Comments on: Share Your Opinion on Irish Ancestry

By: Virginia Dunham

Virginia Dunham — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 03:14:25 +0000

This blog will close September 30th…so Heather still has an opportunity to sign in and address the issues raised in the various comments posted above.

My kudos to those Ancestry employees who follow up on their blogs…especially those who have often stepped up to the plate to acknowledge errors.

Guess I find it very difficult for a “Sr. PR Manager” ignoring an obivous survey problem. Maybe I am wrong…but I am assuming “PR” refers to Public Relations???? Oh, well…explains a lot regarding how Ancestry often disregards customer complaints, etc.

Virginia

By: BobNY

BobNY — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 04:18:41 +0000

RE: #40

Even if the blog announcement initiator had no control over these assumed events, she still owed the community a response — even if it was only to say she had no control over the events. According to her bio blurb, she “enjoys providing updates around the many things happening at the company.” Well, we are waiting

Someone decided to hire a UK company to do this survey and then have a US person put out the announcement — dumb. Very typical of ACOM that not only does the left hand not know what the right hand is doing, but sometimes is stepping on the left hand in an attempt to get out of the line of fire.

There are still issues with the search and content people working in their little silos and continually passing off a problem as belonging to the other.

By: Jade

Jade — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:22:52 +0000

cts166, your #39, what you say is common sense that the folks who wanted the survey results would be well aware of.

It appears that there was at least a problem with the survey code as posted, and possibly some problem with the questions asked. The present blog announcement initiator probably had no control over either.

By: cts166

cts166 — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 05:45:56 +0000

If you are really interested in getting good feedback from people, you need to:

1. Make the survey available with working links.
2. Make it available for a reasonable period of time.
3. Give people notice that it is available.

This seems more like you are trying to determine which of your teasers people are reading rather than based on a real interest of what they have to input about Irish genealogy.

By: Andy Hatchett

Andy Hatchett — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 03:49:46 +0000

Let’s not- at least not in the same format as last time.

Let Ancestry do it in-house if they really want the info.

By: ellen

ellen — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 00:09:26 +0000

Let us try the Irish survey again!

By: Jade

Jade — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 20:50:06 +0000

Steve #35, “Why were we not told about it before it closed?”

Well the survey obviously was open for some period of time after announcement on the blog. Whether for 30 minutes, 2 hours or a bit longer I could not guess.

Was it announced on Facebook? Or to tweet followers?

By: Steve Jones

Steve Jones — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 19:28:02 +0000

I would have loved to have had a chance to take this survey as I have Irish Ancestors – Why were we not told about it before it closed?

By: Andy Hatchett

Andy Hatchett — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:45:42 +0000

There is nothing stopping anyone anywhere from either doing a family tree and attaching scans of documents to it or posting to the surname message boards and attaching scans of documents. Either would help increase the amount of documents available to other researchers… and all that can be done for free.

Genealogy, as the old timers will tell you, has never been a particularly cheap hobby

By: Gil Aguirre

Gil Aguirre — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 09:55:28 +0000

I’m not Irish but my roots are also from a country that ancestry.com would have very little information on. As such, I dont see a lot of value signing up and paying $25 a month for the service.

Personally, i think ancestry should re-think its pricing strategy and follow the facebook model. I dont mean give it for free but make it cheap enough to allow people from all over the world to jump into the band wagon if only to broaden its database. For like family trees and roots which could come from any country, there should be no boundaries to joining ancestry.com.