Genealogy Chat

ElizabethK

I suppose it is modern life ;-)


Looks like Ancestry has found a way to solve some of the problems :-P
http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards/board/general_chat/thread/1354259

Thank you namelessone :-)

Have tried and it works OK - much better !

You now have a choice with "spouse" of partner / single / friend :-D

I said earlier on this thread that I didn't like the profile page, or life story - there seems to be a way of turning off the 'story' Ancestry now gives in their new version:-
"For those of you who don’t want the additional narrative in your LifeStory (at all), here is a tip: you can hide these events completely by clicking on the gear icon on both the Facts view and LifeStory and then selecting the ‘Hide Family Event’s option " I found this on their blog: http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/

I've not tried it as I don't have a tree on Ancestry but hope I can use it when viewing other peoples tree.

You're right, ElizabethK. It's going to take for ever. I became so fed up with it this afternoon that I imported my tree to findmypast and I'll use that until they've sorted things out. The last straw was when Great Aunt Johannah Kirton's death changed from Pontypridd in 1988 to Preston in 1976.

You can't have a public tree on findmypast or search other trees yet but they say they are working on it. Oh, and people die on there - they don't pass away!

Annie

Noticed something else about the "timeline" at the side - even if a persons death is recorded in 1937- it continues to show family events occuring afterwards with {for instance} "? s brother died in 1945 when ? was 50 years old" although ? had already died :-|

Ancestry are working on the site from 7am-11pm according to a banner across the top of the page

This morning I was offered an "update" to FTM14 but did not succeed in getting it as it would not accept the folder as "valid"-downloaded OK but disappeared

Are Ancestry posting anything on Facebook ?

I had a look at Kense's link - nice to see the American users are having problems with the place names - but it all gave me a headache :-S

Kuros

I have corrected the ones I have found by clicking on the "edit" top right hand of page and then on the "quick edit "option but it does mean checking through the whole family - and that is only the ones you know about :-|

Is there any way of correcting the errors on the profiles? I've just been looking again and some members of one family were born (according to Ancestry) in a place that does not exist! This is repeated throughout my tree.

Annie

Thanks for the link namelessone :-)

I agree with the poster about the "irritating" use of terms such as "passed away" instead of "died" but the real problem is the alteration of inputed info-not sure if there is a way to find the errors except by accident?

What they are working on:

http://ancestryforums.custhelp.com/posts/d7746ed758

Note top reported issues.

There are dreadful errors in my tree now. For example Great Uncle Henry was killed in the Lady Windsor pit when he was sixteen years old. They've now put his death at a ripe old age in Vermont! Good thing I have certs or I would have been wondering.

Annie

There are some interesting posts on :
http://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/forum/topic12242.html

I still stand by what I posted earlier - they should NOT be mapping from gazetteers but should simply be picking up the text that the user has entered.

There should be no need to add addresses to the description - if my great grandparents married in St George's Church, Anytown then that was the LOCATION of their marriage, not the description of it.

Yes, e.g. 999 Letsby Avenue, would be a "remembered" input but it would NOT be recognized by Ancestry's gazetteers - this is where how the whole debacle occurs.

I should add that I have on some entries put the house number, street, town AND country for an event but the timeline shows e.g. his son was born at Street, England - it is not picking up the correct text and is mapping to the town of Street.

I think Ancestry expects the place to be Town, County, State, Country; but it usually seems happy with Town County, England which is how most of mine are.

For more detailed location such as addresses I would put them in the description.

I believe if you put in a location as say 999, Letsby Avenue,Coptown, then it would offer you that the next time you started typing 999.as a location.

Kense, I've never yet been offered the full name of e.g. a church when entering it .....

Has the handling of place names actually changed in the new tree?

Some years ago I made sure my places included the country because of the irritation of being offered US place names.

As far as I know when you start typing a place it will offer you the full names of matching places. As you type more letters the number of options reduces and eventually there is only one or none if you put in a place Ancestry hasn't heard of.

It is quite happy to accept whatever you type as long as it doesn't match the first part of one of it's stored places.

The death/burial (and birth/baptism) problem applies to the old tree. The solution is to use before when specifying the death date.

I do not like having the list of events down the side :-|

I have twins boy and girl born in 1816 baptised together and there is this narrative at the side of each entry telling me one was born before the other was a year old :-S

If there is just a year entered for a death with no date, but a buriel date is entered the buriel appears in the list before the death-irritating !!

Totally agree with Ken2.

What Ancestry *should* be doing is, instead of trying to map place names from events, just picking up the actual text that is in the Location field for the particular event.

Kense

I'm not sure I agree with making all the data I add to my tree completely unambiguous.

My tree on Anc is personal so if I put place of birth as Manchester I, and my relatives who have access, know this is Manchester, Lancashire, England. I don't feel I am being ambiguous - just economic. Similarly I would put a place of marriage as something like St John's, Old Trafford. I miss out the word Church as I don't expect anyone to think it could be St John's Railway Stations, or some random house in St John's Avenue.

Surely it is up to us what we enter and not for Ancestry programmers to erroneously "correct" our omissions.

Just a thought.