Stupid Ancestry hint

[andrewalston]

In one of my trees I recently added:
Iris Spencer, born "bet Jul 1923 and Sep 1923 • Warrington, Lancashire, England"
 
Yesterday I glanced at her profile and found it showed 1 hint. To my surprise it showed the record below.

I am at a loss as to how their system deemed tis appropriate.

I eventually reached someone in their "support" department by phone. Although they could see exactly the same as I could, they were unable to see that there was any problem with the hint. Their attitude was to gaslight me. They claimed they would send me a link for me to send detailed information for their technical team. The promised email just had a link to a page in their useless "FAQ" section.

[MollyC]

Perhaps their FAQs should include "Is there anyone at Ancestry who can think logically?".

[brigidmac]

I Can only IMAGINE That SOMEWHERE  someone skipped a line on the 1939 register  and got  Iris spencer s  details mixed up with an eelderly lady on the same page the details then get put in the sysem and some people blindly copy the same details

sorry 4 capitals

i have caught myself doing this a few times where person is identified by the curser and ive slipped  to far from my individual but it shows up at the comparison stage

[Wexflyer]

I eventually reached someone in their "support" department by phone. Although they could see exactly the same as I could, they were unable to see that there was any problem with the hint.

They were unable to comprehend why you didn't simply accept the hint and add to your family tree. After all, that is what the vast majority of Ancestry users do....

[brigidmac]

i find that truly shocking

they should be reprimanded for giving advice like that

they are in the wrong job if they dont understand the basic workings of matches .

I would report that !

Ive always found staff very helpful but only ever enquiring about subs or dna kits to purchase Ive never used their services to question records except maybe to get a clearer copy of a document

[elliot]

You know that we all symathize with your frustration especially after you too the trouble to phone them!

[Albufera32]

As I understand it, Ancestry uses essentially the same search/match methodology as Google - it suggests a hint which another user thought was accurate and linked to someone with the same details as you. So if another Ancestry user has attached that particular document to a person in their tree that has similar details to your person, the hint system will highlight it as a hint for your person too.

I believe it also attaches as a hint any document which another user has added to their tree to a person in their tree who also has a document which you have added to a person in your tree.

The problem, of course, is that this method only provides useful hints if the original user only attaches documents which are in some sense "correct" and as we all know, that is not always the case. Unfortunately this tends to compound the problem where people blindly accept hints thinking it is some clever system that finds the documents that do relate to the person in your tree, resulting in errors being magnified by being copied into multiple trees - which makes them even more likely to appear as hints elsewhere.

Technically speaking, the CS person is correct in the sense that Ancestry didn't glitch in providing that particular hint (assuming someone has added it to a person similar to your "Iris Spencer"). Strictly speaking the hint system has worked the way it is meant to work. On the other hand, common sense suggests they would have wiser to agree with your point that the hint was clearly wrong in this case.

[coombs]

I have also had this, hints for someone who is totally unrelated to my ancestor purely because others (likely distant cousins) have researched and blatantly accepted the hints as that for the ancestor I am researching. Like an 1851 census entry for our ancestor who died in 1810 when it is someone of the same name and birth county.

To be fair, some Ancestry hints have been a godsend and revealed info I never knew about before, and when I checked further, the details matched.

[Ayashi]

And then someone else who received this hint says "yep, that nonsense checks out" and adds it, so the algorithm gives itself a pat on the back.