Will this continue to be a free feature? Or will everyone have to have a paid membership to use this?

will the family file show up on RootsWeb World Connect Project database?

Now will you please make a similar announcement about OneWorldTree, and retire that infected dinosaur?

I have already submitted a tree to the new tree system, which is PRIVATE, and will never be made public because I upload my documents to it, which I will not share. I absolutely HATE the new tree system. HATE IT HATE IT. Once they retire the Online Family Tree, I am removing everything from Ancestry.com and working strictly from home, on my Rootsweb progam.

I deleted my online family tree and it is gone. Ancestry doesn’t even give you the choice to put it back on if a person has changed their mind. How clever of them.

Will your tree show up on Rootsweb? I doubt it.

The new tree system is not viewer friendly, not is it as easy to enter information. It is a constant click-click-click to get to the correct person, or lineage. Too many pages, too much confusion, too many event pages, relationships etc. That is not simple, but confusing. The search name engine is defective, and doesn’t always work, nor does it always find the name, even though you know that name is there. Such as your own name. I put my name in and the search engine couldn’t find it. What is the excuse there?

Also, consider this: family researchers are uploading documents (birth, death, marriage etc) headstone photos and other pictures to their trees which strictly benefits Ancestry; there is nothing to prevent them from harvesting all this hardcore documented research that we are paying for, and putting it in their databanks to be made available to the paying public sometime in the future. No matter how we are assured this information remains in our trees, Ancestry still has their disclaimer and submittal agreement that we must agree to before submitting our documents and photos.

I am indeed bitter about all of this.

..and I also agree with Xander about the ONEWORLDTREE being an infected dinosaur. Kill it quickly.

While this news is a bit disconcerting, I realize that a year on the internet is a long time, let alone eight years. I actually came on because I went to merge information on a person in my tree tonight and Love, Love, Love the new Merge page (Once I figured out how to use it) This is GREAT! Thanks so much for this great addition!

How will this change effect the family trees that I have on my “MyFamily.com” site ?

Thanks Kenny for the updates.

Our family LOVES the online Ancestry Member Trees. We have over 100 people collaborating on several of our trees. There are multiple editors in each and we find the trees very easy to use once we get used to them. Of course we are always looking for enhancements to make them better. That is why I agree that Ancestry should concentrate on ONE tree system, the member trees, and retire the OLD system OFT. Regarding ONEWORLDTREE, isn’t is an indexing system, or view into all the trees submitted? WE love it, and it lets us get an overall view of all the trees an individual may be in, and then makes it easy for us to view each of the trees included. Keep up the great work on the trees. Looking forward to more enhancements regarding descendant reports, and other things from the other blogs here on this site. Our family is addicted to the online trees, many many comments from family, how the look every day and some many times a day to see the new photos, stories, comments added. It is exciting and we all love sharing our photos, documents, stories with our other family members who are members of the online tree. Thanks to ancestry for all the great work they have been doing. Things are getting better and better. Thanks

Although I have begun to use the new Ancestry Member Trees I am not happy with the extreme changes. Someone with basic computer skills, would find it very hard adjusting to new ways of searching and saving. The new system is just not as friendly to those who are not computer savy. I find myself having to click too often to return back to the person I am working on which takes a lot more time than the old program. I also really miss the one of the Tree Views: (Family Story) which was a very good feature on the old Online Family Tree and should be added to Ancester Member Trees. It makes things a whole lot clearer when you can read the family story at one glance. I have to add that I really enjoy the ability to add pictures, stories, and audio. I hope that Ancestry Member Trees will be a free feature for all users to enjoy not just paid subscribers.

I just uploaded one of my larger family trees and portions of it are MISSING. Also missing are my copious documentation notes and census notes that I have been working on for YEARS. I had used Ancestry.com as my primary online family tree, and had recommended the website to others, but will now reconsider. While I think it is nice that the new trees will allow folks to upload photos, etc., I think it is apalling that we as customers are being forced into a situation that will require hours & hours of more work to re-establish what we have done so far. I DON’T THINK IT’S WORTH IT. My subscription is up in June. I may not be back.

I feel that Ancestry is right about this. It’s time to move on and up with what’s out there in terms of online sites. While it may seem a bit unfriendly to some users (always a learning curve and always room for tweaking), I find it fairly sleek for the most part. I think that people who are using Ancestry to its full potential (research, sharing, making connections), it makes considerable sense to offer so many of the things serious seekers use in their programs at home.

I question users who think that Ancestry.com has ill intentions about the services they offer. Look at it this way–why would Ancestry use research that people have put on their site for gain? How could that ever be feasible or remotely useful? “According to Joe Smith’s family tree, Edelbert Smith is buried just off Main Street, Anywhere, USA”–so what’s the source of that when it comes down to compiling notes? Do you admit that you got the information in a similar fashion as hearsay? It would be along the lines of using a random Gedcom as an actual source instead of a research note to look into at a later date! It also means the information is still not valid until you’ve verified it yourself or know that person is a credible researcher–but it still is not a source to brag about or to take seriously. Within the paradigm of a good, source, information placed on the Internet is suspect. While I enjoy using all of Ancestry, I take everything on here with a grain of salt.

We live in a Renaissance in terms of genealogy. I hope that Ancestry is aware that it is leading this community into a new era of possibilities. Not that I wish to grandstand, but we should be thankful that Ancestry even exists. Or the Internet for that matter. I’m 28 years old and remember when the “Information Superhighway” was advertised when I in eighth grade. Bless those souls of old who had to write letters by hand and hope that some kind soul across the country or globe would actually do a lookup.

I’m a bit confused by a previous poster had searching difficulties. I messed around a bit with the tool and found it excellent. I typed in my name and there I was. I also tried finding other people. The “smart” search is great. I typed in William and everyone with the name William appeared under the box so I could scroll down to the one I was looking for and go to said person.

My one suggestion would be to cleanup the rough edges with the “Add Event” section. It seems to be lacking a note section, which would seem to help those who are committed to putting their research online.

The same thing happened to me. I uploaded almost 5,000 names to the new tree system, and whole families were missing, or were placed in the wrong place, relationships to the wrong family. This was years of work down the tubes. The notes section is still there, but you have to click several times to find the notes box. These notes are important to anyone who may be researching the same family, and someone who is new to the tree system won’t know to click on Edit Person, and then look for relationships or notes. There are too many clicks, and too many boxes.

The new tree system eliminates all the original viewing choices which helped in building the tree. Now, with all the clicks, different pages to read and the confusing boxes, this is lost.

Sure, there is a benefit to having several family members being able to access and add to a family tree at one time, but I for one don’t want anyone else editing the information that I take so much time documenting and putting in. I have a family member will will argue any date you present to them, even if you push the birth or death cetificate under their nose. This person would take it upon themselves to change or delete person they don’t want in the tree.

Another example is my son who doesn’t want any reference to his wife’s first family in my tree. His wife has children from her first marriage, therefore her first husband is a necessary addition. My son has already in the past, deleted all the first spouse family information that I put in my tree, and I had to remove him from editing anything.

Do you people want to take the chance of having this happen to all your hard work?

Unless Ancestry.com removes all the clicks, the amount of page views (relationships, relationship events etc) and places the notes page on the front of the person view, I am removing my tree completely and I will not renew my subscription this fall. The new tree system is just too unwieldy to manage. Too many clicks to get back to the right person.

