RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: dolly dimples on Sunday 21 December 08 16:53 GMT (UK)
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Hi all.
This new Ancestry is really trying my patience, it is much more complicated than the original, and it is sooooo slow. I was dozing while waiting for pages to load on all parts of the site, so I finally gave in and logged off.. I wasen't going to renew my subscription in Sept , now wish I haden't....
Has anyone ever reported the likes of this to Ancestry and did they respond?
Also hard to find a contact addy to sound off anyway... Dolly
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working fine for me - but I base all work off the Search page, not the new fangled Home page - click 'Exact Searches Only', type in a name (and county if yoiu want), get a list of Census years and BMD etc info listed, and work from there ...
:)
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My thank's Newf,
I shall try that, I am no PC slueth and like things to stay the same... plain & simple! Cheers Dolly
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make sure you have turned off the 'New style search' tho ... ;)
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hi Dolly
you are correct about the Ancestry homepage,its more difficult to use now,it used to be straight forward.Have you tried to customise the home page,i did and brought the census years to the forefront which makes it a bit easier.
Steve
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For all that Steve , thank's . Tho' how do I customise anything, sounds way too techy for me. I can just about find my way round the internet! Haven't been back on Ancestry yet as it is too slow, which makes it so boring. Methinks I will leave it to another day!
grateful thanks for prompt replies, Dolly.
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When I'm using A-----try now it keeps telling me I'm not connected to the internet and asks if I want to go on line. Very annoying as it happens during searches. The strange thing is that it only occurs on the desk top computer and not on the laptop.
Jan
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Jan, I have had that a couple of times, tho' not on Anc' It's very annoying the things that do happen on it .. after all, altho' it's good value when it's fully working , we should be getting first rate service from them. Maybe not enough people complain direct... Dolly.
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It's only A it happens on with me! I've got a friend who has contacted them several times to find out why I don't receive notification when she adds to her tree, but she gets it when I add to mine. They replied she was must be using A---try. com - which she isn't! Oh well as you say when it works well, it's good.
Happy Christmas
Jan :D
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Glad it's not just me :-\......... vote with your feet, I am >:(. What are the alternatives?
Philip
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Hi
For England and Wales, the main competition comes from Findmypast. Unfortunately there are gaps in the FindMyPast census records so it is a balance between a different (better?) transcription on FindMyPast with the risk of missing someone for lack of data or continue with Ancestry, which should have a complete set of images albeit concealed behind some strange transcription and search procedures.
Otherwise, it's back to the pencil and paper and long days in the relevant record offices or peering at the LDS microfilms.
I am sticking with Ancestry.
Good luck
Gobbo
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Hi
I think I have been unfair about the new Ancestry search. For ages I have moaned because they gave most of the weight in a search to the names and almost ignored things like birthplace. I was using new search yesterday and discovered that in the advanced options I could select almost any bit of my data to be exact - for example look for a woman whose first name is Mary, born in 1837 and living in Woolwich at the time of the 1861 census. This gave me a quite manageable list of Marys and it was just disappointing that I could not spot my particular Mary among them. With the old search I would have been offereds an enormous list of Marys born in loads of years and places and not all living in Woolwich. So I have to confess that the new search is worth trying and sticking with even if it does seem slow and awkward at first - it should save you time over the whole search.
Merry Christmas
Gobbo
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I agree with you, Dolly Dimples, that the new Ancestry set up is so frustratingly complicated. ???
It claims that you will need fewer clicks of the mouse ...... but this is not true. I have found myself on a long clicking journey just to find the Wales Census/Scotland Census. Previoulsy they were one click away. The quick link of UK Census is not 'what it says on the tin' ..... it is a quick link to England only!
I also tried to customise my home page. In fact I tried 3 times and every time I logged back on all my hard work had disappeared. Similar problems with BMDs.
I sent my grumbles to Ancestry. They were receiving 'a high volume of emails' ...... wonder why!? They eventually replied telling me to delete temporary internet files and all would be well. I would be able to customise. Didn't work! and it still doesn't.
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Well! it appears that I am not the only one to complain about Ancestry, I have complained before, but they always seem to give out a lot of gobbly gook that never solves anything!! I did try as Newf suggested and it did appear to be somewhat quicker...
