Comments on: 1940 Census – All images and our first two indexed states now online

By: Sonia trujillo

Sonia trujillo — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 02:45:22 +0000

Is puertorico included in the census?

By: John

John — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 19:46:58 +0000

For those who may not have noticed, comments about the both the lack of progress and communication — this theme has also been picked up in the thread “1940 U.S. Census: So Many Questions Waiting to be Answered:” Many are also commenting there on the lack of progress and what is probably even more concerning, the total absence of any comment from ancestry.com as to why there is evidence of any progress having been made over the past 12+ days.
Some have commented that we should be more understanding, that this is big project. However, ancestry.com created the impression by its early postings that we should be expecting to see much much progress.

Successfully marketing the 1940 census and making its contents easily available to its customers has to be the top business opportunities for ancestry.com (ACOM) over this decade. To have failed so poorly has to be seen as major business failure on their part. Ancestry.com is a publicly traded firm with a market value of about $1 billion. It used to be significantly more valuable.

Given this performance — my advise to any investor would be take a short position in ACOM. The value of business cannot help but decline as the investment community learns how poorly ACOM has responded to this once in a decade opportunity to grow its business.

I have always been a major supporter of ancestry.com and its products. However, in this instance, their performance has become a major major disappointment. They have really let me and there other customers down and they don’t even have enough business sense to acknowledge it and apologize.

I sincerely hope whomever at ancestry.com monitors these comments makes sure your top management knows how poorly they are currently being perceived by their customers.

By: Ron

Ron — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:25:09 +0000

Maybe you could get the janitor to at least change the date? It’s been stuck on 06 April 2012 for almost two weeks.

By: Mick

Mick — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 18:57:18 +0000

Its been a year now since Ancestry acquired the England & Wales 1911 census (35 million records) and the indexing is not finished yet.

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:37:53 +0000

@ Stuart, I get where you’re going with the “great if they all collaborated on one index”…but on the flip side of that, I think a little diversity of indexes is good, and with more than one source indexing records, no one source can sit back and “slow play” a dangling carrot of “indexes coming soon!” as a subscription enticement if the other sources are already churning them out. You’ve got to stay on the ball with the indexing, or people will just go to other the other sites. From a ‘speed of getting them all done’ perspective though, yeah, all sources working together would be great. It would be fantastic if they got together and said “We’ll work on these states, you guys take these ones” etc.

By: Trevor

Trevor — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:00:54 +0000

Tom, There is a way to access the 1940 census images without Adobe Flash. Please contact us toll free at 1-800-262-3787; we would be happy to help.

By: Tom S

Tom S — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:30:50 +0000

New with the 1940 Census, you require use of Flash Player to access the content.

I have found Flash to be a buggy, unreliable, resource hogging, insecure piece of pollution and don’t allow it to run on any of my computers.

It is NOT ACCEPTABLE for Ancestry to require the use of Flash to access paid-for content.

By: Andy Hatchett

Andy Hatchett — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 02:57:32 +0000

Stuart Re: #68

Considering that the major players haven’t even been able to agree on a new data standard for the past 10+ years, I hold small hope of them agreeing on an indexing standard that they will all follow.

Andy Hatchett
http://www.fhiso.org

By: Andrea

Andrea — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:35:45 +0000

I think we all agree it is a monumental task. My member connect activity has not been updated since 4/2 and 1940 census index status board has not been updated since 4/6. Communication is the key to understanding and good business practice. I called customer support and was advised that they do seem to be having some computer problems (actually I felt the rep didn’t have a clue and would say anything to get me off the phone.) Ancestry please communicate with your clients we deserve that much. One day, one week, one month, it is all history and most of us have time to wait but communication and honesty make the wait more plesant.

By: Stuart

Stuart — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 21:39:10 +0000

What would be awesome would be if all the companies that are creating indices collaborated on one index that was just shared among all participants. That way, it would come out a lot faster, and a lot of work would not have to be duplicated. Also, it could be started with fewer fields just to get it out with information that helps to find people (names, ages, maybe another field or two), and more fields could be added after the first round came out. Maybe somebody will listen to this suggestion and have it ready in time for the 1950 Census.