I despise it.

Where is the abiilty to print out information from another person’s tree, such as was afforded to the public in the past? It’s gone.

The ability to view all information regarding the family member’s history, ie. census, who was living in the family during that census year, what their occupation was, who was living near them, and the NOTES, is gone. This was a huge beneficial factor in the old online tree system.

No, I am removing my tree and will search for another online site to put it on.

Goodbye Ancestry.

HELP! I have tried over and over to transfer my tree to the new site - MOST of my tree is missing!!! That’s over 6 years of work - please help correct the problem OR leave where it is - I go too deep/ far with my branches to lose anyone now! Linda T.

I migrated my Online family Tree to the Family tree site but while all the names I have in the OFT are acessable the tree itself haws not constructed itself in the same form as the OFT. Only two generations are in the new family tree. Where are all the rest of the names?

Rob

I am confused. I am sorry, but the more that I read this the more I think that I might already be using the new system. What is the difference? Is the web site address different from the old to the new system? It may be that I won’t have to move my data at all, but how do I know which system I am using? It may be that I started under the new system or I would already know the difference? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

I was ready to transfer my Online Family Tree to the new member tree website but after reading all the negative comments on the blog I am very hesitant to do so. Sounds as if to many mistakes have been made in the transition, to much hard work and time involved in accumulating all ones research and much of it lost in that transition. I for one also would appreciate the Family notes view being restored. If this new member tree is so complicated and requires to many repetitive clicks and moves to reach the info one is looking for; how can this possibley be a good move? I would appreciate an answer from Ancestry.com as to whether all the complaints registered are going to be rectified? Thank you.

I am hearing a lot of talk about this new member tree system but so far have not been able to find it to get a look at what you are demanding we move to. I would like to at least see it and see if I can move around in it. you know experamint with it a bit. At this point it sounds a bit scarry. You are asking me to dump all of my years of work into something I have not even seen. I am not one that likes to buy something sight unseen. And some people have said you can’t even print out any information that I find. I do print out every thing that is my way to have a document and a way to locate a source. I have been working on several trees all of them conected to mine. I just got done haveing some one deleat all of my genealogy and (Ancestry says they can’t find it ) I have been in the proces of puting it back togather. I am not real happy about the posability of all my work getting lost again or scrambled from what i am reading. I am beginning to wonder if that money I have been paying Ancestry isn’t just throwing it away and perhaps I should find another use for it.

I have been working on my famliy tree on Ancestry for years now. I have over 62,000 on my tree. I’m terrified that I will lose it all when I transfer over to the new system. I wish they would retire OneWorldTree and well as Private Trees. I enjoy having others view my tree and send additions and corrections. I’m not really
computer savvy either. I would rather keep things as is.

AWT is more useful to me than the member trees, and is because of the time/trouble it takes to find what you are looking for in the new format. Again, you would think that someone out there would have noticed this in beta testing. (You DO beta test, don’t you?).
The editing issue isn’t a biggie, I don’t let other folks touch my data, and I think that functionality is still there.
Basically, Ancestry needs to beta test the ideas — from the new site to the cache issue earlier this year, and now the trees. If you would test it with real users before putting out and saying “Tough if you don’t like it”, I think you could get a better acceptance. And maybe learn something? I hope.

I have enjoyed Ancestry World Tree because of the ease in up-dating my family tree. I would hate to think that all my work would not be viewed by everyone connected to my family or that it might be lost. From the comments that I have read I do not think anyone is pleased about your deccision to change.

I have enjoyed Ancestry World Tree because of the ease in up-dating my family tree. I would hate to think that all my work would not be viewed by everyone connected to my family or that it might be lost. From the comments that I have read I do not think anyone is pleased about your deccision to change.

Losing the “Family Story” portion in your new settup is the loss of the key ingrediant. Also, while you can click on a pedigree it lacks the ability to creat a list of descendants. I can’t say that i will add all my hard found documents and photos for obviou8s reasons (the benefit to the corporation) but will give this new idea a fling. BUT WHAT I AM MOST WORRIED ABOUT…ARE YOU STILL SUPPORTING ROOTS ? AND, WILL THAT FEATURE CONTINUE AS IT IS ?

This message is in response to an “Online Family Tree Announcement” on or about December 19, 2007 by “kfreestone” (identified elsewhere as “Kenny Freestone, product manager at Ancestry.com over online family tree tools, especially the relatively new Member Trees on Ancestry”).

Ancestry.Com recently decided to terminate its long-standing service “Online Family Trees” (OFT). OFT is to be “frozen in stone” as of the end of March 2008, with then existing files continuing to be accessible but without permitting further changes to the files. Such an abrupt elimination of a valuable resource for genealogical study has come without opportunity for input from the many users of OFT, of which I am one.

Ancestry.com is encouraging current owners of OFT files to transfer them to new “Ancestry Member Files” (AMF) with different protocols. Beware! In order to make a comparison between AMF and OFT files, I uploaded my family GEDCOM file to AMF. Here is a major deficiency in AMF noticed immediately. Under OFT, as under Rootweb and AWT web access, notes are immediately visible when one accesses the entry of an individual in the file. However, in AMF files, “research notes” (same as “notes” in GEDCOM files), are visible ONLY to the “owner” or to designated “editors” of the file (I quote: “Research notes can only be viewed by the owner and by those invited to the tree as an “Editor”.”).

THIS IS COMPLETELY ANTITHETICAL TO THE IDEA OF RESEARCH NOTES! It means that my file cannot communicate information about an individual to a general researcher beyond bare statements of parents, children, dates and places. What about an individual’s life history?? Profession?? Accomplishments?? Property owned?? Physical description?? Attributes?? Substance of wills?? Descriptions by others?? Links to other information?? Etc., etc. A lot is embodied in research notes. This is totally intolerable! I want my research notes to be readily visible to anyone viewing my ancestry file! Unlike AMF files, OFT and Rootsweb files currently display all notes. An AMF file might pass for a neophyte who has a few entries and posts a few photos, but is totally inadequate for any kind of serious genealogical research. I protest elimination of OFT files in the strongest terms, and encourage others who have similar objections to make their voices known now!

You may wonder if I have a “work around”. The answer is a little complicated. Over the past five years, I developed web pages of documents or photos with links to individuals in my own OFT file. The problem is that links on the document and photo pages have to have FIXED links (URL’s) in the ancestry file in order to make correct references. When I uploaded GEDCOMs to OFT, individual identification numbers (“ID”) have been kept the same as in the original GEDCOM over many years. Recently, I purchased a copy of Family Tree Maker FROM Ancsstry.com. I thought I might be able to upload a GEDCOM with ID’s kept the same as in the GEDCOM. Very sadly, I was informed by FTM personnel of the impossibility.

If I can find a decent GEDCOM editing utility that can preserve ID numbers, then I will be happy and can avoid most of the OFT/AMF dislocations. I will be very grateful for advice about a decent GEDCOM file editor that preserves ID numbers: please let me know!

For reference,

My main page with genealogical links is http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~garyscottcollins/.
My photos page is http://freepages.family.rootsweb.com/~garyscottcollins/.
My documents page is http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~garyscottcollins/
The document and photo pages include links to cited individuals in the ancestry file http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/~garyscottcollins/.

