I agree that the "Collaborate" tab should be visible at the top of the page as it has been. I also agree with the point about folks setting themselves up as experts in these forums, and not understanding that sometimes people just want to be heard.

I first found out about New Ancestry when I found the advertising banner at the top of my home page one morning last week. Decided to give it a "whirl", and can't adequately describe my disappointment. All the hard work I have done over the past years trying to clearly source every time line event in my tree for my own use and the benefit of others lost. Supporting documentation in the form of document images and document transcriptions/ stories no longer associated with those time line events. Supporting source records have to be found by clicking on the event to generate an arrow pointing to the source rather than simply having the source links in the time line event box. Navigation around the site is not intuitive at all, and takes more time than before (many more "clicks"). Then there are those generic historical items that have been inserted to make a "story" that generally have nothing to do with the life of the ancestor, some of them making no sense at all. (Sure, we can turn that off, but others are going to see that comic strip view of your tree.) It wasn't long before I was desperately hunting for the escape route back to Classic, which was not easy to find. When I entered my feedback, it locked up. Went through this loop several times, before finally escaping. (Have since learned that feedback character # is limited - what does that tell you?.) Then I went to the Community Support New Ancestry Forum to find out what was going on, and found out I was not alone. In the 15 years I have been using Ancestry I have never had to search for or ask for help navigating the system, it has always been intuitive. Although I have used the message boards over the years to collaborate on research, I had never gone to Community Support. Kind of strange isn't it that you have to set up a new account to enter? (Userid and password) So now my second disappointment - folks who came to vent were being clearly told that Ancestry is not paying attention to our complaints. This system is going in place whether we like it or not. Within about two months, if lucky not until the end of the year, there will be no option to go back to Classic. The only feedback that Ancestry cares about is what is given when you exit New Ancestry to Classic. (Good luck with that.) This feedback goes to the programmers only. The folks who post on the New Ancestry Forum include the Beta testers (that selected lucky few), so they can answer questions about navigating the new system, or will report the "bugs" that you identify if they agree they are bugs. Someone recently started a thread tracking the negative feedback on ancestry blog and Facebook, and is being put down by the ruling clique - 1. Blog, Facebook, Community Support, and Message Boards are not appropriate feedback mechanisms - ancestry is not paying attention, 2. The ruling clique thinks that decreased number of New Ancestry forum postings in recent days must mean people are getting used to the new system. They could not be more wrong about this last one - the majority of ancestry customers have no clue New Ancestry is out there, and the ones that do learned quickly that it was a waste of time posting concerns in Community Support,

By looking at the profiles of the the most frequent posters on all Community Support forums (answering questions) I saw years of experience listed as 5, maybe 10. There was one who had over 40 years, and he knows his stuff. There seems to be a competition to give the best answer (they award points for various things). If someone asks for help finding something about their ancestors, these folks will try to outdo each other doing the actual research, rather than making suggestions for how to find out (i.e. teach). Started to get flashbacks of high school experiences... but I digress.

Collaboration is core to genealogical research, and the Message Boards are a great way to interact with others to exchange ideas and support, especially if you are new to research. Making it easier for those new to research to find the message boards (or community support), rather than making it harder, only makes sense.