Anne Mitchell’s ancestry blog posts

You are correct that sorting large datasets is a resource intensive task — either for the database server(s) if the dataset is sorted there and then returned to the web server(s) or for the web server(s) if they are sorting raw data.

However, the database server(s) constantly processing the enormously large (and mostly garbage) datasets produced by the New Search is sucking up far more of your server resources than an occasional sort query.

So the complaint about server resources being the impediment to sorting data doesn’t hold water — the behavior of the entire New Search shows an utter disregard for those same resources.

Additionally, the dataset IS being sorted, it’s just being sorted by predetermined criteria. Permitting the users to specify a sort order at the same time as the initial query — combined with proper database indexing — would have minimal impact on the server resources over sorting in the default manner.

I do not believe only permitting the sorting of x number of “most relevant” results would be beneficial in many cases. The relevance ratings assigned by Ancestry are often horribly flawed, as any user who habitually gets pages and pages of highly ranked results from other continents and centuries will tell you.

I do not save “cookies”, so EVERYTIMES I login I get the new Search screen. I am FORCED to enter the name “Jones”, to get to the next screen. I THEN can hit the link to use the old search method.

PUT THE LINK TO GO TO THE OLD SEARCH METHOD ON THE INITIAL SCREEN AFTER LOGIN.

Ron Bestrom
PAID MEMBER for 8-9 years?

After trying the “New Search” I did complete the survey, but I didn’t feel that I was able to express exactly how bad I think this “improvement” is.

The only changes to the “Old Search” that would have been helpful to me would have been to enable the use of “?” in name searches, as Ron showed in #63, and a change back to the previous way of searching the Newspapers. Previously, the initial searchof the newspapers involved specifying a location, which produced publications produced in that location, and a date range, which produced hits in papers PUBLISHED during the specified time period. Currently, one can search using both these criteria, but instead of “date and place of publication” hits, one gets hits within all publications in the database,with the limitations of the optical sacanning of these publications, which include a lot of junk, difficult and time consuming to wade through. My only alternative is to pull up a list of all newpapers availble in a particular locality and search each one individually. The newspaper search is no fun anymore.

Rather than spend time and money developing the “New Search”, these resources could have been better utilized tweaking the transcriptions, including “municipality” rather than “village” names in the censuses databases; improving the wildcard function; acquiring new info; and fixing things that you promised in the past to correct but have yet to accomplish, such as linking the correct page 2 to page 1 of the WWII Draft Registration for Pennsylvania. Oh yeah, and providing real people with real answers to our individually sent specific inquiries, instead of canned answers to general questions.

It was mentioned on the next version of this blog that on Wednesday it was discovered that there was a problem with doing exact-name searches in some databases. They did not say what databases were involved, but said feverish work was being done to find and solve the problem.

When you notice a sudden problem such as this, it might be useful to contact Ancestry at the email address that you can find through the “Help” link.

Good hunting,
Jade

For Jade (who always seems to have a clear idea and can express herself so well) I also noticed the strange indexing in newspapers, and city directories, but could not say why. You made it clear to me because when I use a first name and a surname, my results are all over the place. I get initals for first names and surnames, too. I can’t figure why I get initals!