Sincerely,

Gary S. Collins

I had every Census for every ancestor typed in my notes section…now they are gone……where do the notes section fit into this?
I don’t like this new system. It is too impersonal. And to merge into other trees……you don’t know if those trees are factual or not..some people just copy other people’s trees.

Please do not take away OFT. I have spent six years researching my family lines. I keep going back to it even thought I have updated my trees several times to the new system. I prefer the old system that indicates records and likelihood of matches with the star system. Much easier to begin a new limb. Also, I lost years of entering children, aunts, uncles, and cousins that were in OTF and did not transfer to the new system. I agree with the difficulty of entering notes, references, and documentation. If you can simplify the new system to be as easy as the old system, as others are also saying, then give us 6 months to make our changes. I am a PhD and familiar with computer programs so if I have troubles, I KNOW others are having difficulty as well. I also feel long time loyalty should be rewarded and prices discounted. Perhaps a 5 year sign up plan?? Just remember those of us who have been with you for ages. And another difficulty, I have automatic log-in on my computer. I shouldn’t have to change my password if I forget it. I have tried to show others at work how neat your system is, but I can’t if I don’t have my password with me without changing it. I don’t like that inconvenience. Can you pole your users about new directions, suggestions or feedback and not have draconion announcements?? That would be good business practice.

One more thing, can someone please tell me how to do an anaftel in the new system. I can’t figure that out. I don’t like the merge system either, because I can’t verify another person’s research. Thanks.

I just transfer my on line tree to the new setup member tree and I do not like it. It is too complicated for me and all my tree information was not complete. I hate going back and trying to put the families back where they belong.

I only the know the basics of computer and the on line tree was very simple and easy to use.

Most of the inquires I receive come from researchers who saw my tree on Rootsweb with which you share your ancestry trees.

Please reconsider this move. I really don’t like it.

RE my previous post: Well. Gee. I finally found all my notes & documentation on the family trees uploaded into the new system; they weren’t missing, just BURIED in a little spot called “research notes”. It took me quite a while to find them. And interestingly, only the owner can view the research notes. How helpful is that? You can invite someone to view the research notes as an “editor”, but I never let anyone else edit my research. Oh by the way, I am a teacher with a MA degree, with lots of computer experience, and if I’m having this much difficulty with the new system, you can imagine how it’s going to impact others with less experience. And I am REALLY ticked off that whole chunks of my family trees just disappeared when I transferred them. Luckily the info still exists on Rootsweb.com Worldfamilytree–but for how long???
Smooth move, Ancestry.com !!

Kudos to Mr. Gary S. Collins! Thank you for your excellent comments!

To begin with:
Anyone who posts here that they are outraged and claim it is inconceivable that Ancestry would not “harvest” our hard found, hard earned, paid for documents such as birth and death records, lives in a dream world. Ancestry is in the business of harvesting vital records.

Anyone who posts here claiming they have no problems whatsoever with hints, uploading, using the name search engine, causes me to roll my eyes in disbelief because the majority of people who have tried to use the new family tree system have had nothing but problems. How do I know this? Because in my nearly 10 years of genealogical research, I have established a broad range of contacts and communicate with them on a regular basis. Out of 100 people, 98 do not like the new tree system, have had problems, and will not use it.

The new family tree system has so many flaws in it that I silently scream in despair. In course of a telephone conversation with technical support at Ancestry.com, the technician disclosed and admitted to me that the “new and improved” (LOL) tree system provides Ancestry with an easier, simplified way to index all the records that are entered on their website. My thought is that this may simplify things for Ancestry support, but it complicates many things for us as the submitter.

Last evening, after deleting my public online tree from Ancestry in anger, I uploaded my tree to the www.rootsweb.com website, which is still running the old format. I don’t know how long my tree will remain there since Rootsweb and Ancestry are interlinked, but at least for now I can work in the old format.

If Ancestry locks the Rootsweb submissions as they plan to do to the OFT at Ancestry, there will be no other recourse for us but to work on our private tree programs at home and not submit anything online to Ancestry.com. I use Rootsmagic here at home, and love it. I work three different family trees at the same time. The format is similar to the OFT at Ancestry, with a few minor changes, and is not difficult to learn to use.

All my family notes on the new tree format are hidden, and my notes are absolutely crucial to researchers. They include additional information with respect to family relationships, where a missing member of the family may be, a detailed explanation on how to differentiate between identical family names within the same family because so many people accept names as face value and put the wrong person with the wrong family.

My census entries are completely gone along with other important “miscellaneous” events that I had included. My notes contain complete families, their names, ages, where they can be found at a particular time, how many people are in the family, who is living with whom and how many children born, how many living. These notes afford a researcher the opportunity to immediately see who is who and who is where, and also confirms my name and date entries.

I believe that Ancestry attempts to compensate for this loss of records by allowing us to automatically attach a census and other record to a particular name by the way of “hints”, but Ancestry’s “hints” don’t always work! Countless times Ancestry misses the census, or other document and their excuse is “Gadzooks! Is everyone on Ancestry.com at the same time!? blah blah blah” and nothing comes up at all. Ancestry’s “hints” miss the obvious, and also miss the non-obvious, the misspellings and the inverted names, which we as the researcher, have to re-do a document search and attach it to the name. This doesn’t always work either, because I’ll do a name search to bring the record up, and the name search engine does not always find my name, and the program slows up. What is their excuse for this? Too many people on Ancestry at the same time? In addition, automatically attaching a “hint” census to a particular name in your tree keeps the census under Ancestry’s control. It stays on Ancestry and not in your computer or in your paper files. But here we are, taking the time to attach all these documents to our family trees, and what will happen when the day comes that Ancestry has decided this is no longer productive to them, and changes or re-arranges the format to remove these “hint” documents from our trees.

The ability to merge names and dates from other people’s trees is a horrendous feature. Too many people do not bother to do their own work and copy other trees. These same people do not confirm anything they have entered, and their trees are WRONG! I’ve made mistakes within my own tree, and have watched in horror and amusement as people who have relations within my family copy everything that I have entered verbatim, errors and all. When I correct my error, the people who have copied my work leave the errors in their tree because they are not always aware that I have corrected my entry. Despite the fact that I have had a disclaimer on my tree stating copy at your own risk, this tree contains errors, — they copy my work regardless.

This new tree system is for people who are not necessarily computer savvy, think genealogical is a fun game and don’t view it seriously, and for those who want to publicize their entire family photo albums. Believe me I know it. I have a family relative who has submitted almost every picture from her photo album in the last 20 years. Who wants to see a picture of her changing her baby’s diaper or her with her kids at the bowling alley? Phooey!

I propose finding another genealogical site with a similar format to the original OFT format, and submit your tree there. You can still use Ancestry.com for your research; just don’t use Ancestry.com for your tree submissions.

There are plenty of other genealogical websites out there who are not affiliated with Ancestry.com. I plan to use them.

I have had very little success with the new Member Trees. I downloaded all of my OFT files and uploaded them to Member Trees. I waited for 3 months, but NONE of them ever appeared online, so I deleted them. Ancestry told me that it can take up to 30 days for the transfer to take effect. Hmmm.

I followed the same procedure as before and now 2 of my numerous gedcoms have actually appeared online (Whoopie!). Curiously I am receiving numerous ‘helpful hints’ from Ancestry stating that new members have been added to my gedcoms. Strangely though the gedcoms still do not appear online. Very useful tool…NOT!

