RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: kathleenmitchell on Thursday 13 August 15 19:42 BST (UK)
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Hello All,
Will Ancestry never learn? I am on the new ancestry site which is being rolled out to all, and I could chuck a brick at the computer, not only has the colour changed but it is pick up my family details and showing them wrongly.
I have relatives who lived on Wellington St Greenock, Ancestry has picked it up and shows Wellington New Zealand!!, another lived in Perth Scotland, this has now become Perth Australia, another died in Greenock, which has now become Greenock Pennsylvania, when you go into each individually the details are still correct, but when looking at them as a highlight of a relatives details they are wrong.
Has anyone else come across this?
thanks
Kathy
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Lots - there's a whole thread here.
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=727605.0
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Essentially, you have failed to add a country (Scotland) to the place names!
So, Ancestry finds what it thinks is the right place?! ::)
It's easy enough to add the country ;D
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According to the reply I had from Ancestry though, they are aware of the problem and are working on a solution. I was told by them that it shouldn't be necessary to go through and change them all manually.
I do know it is an American site, but as all but a very few of my relations were born and died in the UK, I didn't consider it necessary to have to add England all the time, especially as my tree is private for my own use. To me it made more sense to add USA or Australia when they died outside the UK. Oh well, we learn the hard way!
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Ever since the introduction of the "new search", place names have been assumed to be in the US unless you specify otherwise. This appears to be intended to cater for the mass of US subscribers, who have only a very sketchy concept of geography.
It is only very recently that they have tweaked the place name lookup boxes to bring UK places to the top of their list when referring to UK databases.
They have also relaxed their rules on place names being used for database lookups. Previously, where a place of birth on a census sheet, say, was written, and correctly transcribed, as "Birmingham", the person could not be found, because it did not exactly match the Ancestry Gazetteer, which had the place as "Birmingham, Warwickshire, England". It still does not allow wildcards, but it is an improvement.
Some places are still not in the Gazetteer, or are badly defined, so will never be located. Tower Hamlets, for example, is claimed by Ancestry to be in Kent, rather than north of the Thames in Middlesex, so we have to resort to the "Keywords" box if we are to locate relevant records.
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When errors like that are obvious people should email & complain otherwise they wont know.
There is also a London in Ontario & an England somewhere.
Don't know why they need their automatic assumption anyway.
I now know why relatives who are in my tree, never left Scotland but died in every country but on ancestry trees.
Annie.
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And the price has jumped dramatically
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When errors like that are obvious people should email & complain otherwise they wont know.
I had quite a correspondence with them about this not long after they killed the old search. I provided a list of about 40 places which I know appear in censuses but not in their gazetteer. Many well-known places in London were on the list.
They have still not updated the gazetteer to match reality.
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Have just been on to the site, go to my account click old site and answer the reason why
It has put all my information back to how it was.
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Only interested in memberships & have done away with a lot of things which were free now cost extra on sites your redirected to. No viewing of public trees now either.
Annie
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Have just been on to the site, go to my account click old site and answer the reason why
It has put all my information back to how it was.
Sorry but dont understand what you mean. I'm not a subscriber now.
Annie
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Have just been on to the site, go to my account click old site and answer the reason why
It has put all my information back to how it was.
NO, no, no, no!!!! ::)
Ancestry never did change any information.
They have only changed the way the information is presented!
And it only affects those placenames where you haven't put a country!
If you always enter a placename together with the country it is in, then you won't get a problem - I know because I have always put a country, and all my trees look spot-on!
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Sorry KG but that's slightly inaccurate. The issue with missing countries only applies to the new Life Story feature, if you look at the individual profiles of people then the places show just as they have been enterred. I know because I've just had a look on some trees I have access to and upon which there are places without the country listed because both I and the tree owner know they are in England!
It really is down to personal choice, as with so many things in research, and I really don't see why you have to enter a country when your research is for you or someone else who knows it is England. And no the trees I have access to aren't public on ancestry and aren't likely to be. But even if they were, its up to the individual researcher. I know some people claim its best practice to enter a country in the place name but best practice is put forward by some and not necessarily agreed by others. ;D
As quite a few people have already asked ancestry, it would be far better if they allowed Life Story to default to off and people chose to enable it. I suspect the reason they won't is because their developers have spent far too much money on this feature and aren't going to allow people the option not to use it. But then I'm just a bit cynical. ;D
When it comes down to it, and I appreciate from a programming perspective standardised place names with counties is better and easier for developers, in the end the research belongs to the individual and not ancestry. However, people do have the option to use desktop software and update their "trees" manually thus avoiding the problems that the new Life Story feature causes. ;)
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And it only affects those placenames where you haven't put a country!
Not quite true either as I have found, and as I believe was mentioned on the other thread, that if you have entered a full address and the name of the road happens to be the same as a town or county it assumes that is where they were born. So an ancestor who was born at Croydon Road, Birmingham, England has been changed to being born in Croydon, Surrey.
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Aah! I see! ;D
When I see a box headed "Location", I tend to assume it wants a town, county, (and state or whatever), and country that Ancestry can look up in it's (admittedly, incomplete) database, and I can then choose one of the offerings from the drop-down box?
Or just write my own, on those occasions when Ancestry doesn't recognise my entry.
The street address I always put in the box marked "Description" ;D
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If you always enter a placename together with the country it is in, then you won't get a problem - I know because I have always put a country, and all my trees look spot-on!
Please stop telling people how they should record their information. Family history is an individual activity not an exercise in corporate blandness. You don't seem to have grasped that there is no need for ancestry to change anything. And ,yes they HAVE changed things. If my information is now presented wrongly, even if it is only on one page, then they have changed that information. They have done this to make information fit their database, which is the equivalent of forcing square pegs into round holes. If I put Newark, New Jersey the database manages to work out it is in the USA so it should be possible for the database to work out that Newark, Nottinghamshire is in England.
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If I put Newark, New Jersey the database manages to work out it is in the USA so it should be possible for the database to work out that Newark, Nottinghamshire is in England.
Absolutely! I have written to Ancestry on a number of occasions asking why they can't manage such a simple thing! ;D
As an IT Professional, I know it's not difficult to capture the information that someone has logged on to the .co.uk version, and that all location hints should therefore be biased towards the UK.
BUT, I also worked out a few years ago, why I was getting strange hints and locations.
So, I took steps to remedy my "mistakes".
I also took note of what was actually being asked for, in certain boxes. And it definitely asks for "country".
At the end of the day, it's up to you - your choice.
I am just pointing out that it's possible to get around these things.
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"If I put Newark, New Jersey the database manages to work out it is in the USA so it should be possible for the database to work out that Newark, Nottinghamshire is in England."
If you put in Newark Nottinghamshire in the "Place your Ancestors might have lived " box it comes up as "No matches found" !!
I simply cannot understand why anyone uses the Ancestry site to fill in their tree anyway. Why not just purchase a tree programme and load it onto your computer. Then you can enter what you like, with no bothers. For instance I have FTM 2011 and hate the clumpy Source boxes. So just put all my details and sources into the research box on the individual I am working on. Along with the media ( census images) and other details. Not how the purist would do it, I am sure. But the way I do it for ME. If I were to load my tree onto Ancestry, I would have no sources at all showing. Does not mean they are not there.Just not where Ancestry wants them to be. 8)