. Plus, I am aware that he's also invited many people to view it. That part concerns me though.

Anyways.. lessons learned.. I can forgive, but I can never forget.

Thank you for replying to me.

Re: An idea for the Public vs Private Tree dilema

McComberdescendant — 2013-05-07 04:13:51Z

Lost - I don't know of any way your cousin could keep you from seeing the tree, if it's a public tree (and if he has made it private, which prevents you seeing it, perhaps that takes care of the issue you had in the first place?)

Re: An idea for the Public vs Private Tree dilema

scwbcm — 2013-05-06 21:54:26Z

Yes, by all means abandon all forms of copyright just because you live in this century. You go first. Just kidding.

Re: An idea for the Public vs Private Tree dilema

LostQuays — 2013-05-06 21:44:24Z

A very distant cousin hounded me for 2 years to share my ged file that I refused to post on Ancestry. I finally gave him a copy.. I told him to never share it or upload it on the internet. I wanted my living relatives to remain private. I told him.. "just use it as reference and it's up to you to prove it to yourself that the information is relevant."

I had also recorded and translated thousands of vital documents from my ancestral town - related to me or not.. It took me a few years to do.. I invested money and time researching from microfilm.

That was the deal. Don't share it .. especially on the internet.

Wouldn't you know it, he uploaded the ged file on Ancestry and made it public.

When I confronted him he told me that no deal was ever made.. and then blocked me from seeing it.

In my opinion.. if privacy matters.. keep your tree at home and think twice before you share it with others.. best to really keep it in your own family...

Re: Request: ability to search for comments and "alternative information" submissions

fhsleuth — 2013-05-06 20:23:06Z

My previous post was removed because I had included a URL, which is in violation of Board Rules. Following is my newly edited post:

"Thank you for taking the time to explain the changes being brought about by the BETA version.

"Indeed, that would be frustrating for one to have posted alternative comments to a record and then have another poster come along and make 'changes' that may be incorrect. The end result of such would be a toss up as to which comments would actually appear in one's own tree. I agree that practice would be a nightmare for the conscientious and methodical researchers who have painstakingly taken care to ensure the validity of their own data and source documents.

"If I may make a suggestion, some may want to check out the way records are corrected on an ACOM sister site. Selected fields are stacked vertically and data is posted from original records by site personnel. Anyone can obtain a free membership and add information about the person to that record. However, a new set of selected fields is stacked vertically beneath the first set and the name of the individual who posted those changes is included. Therefore, nothing is overwritten for all time. Every comment posted is preserved and can be compared with other posted comments. Free members are permitted to leave their own contact information if another researcher may wish to discuss, compare, and contrast the various postings. This format is somewhat appealing because all data remains 'atop' the records and an evaluation of all data can be made. But, there is a downside as original records are normally blocked from view unless one has a paid membership.

"A check of the sister site's method might provide some ideas for improvements on ACOM. It is worth a look in my opinion."

Find the ACOM drop down menu at 'Visit Our Other Sites' near the bottom of the page and locate 'Fold3.'