There does not seem to be a way to replace an existing Public Member Tree by uploading an updated gedcom. I presume that you must delete the old one and enter new one instead. Extremely work intensive as it involves reposting biographies, photos and research notes.

And I completely detest how the Research Notes are hidden from view! All my research is contained in the OFT Notes and I WANT THEM VIEWABLE when I am doing my research. I don’t want to click to see if there are any Notes (most of the time there is not) so that just wastes time and effort. Most of my OFT Notes are Biographies anyway and that is where i want them to go. How do I get this to work?

Also it would be useful if Research Notes had an icon to notify us if there are any available.

I notice that online errors are entering the “See full list of individuals” tab. The first page and a half of individuals in my gedcom are blanks. I entered 25,598 individuals from the OFT but the counter indicates 25,721 in the Member Tree. The other smaller gedcom that has appeared on line has 33 OFT individuals, but Member Trees says 36. I checked those links and it appears that they are all individuals that have not been added to the file yet. That could cause problems later on, don’t you think?

Member Trees has made it much more difficult to research online. If you find someone that you might be looking for, you have to contact the owner of the file first, not knowing when or if they will respond. Meanwhile you are left twiddling your thumbs. Not very user friendly.

Hopefully you have some answers to these problems. I knew that there would be many glitches in this process which is why I started early to see what the results would be. Can’t say that I am totally overwhelmed with happiness about the improvements, because I am not. Although I am mildly attracted to the new Member Trees, I still prefer the ease of function and layout of the Online Family Trees much more. I will be sad to see it go.

oops I have a correction to my previous post. When I referred to OFT as a tree, I meant Online World Tree, not the OneWorldTree which is horrible and no better than the new new family tree whatever it’s called. I can’t keep the tree names straight because there HAVE BEEN SO MANY OF THEM IN SUCH A SHORT TIME. DUH. When I talk about Online World Tree, that really means the Ancestry World Tree that we all use and loved.

Sorry bout that.

What happened to my “Notes”?!!!!!!

(1) Thank you for your very kind comments, SERIOUS GENEALOGIST.

(2) As, among others, ReneeTS wrote: “What happened to my “notes”?!!!!!” The answer is that, using the AMT interface, they are “gone with the wind”—inaccessible to any general person examining your ancestry file.

(2) Ancestry.com has gotten too big for its britches. The near-monopoly that it has in the genealogical service industry is leading to hubris. Chopping off a significant research tool, Online Family Tree (OFT), while promoting the “dumbed down” Ancestry Member Trees (AMT) will send any person with serious interests in genealogy elsewhere. A classic example of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.

(3) Has Kenny Freestone, described as “product manager at Ancestry.com over online family tree tools, especially the relatively new Member Trees on Ancestry”, ever had experience using OFT?? Does he have any credentials in genealogical research?? Are the products of his personal research anywhere on the web where they can be viewed?? I would like to examine them.

Sincerely,

Gary S. Collins

I’m an editor on someone’s tree.

I wouldn’t use hubris to describe this move. Try arrogance.

My own tree is in a My Family site & I’ll lose that shortly, as they are eliminating allowing people to have offline trees there.

As to whether they are doing this to get their hands on people’s research, stop & think about it. No more offline trees, even if people are paying for it.

I have found many errors in their free files & thought, Gee, maybe I could get some pin money for logging & submitting corrections for errors to be corrected. I started looking. Guess where the information comes from? Look on the site. If you send them a file & they give you some free time, your file goes into the pay section. If you donate the file & don’t take free time, it’s in the free access section. It’s not done by professionals.

This is nothing other than arrogance. Files that I used to access for free on Olive Tree are now no longer free.

If they wanted to make the tree better, they would add a linking capability, for those of us who have cross-marriages of families & leave the family story & descendant view alone. This is for their benefit.

If this was a contest to see who could upset most customers in the shortest space of time, Ancestry would surely have won it by a mile.
My transferred trees - featuring several thousand individuals researched over several years - now have multiple missing connections which it appears I now have to repair manually, and of course all the notes I’ve added (which if nothing else one might have imagined could have been transferred to the new “Stories” feature) appear to have vanished into the ether. So Ancestry, do you really think that “progress” equate with “dumbing down”?

I’m a simple person who is not computer savy. However, I do believe in COMMON SENSE. From the comments I have read, Ancestery.com seems to have lost aLL COMMON LOGICAL. It seems to me if you are going to change from one format to another format, that some serious thought shold have been given to the best way to go. This is only my opinion but the best way would have been to develope a program design, where you, Ancestry.com, moved all the files to the new program. It would appear that you would have had a lot less headaches and angry people. It seems from the comments, so much of one’s information isn’t going to be available to other researchers. So why move?

Richard Parker

Google Mr. Freestone. You will find nothing but social site garbage and job titles. If you query “Freestone, genealogy”, Ancestry.com doesn’t appear in the first 5 pages. (I didn’t look any further after that).

So he is “connected” on-line with his peers and job-related stuff, but he appears to have NO genealogy creds. He is not a member of APG nor does he have BCG accreditation.

Mr. Freestone, where are you? Who do you answer to? Why are you not addressing the concerns that come up here?

Has it ever occurred to anyone that sometimes things are better off left alone. I don’t care for the new one either. I certainly hope you are not going to remove anything from Rootsweb. I don’t think the new version is as user friendly, either

Where will the “notes” that we currently have in our trees appear in the new format? I just migrated my tree and don’t see them anywhere.

Posted by Kenny Freestone on http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2007/12/19/Online-Family-Tree-Announcement:

“*****************************************************************
12/21/2007 Note: We’ve had many questions come up in the comments section of this post. To help address these and other questions you may have, I’ve posted answers to these questions, as well as a list of known issues. –Kenny *****************************************************************”

I examined the two, new day-old links by Mr. Freestone above to learn more about the rationale for summary termination of OFT in favor of AMT.

From the new link “Online Family Tree FAQs”, originated December 21, 2007

“In the last 8 years the Online Family Tree system has aged–gracefully, but is now unquestionably old and ready for retirement.”

This is GOBBLEDYGOOK. At the programming level, it is impossible for a system such as OFT to “age”, whether “gracefully” or otherwise. The claim that OFT is “unquestionably old and ready for retirement” is provided without explanation. What Bee-Ess!

“We have two key principal motives for transitioning everyone from the Online Family Tree system to the new Ancestry Member Tree system:”

“First, we are concerned about the long-term stability of the product, and are anxious to get everyone and their files situated on the newer platform and technology that we can maintain and support. The product is eight year old, which is a very long time in internet years, and we are not comfortable that the system is capable of living much longer.”

Kenny Freestone, please define your concerns (or those of your employer, ancestry.com), about the “long-term stability of the product”. If you are claiming that Ancestry.com is incapable of maintaining and supporting OFT, please detail exactly why!

“Second, we believe the new Ancestry Member Tree system is a far superior experience, and believe you will find much to appreciate about it. We want to focus all our available resources on this one system, and make it the best it can be.”

What is the basis for your belief? I think that a fair-minded observer will conclude from an examination of opinions on http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2007/12/19/Online-Family-Tree-Announcement that, if it is intended to be a vehicle for serious genealogical research, the hyped AMT system is a joke.

