Comments on: Latest on lifespan filtering

By: Anne Mitchell

Anne Mitchell — Fri, 08 May 2009 23:36:42 +0000

Two hundred and eight comments…if nothing else, we can agree that there is interest in search.

A few things:

Trees is not my area, but I do know they are working on some merge problem, or some other problem and they are rolling a fix sometime on Monday, so trees should be in better shape on Tuesday.
When you search on historical records from a tree page, you get a long list of trees, which you shouldn’t and there have been issues with names not going in the right places. That fix is scheduled to go live, last I heard, on May 20th.
As for the ordering of household members in alphabetical order instead of page order, yes, I agree it is annoying. Results have been reordered to be alphabetical in search results, because it’s more efficient, and because it tends to make more sense to our members. Down side of that is that it shows up in alphabetical on the record page. And yes, we need to go spend the time to order it differently, but I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that it’s not in your top 5 of things you really want us to do.
I’m closing this blog post to comments, because I’m to NGS in Raleigh, NC and I won’t be able to pay a lot of attention to this until I get back. If you are at NGS, stop by the booth and say hi, or come see my search presentation and you can ask me questions all day long!

Happy Searching.

By: Kent Forrest

Kent Forrest — Fri, 08 May 2009 23:21:26 +0000

In general I see the New search as a work in progress. It is still a BETA as far as I am concerned.

What truly disappoints me is the a host of other issues that seem to be entirely ignored: (e.g. lack of ability to organize photos into folders, no tags for group photos, can’t easily control relative link merges with mispelled names, etc.)

I would rather have Ancestry work on perfecting the organization of what I have than wholesale rooting though questionable data.)

I could go on but no one is going to respond so …..

By: Ann

Ann — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:52:06 +0000

To Jim #203

Hi Jim,

Yes, I also have the same person in 2 trees – my original tree, that just got too messy and will eventually be deleted, and my “good tree” that is and will be a work in progress for years to come.

I also sometimes get the issue that ancestry decides to save the info to my “bad” tree, so I have learned to watch very carefully when I get to the point of attaching the info. There is (in small print) the option to change the tree to which you are saving.

Good luck!

By: Linda Clark

Linda Clark — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:43:13 +0000

I also find it takes entirely to long to look up any records since the new and improved changes were made. It is so tedious, I often just give up and turn off the computer. I know progress is important, but the parameters are often way to liberal. I want to have the option to do the way that works best for me whether it is the old or new version.
When I look for someone I know is in KY, why give me information from someone in California. I know you have a difficult job trying to make us all happy, but I am a very unhappy camper right now.

By: Jim Nygard

Jim Nygard — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:39:56 +0000

Is anyone else having this problem??

There is a bug in the Merge function…
When I find data that I want to merge in to the record of my open Tree and I select the save function it changes from the OPEN tree I am working in to another tree in my list of trees and saves the data there… and Yes I have the same indivdual in two different trees…

The “REAL” concern is that there is no indicator of this happening until AFTER the merge has completed and you are back to the Person Page.

VERY FRUSTRATING….

By: Barb

Barb — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:26:25 +0000

I have not found the new search useful at all and see no improvement. If I search for a person named Joseph Code, the results I received are zip code, morse code. William Code, Joseph Daly. None of these are relevant. Scrolling through all of the irrelevant searches, of which there are many, is a waste of time. If someone else is having success in my examples, please comment, and if you are not please comment. I cannot believe that I am the only person who is running into this problem.

By: Janis Jones

Janis Jones — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:22:07 +0000

I “feel the pain” of others who have posted about problems that occur with the changes to new search. In my own research, I’ve used a lot of “tricks” to get the results I want fairly consistently, regardless of the ongoing glitches. However, the decision to have public and private trees returned at the top level of search is one of the worst ideas anyone has had since I subscribed. Other people’s trees are, literally, the very last thing I want to see when I’m using the search tool for individual information. I want original source material: Census, vitals, military records, not trees. They are useful enough for suggesting new leads or contacting others researching the same persons, but they should not be the first information presented on a search.

By: Ed Western

Ed Western — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:28:35 +0000

The new search doesn’t always group blacks together. A lot of times a search for blacks is different than a search for coloreds or negro. When will Ancestry work on this?

By: Tony Cousins

Tony Cousins — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:25:33 +0000

Michelle #198

In some ways I agree, the information that has been amassed on Ancestry really is mind boggling, but that only takes money to buy the collections and scan them. It’s the transcription, indexing, presentation and searching that is paramount. Ancestry is not doing a very good job on that, especially the relevancy of the search results.

Ancestry Anne:

I do believe that someone at Ancestry has been listening – I don’t have to hit the back button multiple times just to go back one page. If that is the case then please pass on my thanks – if it isn’t the case please don’t switch it back on again

TonyC

By: michele k.

michele k. — Fri, 08 May 2009 18:16:33 +0000

All of your efforts, whether they work perfectly or not, are greatly appreciated. I have spent months (when you add up all the hours) combing thru records, and sometimes it is the looking thru all of them that one relevant shows up.
I’m excited that you are still streamlining the process. It’s that instant gratification ideal that allows people to never be satisfied not matter what.
In graditude and sincerity,
michele