Comments on: Continuing the Dialogue about the New Search Experience

By: Charles B. Compton

Charles B. Compton — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 05:16:13 +0000

I noticed several years ago that I couldn’t find someone in the 1850 census on Ancestry. They are in the microfilm at the LDS Family Research Center and also in the 1850 California Census book. The name was Loyal M. Moore and Eliza Moore, in Sacramento County. We’re they just overlooked or is this common in some census years?

CB Compton

By: GL Johnson

GL Johnson — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 17:34:52 +0000

Anything change with the (adv) Search Saturday night or Sunday morning? Seems what was working yesterday now finds ‘No matches’ on exact spans of Birthyear.

Also, can some of the icons at the bottom of the display be replaced so we don’t have to sit waiting for the ‘unseen’ to load so we can continue working?

Thanks!

By: John Allbritten

John Allbritten — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 08:25:45 +0000

The new search is junk. Period. Doing this for 16 years and an on again/off again Ancestry subscriber (the latest about four years), i find it the only thing worse than the crawl of the site’s speed. Thanks for the trouble.

By: Warren

Warren — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 20:50:21 +0000

Amen to Gloria’s(#58) comment!

By: Gloria

Gloria — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 22:57:01 +0000

I have posted elsewhere on Ancestry, so will not repeat here.

What I find is that Ancestry has implemented new software that doesn’t really work well. Those who have subscribed are trying to be so helpful , but it is THE JOB of the software creator to do it right in the first place! And certainly to test it adequately!

Someone got paid “big bucks” to create this software. I hope you all are getting a “consultant’s fee” rebate for your time and efforts to correct this mess!

Note to Management: There will be no books, or scrapbooks, or albums, or Tree software sold if the information available from you is so hard to get.

By: Barbara J. Yeoman

Barbara J. Yeoman — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:58:38 +0000

I am indifferent to the new search and find the old search much more flexible. But, I have a problem. I am having great difficulty loading images which I had easily been able to access before. Now I repeatedly get errors while trying to load. I do clear my cache regularly including doing a clean restart when wanting to search records. I sometimes spend many hours searching and find I need to keep my system clean in order to continually load images.

Is there a problem with pulling up record images, i.e. old draft records, some censuses? Particularly the draft registration images.

Thank you.

By: Jade

Jade — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 04:23:50 +0000

Warren, with all of the known bugs in FTM 2008, it could be that you are experiencing one. Try buying an older version and see if it works better for you.

You really don’t want to be merging stuff from OneWorldTree. This computer compilation has huge amounts of erroneous data. It picked material from available Trees, based on no really good criteria for choosing one version of Family A over another version of the same family. Most of the Trees are not based on evidence. And the OWT program cross-linked many families in seriously erroneous ways, such as merging data for same-named individuals who were 2 or more generations apart in time.

If you want a truthful genealogical account of your ancestry and/or cousins, there really is no substitute for nuts-and bolts research directly in records.

By: Warren

Warren — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:10:17 +0000

Since I do not see many comments on this I am compelled to believe it is only on my computer that this is happening: From FTM 2008 I launch a Web Search and the “clock” shows a ticking away of time. Then it stops with the info but only long enough to “tease” you and then it is off again with the same search. My internet connection shows that info is “streaming” to my computer but the “clock” just ticks away. Eventually, 70% of the time, it finally stops only on a useless page which gives me many choices (one of the new search page) none of which are helpful except the “Family Trees” button which will take me through another series of “eternal clock machinations” to land me on a “look-only-but-you-cannot-merge” page with useful information, sometimes, if you want to “toggle” back and forth between the “People” page and the “Web Search page. Then finally, I can click on the One World Tree button and pray that I do not end up in “clock-hell.” Finally, if all goes well, I can merge data. I am the only one who experiences these procedures?

By: Beverly Winsness

Beverly Winsness — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:02:19 +0000

First, you messed up FTM with 2008 - a rather total disaster and the first time I refused an “upgrade”. Just taking the “Books” option out was bad enough but from all I hear of people losing data etc, I’m staying with FTM 16 until I find a better alternative and lots of emails are going around with great suggestions.

Second, you absolutely destroyed a good search tool and as I read all the other comments, only one thing comes through. Give us back the old engine that worked great, get the junk like “want to start a tree” off the top of “MY PAGE”, and best of all, would you please force some of your own people to use this?

You’ve lost my support for FTM, and now, it looks like your search improvements ruined my research capability. And you have courage to ask me if I want to ‘upgrade’ my current subscription. I’m looking much more at the cancel option as why pay for something that no longer works.

Beverly Winsness

By: Fran

Fran — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:45:22 +0000

I love that you add new info to the data base.

But I keep it simple with you search. The main page is to busy. Newspaper search when you ask for Pa you get other states with it.

Fix the files you have before moving on . Like the World War draft card that you can view one page that is your and the second page is someone else. That problem has not been correct and it has been a couple of years.

I have dial up and only a couple hours to work on my family tree a day. Don’t make it like work.