“What is the Ancestry Member Tree system?
The Ancestry Member Tree system is a great tool for:
• Building your family tree
• Backing up your family tree online (if you use Family Tree Maker, PAF, etc.)
• Uploading a copy of your family tree for others to search
• Finding more information about your ancestors in historical records and other family trees with the help of Ancestry Hints™
• Seeking out other members researching branches of your family tree
• Preserving online photographs and stories about your ancestors
• Preparing a family history book for publishing
• And much more”
The OFT system has been a great system for the important items in the list: building a family tree, backing it up, uploading a family tree, finding information in historical records, and seeking others (not necessarily “members”) researching branches of a family tree. All that is missed is indirect linking of photos. Preparation of a family history book is fluff, as is “and much more”.

“Why is the Online Family Tree system going away?
After eight years of service, the Online Family Tree system has become outdated to the point that we can no longer maintain it. So we’re helping you transition your family tree file to our Ancestry Member Tree system before the Online Family Tree system is no longer available.”

This is BEE-ESS. Ancestry.com has provided no indication as to why the OFT system is “outdated to the point that we can no longer maintain it.” Does Ancestry.com need to hire better programmers??

“Do others have to pay to search my Ancestry Member Tree file?

Yes. While building and viewing your Ancestry Member Tree file is free for you and your invited family guests, others who want to search your tree must have a paid subscription in order to do so. Important note: Even paid members must ask your permission before viewing details in your tree.”

WHOA!! THIS IS THE REAL BOTTOM LINE. UNLIKE FOR FILES ON ROOTSWEB.COM AND SIMILAR PLACES, ANYBODY WILL HAVE TO PAY TO SEE YOUR TREE. AND EVENTHEN, THEY WILL BE UNABLE TO SEE YOUR RESEARCH NOTES!

“Who can I contact to make comments about this change?
Again, we’ve put a tremendous amount of energy into helping you make a smooth transition from your Online Family Tree to an Ancestry Member Tree. If we’ve missed something or you have other feedback to share, make a comment on our blog post or if you prefer, send me an email: kfreestone at tgn.com.”

Yucch! I encourage concerned readers to comment, preferably on the blog post so that all can see! This is a very sad day for web-based genealogical research.

Sincerely,

Gary S. Collins

Well , So you have planted a few of your friends to post kudos for your folly , ( Mr. Freestone ) go back to where you came from . You obviously do not know the tremendous research work , The thousands of hours , That your paying clients have spent to build up your inventory , So that you can tell them , We dont need you anymore .By not allowing the people that have payed you , You are stealing .
The least that you should do ; Is to transfer all the files to your new plan . Think about the clients , Not yourself . Go back where you came from .

I encourage prospective users of “Ancestry Member Trees” to make a detailed comparison between an ancestry file prepared according to the older “Online Family Tree” (OFT) and an exactly new “Ancestry Member Tree” (AMT) formats. The ancestry file is one that I developed over five years using OFT, transferring it regularly in GEDCOM format from OFT to “Rootsweb.com” for public presentation.

(1) My “Rootsweb” (OFT) entry can be viewed in two views:

The first, closest in format to that of the AMT archive viewed below, is at
http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=PED&db=garyscottcollins&id=I112549570&style=TABLE

The second view shows a much more extensive pedigree than is capable to show in AMT:
http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=PED&db=garyscottcollins&id=I112549570&style=TEXT

(2) My entry in the new “Ancestry Member Trees” archive is at http://trees.ancestry.com/pt/pedigree.aspx?tid=4779848&pg=0, which shows several generations of ancestors. Please click on entries for individuals; you will find extensive notes about individuals.

I encourage readers to make a fair comparison:

(a) Click on a few of the individual entries in the “Rootsweb” format (Links (1) above.) You will find extensive notes that I entered for individuals.

(b) Then check on entries for the same individuals in the “Ancestry Member Tree” format (entry (2) above). You will find “zero, zip, nada, aucune” notes because I have not specifically designated you as an “editor” of my file (no offense intended). Even if you had been blessed to be designated as a file editor, you would have to click through a link to examine “research notes” in a tiny text box. Astonishingly, even then, you would be unable to even print out the entire contents of the “research notes” since only the portion of notes visible in the tiny text box are printed.

This is outrage enough to the small number of designated “editors” of ancestry files because they cannot access the complete contents of “research notes” without having to write them down long hand! Ancestry.com gives half a hoot for editors, and no hoot at all for anybody else!

It is a much deeper outrage for everyone who wishes to access research notes of someone who posts them on the web. To whom do research notes belong?? To the researchers who write and submit them or to Ancestry.com?? Ancestry.com thinks they belong to it. Ancestry.com has grown too big for its britches and seriously needs to have its sails trimmed.

In summary, OFT was, and remains, a great instrument for genealogical research and AMT will be a big “Poof”.

Gary, I couldn’t agree more.

The person whose tree I am an editor for made the switch & Surprise!!!!!! large chunks are missing, & no notes.

Just to illustrate the difference, in case anyone from Ancestry still can’t figure it out. I noticed that you have Jonas Cattell. I have some information on him that you aren’t showing. I’ll email you about that.

Of course, on the “new & improved” tree, I wouldn’t have a clue if you had any notes or no notes.

Moving to a new system! It’s not that I’m against change, but the current trees are flawed and my expectation is that the new one will be too. One World Tree is a travesty and a prime example of genealogy gone bad. My current Ancestry tree hasn’t uploaded for more than a year and is sorely out-of-date, even though it appears to go through the process when I request it. The only thing that updates is the date. Makes me wonder if there’s a character limitation since I put all my sourcing in the notes section.

i think this new site,and new way of doing thing is the wrost thing ,that you could have came up with.After years of hard workand then i have to upload to the new tree,your site lost over half my peole.All that time and diggin wasted,just because you wanted something new,that not as good as what you have now

This is a correction to my recent Comment 44. Recall that I invited a comparison between my rootsweb.com ancestry file, identical in appearance to a public Online Family Tree (OFT) file, with my new Ancestry Member Tree (AMT) file created from the OFT file.

1. My apology to all who tried to access my AMT file. You couldn’t, because I had not made it public. The fact is that I won’t make it public out of concerns that I will not have complete control over how information in the file is used. If you did have access to the AMT file, rest assured that you would have been unable to see ANY of the extensive notes in my rootsweb.com file.

2. Under item (2) in Comment 44, correct the statement “click on entries for individuals, you will find extensive notes about individuals” to read “click on entries for individuals, you will find NO notes about individuals.”

Sorry for those errors.

A final comment regarding owners of OFT files who have reportedly lost large chunks of their information when they were “moved over” to AMT. A safe way to migrate your file from OFT to AMT is to first download the OFT file as a GEDCOM to your local computer. Then, if you wish to, upload it to AMT. There is no need to use AMT’s system to transfer your file and then delete the OFT file. Just go to the usual “Export GEDCOM” icon on the OFT screen, which looks like a printed page.

I started a family tree yesterday I am not a computer person. a page started and it said do not stop or come out of it. It ran all day yesterday all night last night so i stopped it. please tell me what was going on

If the new structure will remain open for free use like before - I think, it’s really good due to all these features, but if I have to pay for the exclusivity … that wouldn’t be a good idea.
Think of all the people, who are interested in their family history, but can’t afford so much money. And it IS a lot of money, which you’re asking of paying members !