As Gobbo said tho' the days when it was pencil, paper and record offices is no competition , so I suppose that closes the thread! Thank's all and Merry Christmas .. Cheers Dolly
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Hi
For more than two years I have wondered where my Drawbridge family were on the night of the 1861 census. Eventually I had assumed because Samuel was a ship's carpenter that they were out of the country and had missed the census. Now with the help of new search I can put in their Christian names and specify their birthplaces as exact and behold there they are hiding as the mis-transcribed Lrawbridge family. Well done new search.
Merry Christmas
Gobbo
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Ancestry are a disgrace. Some time before Christmas, they were putting up "no result" notices on BMD searches - even for names like "Smith." That took them several days to put right. Then the slowness started - at first intermittent, now apparently all the time. This has been going on since well before Christmas, and the site is all but unusable. How do they have the cheek to take people's money for such garbage?
Charles
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Hi
Ancestry can be a pain - they are obviously trying to accomplish a major re jig of their data and search and they do seem to be making a bit of a dog's dinner. But the new search will evenutally be seen as a great improvement on the old and - unlike the FindMyPast 1911 data - Ancestry has got North Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland for every census from 1841 to 1901 - and you can have a subscription.
Don't give up yet
Gobbo
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I'm not having any problem with slowness. I'm not crazy about the new setup but I've worked around it and have no complaints at the moment.
mab
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I am having no trouble either. Use the straight forward search page.
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I am using the same search page that I have always used. Those who are having no problems - and I know that not everyone is affected - will continue with Ancestry. From my point of view, unless Ancestry get their act together, it won't be worth my while renewing.
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I am using the same search page that I have always used.
Well, then maybe you should try something different.
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There is a Burwash family in 1911. Annie (widow), Frank and Charles, also Otto aged 12. Address 2 Portland Terrace, Burwash, Sussex.
Charles
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OC - your request can now be found here:-
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=442447.msg3055298
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Ancestry seems to have dropped new search and reverted to something very like old search. It does not seem to make the site any faster and as a fan of new search I miss it very much. I feel like the child who has just had his bag of sweeties pinched by the playground bully so I will go into a corner and cry :'( .
All the best
Gobbo
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Many of the complaints about the behaviour of the Ancestry pages are not the fault of Ancestry at all, but of the user's browser and its settings. Always log out of Ancestry when you've finished, and don't be lazy and stay logged in all the time (as I have also been guilty of in the past). Clearing out your browser history and cache can also make a big difference. There is a forum thread about it on this site.
As for the "new/old search" debate - I use both, but I find myself using the new more than the old. If you give it a chance, you'll find that it does come up with some quite useful stuff.
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Hi Nick
My point is that "new search" seems to have just disappeared. Have you searched in the last three days and still been able to use new search?
All the best
Gobbo
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Its still there.
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/default.aspx?new=1 - is the URL from the small text 'link' towards top-right (under the grey menu bar and 'Add to Quick Links' )
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Hi Mort
Using your URL I get a search form that is superficially "new search" i.e. there is no box for entering a census reference number but all the little boxes that you could tick for exact data have disappeared on my computer.
I tried logging off and logging on just to be told that somebody else was using my username and that I should go away for thirty minutes, wwhich I did and then got back in but no "new search" as I remember it. So I am not sure that logging off brings any real benefit for me.
All the best
Gobbo
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I hadn't used Ancestry since December, until last night. It's still giving me the new search thingy when the census page loads, which I change to the old one. It seemed no different and I had no problems - I plan to do alot more over the next couple of weeks so hopefully it'll be fine.
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Hi All
I think that with Mort's help I have sorted myself out.
If you click the search button on the grey menu line near the top you will get a "Search Historical Records" page. On this page just below the right hand end of the grey menu bar there will be some tiny print underlined saying "Old Search" if your default search type is new search and "New Search" if yor default search type is old search.
If you wish to search a specific UK census you will be given a screen appropriate to your default search and the option to swap between search types is omitted. So if you are intending to change search types you need to make the change before calling up the form for a specific UK census.
If you are using new search and attempt to search a specific census you may be offered a search form that does not show the "exact" boxes for all the bits of data. If you look at the brown bar at the top of the search form you will see "Show Advanced" and if you click this the missing "exact" boxes will magically reappear. Ancestry should then remember that you like these little boxes and offer them on all your search forms and not just the specific census. They will stay with you until you deliberately or accidentally click "Hide Advanced" on a search form when they will disappear.
I used to do the little puzzles in the newspaper but now I have a computer and a subscription to Ancestry.
All the best and sorry for being so unobservant
Gobbo
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I may be missing something, but I have one fundamental problem with the 'new search' which makes me continue to use the old one, and it has to do with placenames for place of birth.