Okay, now I am mildly peeved. Public Member Trees are NOT REALLY PUBLIC!

This is actually the first Q&A in their FAQ on uploading trees:
“If you choose the Public Tree setting, other Ancestry members will be able to view your tree and, if they find common ancestors, merge specific lines into their own family trees.”

So public to them means an Ancestry subscriber. If you are a member of the general public, you don’t count.

Most of my inquiries, about 30 per week, come from my Rootsweb mirror of my OFT. On the other hand, I am lucky if I get 2 or 3 inquiries a MONTH from the Ancestry connection service and its Member Trees system.

Obviously the more accessible the data is, the more people are likely to use it. Furthermore about a half dozen of my family members signed up as paying Ancestry members because of this feature. Rootsweb obviously generates more traffic than Ancestry because of the ease of use.

Methinks that PUBLIC MEMBER TREES should be just that…PUBLIC!

I tried to move my tree from the Online Family Tree to the Ancestry Member Tree area. I ended up making a new tree with no content. This whole thing scares me. There must be things I don’t understand about this. I have invested a lot into my family tree and don’t want to loose any of it. What can I do?

I have tried transferring my on-line family tree several times, but I keep getting an error message (try again), but it does’nt seem to be working properly. I cannot transfer my information as you are requesting.

Does this include removal of ancestry world tree and the one world tree?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to access Ancestry files in the last few weeks, get a page stall-out, and nothing comes up. I have cable broadband, so computer resources are not a problem.

I attribute this to the new tree system, and all the uploading of all the photos.

Not only is the new AWT horrible to use, but it is a monster just straining to break out and crash their systems.

Six of my genealogy friends have already pulled their trees from Ancestry, and more are waiting in the ranks. I hear nothing but complaints.

Ancestry, do you know what you have done?

I’m happy that Kenny Freestone had a Merry Christmas. But I didn’t, with all the uncertainties associated with ancestry.com’s impending, irrational termination of one of its greatest assets: Online Family Tree (OFT).

I PROTEST THAT THE MANAGEMENT OF ANCESTRY.COM HAS SET UP MULTIPLE “BLOG” SITES THAT SEEM INTENDED TO DIFFUSE THE MANY, VARIOUS COMPLAINTS THAT HAVE ARISEN OUT OF ITS “DICTAT” TO FORCE USERS TO CONVERT USEFUL “ONLINE FAMILY TREE” (OFT) FILES INTO LAME “ANCESTRY MEMBER TREE” (AMT) FILES. INTERESTED PERSONS HAVE TO CONSULT (AT LEAST) THE FOLLOWING FOUR SITES TO KEEP ABREAST OF IMPORTANT BLOGGED INFORMATION. THIS APPEARS TO REPRESENT A MODERN VERSION OF THE STRATEGY TO “DIVIDE AND CONQUER”.

(1) http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2007/12/21/online-family-tree-faqs/
(2) http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2007/12/19/online-family-tree-announcement
(3) http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2007/12/21/known-issues-with-online-family-tree-transition/
(4) http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2007/12/26/more-questions-and-answers-about-the-online-family-tree-transition/

As reported by Kenny Freestone, touted “manager” of this “forced” transfer of files from OFT to AMT, about 30% of persons trying to transfer OFT files automatically to AMT files using ancestry.com routines experienced catastrophic, personal losses of information, described by Kenny as a “bug”. Kenny’s comment to make them feel better was: “We’ve just recently been able to replicate this issue, and identify what causes it to occur. It is an unusual thing, but not as rare as we would hope. Our thanks to those who have sent us information to help us reproduce the issue.” In my opinion, those who have experienced an “unusual thing” should complain mightly. Some have already. If you have had problems, make them known!!

Where I come from, a 30% software failure for users who have lost data collected over years would have heads rolling!! So, Kenny, whose heads have rolled so far?? Who should pay the price for lost ancestral data collected over years??

I have personally subscribed for information from ancestry.com over the past 3 or 4 years. However, as a matter of principle, I will instantly cancel any and all subscriptions to ancestry.com on the date that OFT is rendered inoperative. I urge others to make similar statements. I am sure that I will not be alone.

Sincerely,

Gary Collins

Cancelling a subscription to Ancestry is not counterproductive to research.

What is effective is removing all of our family information from their website.

The main draw for Ancestry.com is their FREE family tree system, which is their LOSS LEADER.

Many people don’t purchase outside programs and take advantage of the convenience that Ancestry.com offers by allowing people to publish their family information on Ancestry servers. This in turn causes the submitter to “want more” and they then subscribe to Ancestry.com’s services.

People who remove their family trees from Ancestry’s website create a problem. The FREE draw-in is gone.

I heartily suggest that people who are not happy with the new AMT system, which includes me, to REMOVE THEIR FAMILY TREE. Do not give Ancestry your information.

Send the message. I already have. I have removed my tree from their website and do not regret my action in the slightest.

REMOVE YOUR TREE!

I tried editing one of my OFTs today. AS A RESULT, ALL OF MY OFTs HAVE DISAPPEARED!!!

What’s up with that?

I am concerned that now ancestry is limiting family tree compilation to members only and not everyone can afford their fees. I have had many contacts from the free content and am very upset that they are now limiting access. Are they now getting too big for their britches? Have they forgotten what their goal was?

Dear Mr. Freestone:

I am an experienced genealogist, and have been working on my family tree for over 10 years. I work on my tree every day, travel to states to research and have pored through every dusty cubbyhole possible to get information. I document, confirm, reconfirm, and re-document for accuracy. I attend genealogy conventions and meetings, belong to countless societies, and have a broad range of contacts with whom I chat with on a regular basis. Not too many of my contacts are pleased with the new Ancestry Member Tree but you would not know this, because these people don’t feel it necessary to share their thoughts, they just stop using Ancestry’s resources.

I work on my tree here at home on a home program, and also used the original online tree system at ancestry.com. The online tree is for the purpose of reaching out to other researchers and extended family members, to be able to fill in missing puzzle pieces, find lost branches and tear down brick walls. This is an especially important sector of genealogy. I have since removed my online tree and no longer share my information with Ancestry.com.

The ability to reach out to other members will be lost to everyone when you revert completely to the new tree system in March.

Yes, I am aware that paid members will be able to view certain information, but that information will be limited because features that were previously public have now been eliminated or made “private.” What this will eventually do is drive the people who submit information to Ancestry.com over to Rootsweb so that their tree is again 100% public.

Ancestry will become a magnificent loser in more ways than one.

Stopgap.

You “simplified” a system that was already simplified and user friendly. Names were displayed in family, pedigree or descendant views, however a person wanted to view or work on their tree. Ancestry has now instituted a “main” page with overlarge fonts, a time-line that has limits and range deficiencies, and a view that is frustrating and amateurish. An entire page is wasted to largesse.

Click on the family member’s name, click on the edit profile, click on the events tab, click on the options tab, click out, click back in, click out, click out again, click on the child’s name, click on the tab to enter information, click out, click out on the parent’s name. Ooops wrong parent, click out, click on the correct parent, click on another child, click on the parent, click on the grandparent, click on another sibling, click out, click on the grandparent. Oh my god I’m LOST! Go back to Home Person, and start all over again. click click where is my information? why are there two events pages? What are these options? Those aren’t options that I am looking for, these are useless! Oh my god I am LOST again!! This is simplified and user friendly? ! I can’t stand it and neither can anyone else.

Where is the printer friendly page?
We all like to print out what we submit. We like to print out other people’s pages for our files as a comparison factor.

The merge feature is a monster rearing it’s head. I won’t give my sister editing abilities in my tree because she is inexperienced, and thinks all a person has to do is take someone else’s information and merge it into our tree. I told her to start her own tree and she now has people in it that I’ve never heard of. This is professionalism?

Ancestry.com is promoting substandard genealogy work. Instead, Ancestry should be standing back at arm’s length and not become directly involved in placing names in people’s trees. This could be a class-action lawsuit waiting to happen. I have already heard the whispers.

You want to give people the ability to upload documents and pictures, that is fine, however, give them the original view features that were friendly and helpful. The new Ancestry tree isn’t even like the Family Tree Maker program, of which I am hearing nothing complaints about. I just got an email this morning from a subscriber who bought the FTM2008 and they hate it, and are going back to the old program they are using.

Change is not necessarily good.

The missing Notes is also a problem. Your have posted an excuse that the notes section in the old tree was never intended to be public, which is ridiculous. Then why have it on the tree in the first place? What do you think people used it for - to draw pictures? The Notes section is invaluable, and has obituaries, explanations, and other important relevant information that researchers need to see. This is not for the STORIES or COMMENTS sections. Those sections are buried at the bottom of your over-large page anyway, and people most often don’t even know they are down there, — AND, it’s another click or two if you do find them.

You can possibly reach a happy medium if you reinstate the view and print features of the old tree, reinstate the notes and consolidate some of the extra pages that are absolutely worthless.

There is no reason why “facts and events, relationship events, relationships” should have tabbed separately. This is confusing, redundant and unnecessary. They all mean the same thing, and should be consolidated onto one page, along with Research Notes. Notes in full on a page, not hidden under Edit Profile. Then there is more redundancy and confusion. On each page is Add New Life Event, and then countless More Options. What happened to the simplified entry system that was on the original online tree? Add a census, add a birth, add a marriage, add a census, add a burial. It was easy, friendly and simple. Instead, we are told we must accept a complicated, confusing mess called the New Ancestry Member Tree.

I have run out of words for now. I am sure I will think of more at another time. Right now I am going over to my sister’s house and watch her upload about 700 digital photos to her New and Improved, Simplified Ancestry Member Tree. Linda thinks having an online photo album is wonderful.

As always, with warmest regards,

Nancy

cc: ancestry blog

Gary,
Why are you doing this? It is obvious that most of us do not want a new system. I think I wil cancel my subscription and let my family tree go into oblivion, limbo or wherever everyone else’s trees are going.
PLEASE don’t try to fix something that works so VERY WELL for most of us.

I AM CONCERNED BECAUSE I HAVE A MAC COMP AND DO NOT HAVE A GEDCOM SET UP. THE LDS CHURCH ARE UPGRADING THEIR SITE HOW CAN I SAVE WHAT I HAVE PUT INTO WHAT I HAVE. THANK YOU VICKI HANN (GABBYHANN)

Is there any method to get a simple answer from you people? It seems that no one can give courtesy to answer anything. ALL I WANT TO KNOW IS HOW AND WHEN YOU PEOPLE ARE GOING TO FIX THIS COMPLETE JUNK 2008 FTM program, as promised with patches. I would really feel good if I knew that someone in management had the guts to fire some of the incompetence you have working for you, before, we the customers, cause you to go broke from all of our cancellations. Obviously, no one knows how serious the problems are and also that there seems to be no management running this circus, who has an kahoonas to take over and cure it. Your lack of giving the customer what was promised is going to be you downfall.

I’ve been trying to transfer my two Online Family Tree files which, now, have been running — without results — for a full 12 hours. Isn’t that a bit much, even allowing for heavy transfer traffic?

Another descendant recently contacted me and wrote “Thank you for all the hard work. I never new any of my grandfathers family and only knew his name.” And now my notes will not be visible to the public?

My notes contain information from church records, Civil War pension application records, historical books and historical maps with property ownership shown, Ortssippenbucher, LDS microfilm records, and cemetery records. My notes do not contain anecdotal information. I have documented more detail than is easily entered into reference footnotes. Much of this information was obtained from obscure references, some not easily available without a trip to Pittsburgh or Washington DC or without hiring a researcher. My notes tell other researchers what is available and exactly where (often with page numbers) to locate the information. And now this information will be hidden from public view?

Anyone at Ancestry.com who could make this decision does not know what the public appreciates. Multiple descendants have contacted me to thank me for the information in my notes.

Mr. Freestone,

How many minutes have you spent doing genealogy?

Did it occur to you that every genealogy program on the market has a notes section? Do you think that’s for the grocery list?

After the person whose OFT tree I edit migrated his tree & it was mangled in the process we can no longer work on the old tree.

Do you think that this is good customer service to say oh well it’s only a 30% failure rate? You put up a faulty product & told people to use it.

My tree will not be made public for personal reasons. It is offline in a PAID My Family site. Many people check my tree, but it will be lost when you migrate the site. LOTS of people have offline trees in PAID My Family sites but we will all lose those trees when the sites are migrated. Does that sound like good customer service?

I was going to get a paid My Family site, but now I will not.

I know a great many excellent researchers in Europe who pulled trees from Rootsweb when Ancestry decided to include those trees in One World Tree, & guess what? They refuse to subscribe to Ancestry because they were offended by that decision.

Your “new & improved” tree is faulty and the merge causes disasterous results. Obviously, Ancestry doesn’t care about disgruntled customers or potential customers. Ancestry SHOULD be attempting to fix the problem that you have created & should fix the problem for every single person who has had their tree mangled by your decision to implement something that was faulty.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Kathy the people of Ancestry does not care about you,me nor anyone else. So what it some of ypur notes are lost forever,you really don’t think they care do you. This all has to do with something greenand eveyone wants. They will find a way to fix things were the notes canbe but in if you can remember them,but the fix is going to cost more money.
Ancestry tricked everyone into putting thier tree’s in for free,with
no word of a future charge,which now we have. I have one thought we are the one who put the tree’s on for them,we did the diggin and the work,and they want money. Here an Ideal I have why don’t we all just delete our tree out of ancestry and else where,then let’s see what they have to sell.It will be nothing because they need our tree’s, I work 10 years on mine and I’m will to delete it in a second if ,I can get more people to join in on this. I put my info into them to give out free not to make someone pay for it.If I knew this was coming I would have never add one name to my tree. I
just wanted to thank Ancestry for doing us this way.We relly needed this ,we have a lot of brickwall’s as it is and here you add another. I guesss from the tone of this you know I’m not going to pay,and not to sure my tree’s going to stay either. Thank you so very much Ancestry all my hours of work and years of time put in this just so i have to pay to see. Thier a lot of people who can’t pay this fee is it fair to them, I can but I will not.

Ancestry is changing. Perhaps this should not be surprising — search Google for the 17 Oct 2007 Reuters release ‘Ancestry.com parent company sold for $300 million’ [yes — your users can do all kinds of research].

I renewed my membership in Ancestry a couple months ago for a lot of money, and I view these changes in my subsciption as bait-and-switch.