It appears that you have to choose a place (country, county/state or town/village) from the drop-down menu and that if you go your own sweet way and type something in that isn't in the list, you'll get no search results. This was brought home to me especially because I happened to be searching for two particular problem locations at the time. One was Church Lawton in Cheshire. This is variously transcribed in full, or just Lawton, or Ch. Lawton. Only the full version appears in the menu, so only examples where the enumerator wrote the full name appear in the search results -- a very small proportion. If you enter either abbreviated form you get nothing, so you're reduced to searching the whole of Cheshire.
The other related to Waterfall, Staffordshire. This village is indisputably in Staffordshire but as it's in Ashbourne registration district, enumerators sometimes write 'Derbyshire'. But there's no way to search for 'Waterfall, Derbyshire', and because county and town are no longer separate, you can't just search for 'Waterfall'.
These problems all stem from genuine readings of what the enumerator clearly wrote -- I won't even go into the problems associated with mangled transcriptions or illegible writing. I'd also suggest that it's quicker to type in a placename and tab straight on to the next field than type the first few letters, then have to move your hand to the mouse to select the correct option from the menu, and then return to the keyboard to continue.
I'm at a loss to see how Ancestry think this is better than what went before. :-\
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Well, I think I know what you mean, for instance, if I was searching for someone born in Essex, I would have previously put "Essex, England", but the drop-down offers "Essex County, England, United Kingdom", which is not what I would have put. I'm afraid that this is an example of a combination of American ignorance of European geography, and Ancestry pandering to the majority audience, and that isn't us in England, United Kingdom ! ::) Not much we can do, I think ? :)
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Nick29 -- I'm not that fussed about having to select 'Essex County, England, United Kingdom', although as I mentioned it takes more effort to do that with the mouse than just typing 'Essex'. My problems are (a) that you can't now search for town/village names independently of the county, producing my Waterfall problem above, and (b) that there isn't a free text option to pull up all the place names that aren't in Ancestry's list for whatever reason, producing my Church Lawton problem.
To redress the balance, FindMyPast has a similar issue to the first of these problems. In the 1911 census it steadfastly insists that Waterfall is in Derbyshire even though the address on the actual forms clearly says Staffordshire!
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Hi
I found old search frustrating because it throws up enormous lists of possibles based on surname similarities and seems largely to ignore the other search data such as family members, dates of birth, and where lived etc. New search allows me to enter data that I am certain about as exact and this should greatly reduce the list of possible results.
When entering a place of birth or area of residence you do not need to accept the drop-down suggestions - just ignore them and keep on typing to put in what you think is the best search term - ie Waterfall without a county.
Searching for Church Lawton did reveal a flaw in new search - it seems to pick up "Church" and then ignores "Lawton" so in the results you get people from Church anything including just Church, which is not really good enough.
In addition if you have a few "exact" parameters new search seems to forget that some are exact. For example, if you search the 1901 UK census collection for Albert born in 1864 in Scotland and living in West Hartlepool (with each bit of data set to exact) you get a list of eight responses, seven of whom live in places such as Greenock West, West Lothian, etc. But what I found really odd - five of them were not named Albert. However, having said all that it is only fair to say that I set the test based on data I already knew for an Albert Jackson and he did turn up at the very top of the list.
As I said in an earlier post new search allowed me to search for a missing family using just Christian names and I found my missing Drawbridges recorded by Ancestry as Lrawbridge so I shall continue using new search but perhaps with not quite as much confidence in its logic as before.
All the best
Gobbo
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Hi Gobbo
I wonder whether the new search has been tweaked since I last used it in that case, as I was fairly certain after numerous searches (not just involving Waterfall or Church Lawton) that it wasn't pulling up results that I knew should be there. I may be moved to give it another go in that case.
I've never had the problem you describe with the old search, though. I always search with the exact match box ticked, and introduce my own tailored degrees of uncertainty with wildcards and +/- on ages. Generally I've successfully searched on first names only where I've known a precise place of birth, providing this isn't somewhere huge like Manchester coupled with a very common name.
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Hi
I must confess that I was never very successful using old search with the exact box ticked so I almost always left it unticked. In that state it was amazing how often the target turned up on the second or third page despite being to my mind a much better match to the search criteria than the preceding 20 - 40 results.
All the best
Gobbo
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you could try "church lawton" and see what happens!!
Barry