Of course, things do not remain unchanged forever, and we recognize that the new system has some good potential. However, the capacity to upload 500 photos at a time is not genealogy. This sounds like you are leaving your genealogy researchers behind and are now trying to compete with MySpace.

We expect your family tree services to continue to provide: public notes, descendant lists and registers, and ahnentafels.

I agree. The photograph situation is out of control. Last evening, as a test, I did a name search in the photo section for one particular uncommon name, and 17 pages of photos came up for a single last name. Of those 17 pages, I found one photo that was repeatedly posted approximately 15 times. That photo appeared on 15 of the 17 pages. I counted.

A good portion of the photos were everyday photos of a man in different places, doing different things… a new car, with his dogs, on vacation at the beach, so on and so forth. Other photos were also modern day photos showing people at family celebrations, with their grandchildren. Many of these photos were repeated over several times because they had been uploaded and attached to multiple names. The submitters are obviously proud of their photos, but not everyone wants to look at 25 pictures of their family vacation in 1955. This is not genealogy but it is an internet photo album.

I don’t think this was what Ancestry had in mind when they gave their customers the option to upload photos, but you can’t tell me they didn’t expect it.

Now the question is how to control it.

All these photos are clogging up the system, and any one with common sense will tell you that all these documents and photos, along with the bugs associated with the “new and improved tree” are slowing down the website.

Does anyone here know that FamilySearch.org is at the National Archives in Washington DC and are frantically digitizing ALL the books and records on file there, which include ALL military records and pension records?

Familysearch is also at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne Indiana, Brigham Young University, Harold B. Lee Library and FamilySearch Family History Library in Salt Lake City, digitizing records. They are adding these histories to the internet on a DAILY BASIS

Hit submit by accident. Will finish:

When complete, these records will be the most comprehensive collection of city and county histories on the web and access will be FREE at www.familyhistoryarchive.byu.edu.

The digital history will target over 100,000 published family histories and thousands of local histories that are rich in names as well as biographical and genealogical data.

Once digitized, the collections will have an “every word” search capability, which allows users to search by name, location, date or other field across the collection. The search results are then linked to high quality digital images of the original publication.

This is all in connection with the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. They are joining with others to provide FREE services to archives and other records custodians. This program expands FamilySearch’s previously announced decision to digitize and provide online access to copyrighted microfilm preserved int he Granite Mountain Records Vault. The program also allows FamilySearch and archives to team with genealogy websites to provided unprecendented access to microfilm in the vault. The combined results ensure a flood of new record indexes and images online at www.familysearch.org and affiliated websites.

THIS SERVICE AND THESE IMAGES WILL BE FREE.

THE TIME HAS COME FOR ANCESTRY.COM TO REVERSE ITS ILL-ADVISED DECISION TO TERMINATE ONLINE FAMILY TREE (OFT) IN FAVOR OF THE LAME ANCESTRY MEMBER TREE (AMT).

Let me not try to repeat all the things that are right with OFT and wrong with AMT. Principal is loss of access in AMT to all ‘notes’ for public viewers. OFT has been and is a tremendous research tool for persons with serious genealogical interest. The format for displaying GEDCOM files by OFT, as well as by Rootsweb.com, presents all information that any person with a SERIOUS interest in genealogy wants in the form of NOTES. Other information such as photos and other links can already be attached to OFT or Rootsweb files (see, for example, the page for my grandfather at http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=garyscottcollins&id=I112549564). Like Rootsweb.com files, public OFT files are completely public and super fast because the basic displays are text-oriented. AMT is a display-intensive ‘scrapbook’ for photos that is slow as a ‘dog’ because of its irrelevant fancy boxes and silhouettes of ‘fathers’ and ‘mothers’.

No person with a serious interest in genealogy will use AMT! Many, many people currently use OFT.

WE CALL ON ANCESTRY.COM TO REVERSE ITS MIND-BOGGLING DECISION TO KILL OFT. ANCESTRY.COM AND TO PERSONS HAVING A SERIOUS GENEALOGICAL INTEREST WILL SUFFER MAJOR HARM BY THIS ‘DUMBING DOWN’ OF SOFTWARE BY ANCESTRY.COM.

This message has been posted on the following four ‘blog’ sites:

http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2007/12/19/Online-Family-Tree-Announcement http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2007/12/21/online-family-tree-faqs/ http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2007/12/21/known-issues-with-online-family-tree-transition/
http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2007/12/26/more-questions-and-answers-about-the-online-family-tree-transition/
.

I recently have posted several messages to the four ‘blog’ sites known (listed below) that are concerned with possible termination of Online Family Tree (OFT) by Ancestry.com. Ancestry.com customers (as well as central management personnel at Ancestry.com) deserve to be able to read comments by customers who use or have used OFT. The vast majority of those have, to date, expressed very major reservations about the proposed “replacement” of OFT by Ancestry member Tree (AMT).
Several recent, multiple postings of my own have been briefly posted with the ominous message “YOUR COMMENT IS AWAITING MODERATION”, after which they were quickly deleted. While I can understand rationales under which some comments posted to Ancestry.com might be considered off-target for a particular ‘blog’ and, and therefore might be a source for moderation, such moderation has never been previously announced. Obviously, such “moderation” can be a facile substitute for “censorship”.
Therefore:
1. READERS need to be aware that such unpublicized “moderation” exists now! They need to search broadly on the Internet to find “unmoderated” comments that are not biased by “moderators”, who in this instance can be confidently assumed to be part of Ancestry.com’s promotional relations department.
2. ANCESTRY.COM: Which of your ‘blog’ sites are moderated and unmoderated??
The four ‘blog’ sites concerned with proposed termination of Online Family Tree are:
http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2007/12/19/Online-Family-Tree-Announcement http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2007/12/21/online-family-tree-faqs/ http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2007/12/21/known-issues-with-online-family-tree-transition/
http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2007/12/26/more-questions-and-answers-about-the-online-family-tree-transition/

I thought there were posts missing. Posts that I read yesterday are gone today.

Ah, the fickle mind of the Ancestry blog moderator. First they want to hear from their customers and now they don’t.

I think that the point has been made to Ancestry that there are far more people beyond the estimated 4% that are unhappy with the new tree system.

I think it’s been brought to tech support’s attention that the new tree is boggled with bugs.

I certainly hope they know that the photo situation is appalling.

They know (but won’t admit it) that approximately 85% of the new tree users don’t like it that certain useful features from the old tree system are missing, or hidden, and that the customer no longer has a choice in views beyond individual and pedigree (which is useless if you ask me, but that’s my personal preference).

The board is now being moderated because they are tired of reading the same thing over and over.

Sorry, but that’s the way it is.

I am just as unhappy as you are, but I have already taken action. My tree has been removed from their site.

If Ancestry makes this change, I’ll make a change by deleting my tree from the system.

“Contribute to the Ancestry World Tree
Everyone benefits from sharing research and collaborating with others who may be researching the same lines. As more data is added, the Ancestry World Tree becomes more valuable to everyone. We need your contribution to make the Ancestry World Tree grow.

When you submit your family tree you help the Ancestry World Tree grow rapidly. Your file will remain your own. Only you can change, update or remove your work from the tree and Ancestry.com pledges never to charge anyone to search the Ancestry World Tree or to view your work on Ancestry.com. ”

What they are doing violates the “ple