the Sunday Soapbox | Weighing In On Those Shaking Leaves

Michael John Neill started it all with his post: Should You Leave the Leaves Alone? Randy Seaver answered with a post of his own: Shaky Leaves and All - Are They Useful? I've been thinking about this myself. I did a post a while back titled Ancestry Dot Com Made Me A Lazy Genealogist. There are benefits, to be sure, with the program-generated hints, but like most of genealogy itself - this is simply the tip of that iceberg!

I do look at the hints. I have found some useful, some redundant, some just flat-out wrong. I have been happier with the results I've gotten at Ancestry, than at MyHeritage or FindMyPast. For me, the MyHeritage hints have been a complete waste of my time. But that's me. I have heard other's tout the wonders they have found there. I've had a bit of success with FindMyPast - when I need to "jump the pond" their records have proved useful.

I have found some interesting documents that did not show up as hints, but DID show up when I reviewed a hint. Have you noticed, off to the right on Ancestry when you choose to review a hint, there is a box with other suggested hints? It is here I have made some good finds. Why didn't these hints show up to begin with? I don't have an answer for that.

My choice is to review the leaves and consider the hints that are being presented. I (gasp!) never just attach, willy-nilly, all hints that show up. So may are wrong. Or from questionable sources. In a perfect world I would love the ability to turn off not only tree hints on Ancestry (which is a given), but also millennium files, family data collections, US and international records, US and Canada, passenger and immigration list indexes, and all photos. That would leave a much narrower field of hints, but also a much more useful field of hints.

There are a lot of duplicate records across all the major players. It can get quite wearisome to sort through the same things times and time again.

I can see both sides to this. Using the hints, and only the hints, you will miss things. You are not performing a reasonably exhaustive search, by any means. Never using the hints adds a layer of challenge, but the results of doing a manual search may be more rewarding.

As for me, I chose to use the hints to confirm the basics, the bones of a timeline. Then I dig deeper with a manual search, across multiple databases, to ferret out the gems, the nuggets that only a deeper look will uncover.

It's never one and done.  And new records are being added all the time.

The hints are tools for me, sometimes they are sharp and work well, other times they are dull and need to be passed over. As Michael said: "Your mileage may vary."

How do you use hints? Do you find them useful, or do you leave them alone? Share your thoughts below.



©2016 Anne Faulkner - AncestorArchaeology.net, All Rights Reserved

the Sunday Soapbox | Because Sometimes You've Just Got To Get It Off Your Chest

Friends and followers, I feel the need to vent. Beats running around the Cave yelling and banging my head against the wall .... 

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are entirely my own. 

Read at your discretion.

On Thursday of this past week, I successfully completed my tree merge, bringing all my branches together into one master tree. I easily used Family Tree Maker to complete the task. I saved a bunch of back-ups along the way, and after the initial, brief moment of panic, (I'm creating a monster!) felt  pretty darned good. Time to upload to Ancestry.com!

Easy, right?

Think again. (Is anything ever really easy with Ancestry.com?)

The actual uploading went quite smoothly. Took about 6 minutes, with an additional 15 to sync all the media. Excited to feast my eyes on my creation, I began to take a look around. Almost immediately I noticed something was amiss. My 3rd great grandparent's entire family was duplicated. 

What. The. Heck?!

I quickly checked the FTM tree. All good there. Checking the list of all people in my Ancestry tree showed no duplicates. Curious. I attempted to delete the second set of the same family, only to have it delete in BOTH sets! Dang it!! I opened up the quick edit and made sure everybody was linked correctly. Looked good. So, what? 

Taking a deep breath, I visited the Ancestry.com Facebook page and posted my dilemma on their timelime. I included the screenshot of the issue. I wrote: "Are we having issues again? Tried to update a piece of my tree from Family Tree Maker - this is what happened! It's correct on FTM, they are NOT duplicate people - same family added twice. If I delete one they both get wiped out. Can't merge either, because there is only one of each in my list of people - but somehow they have replicated on this family. ??? How do I fix this? Seems like a coding issue .... (your help is down, of course ...)" 

It has long been my experience that the use of Social Media brings a response faster than any other avenue of communication.

I did get a response. Within the hour! "Hi Anne, we'd like to take a closer look at this. Can you please send us a private message with your Ancestry username?"

So I did. You can probably guess the outcome of this already if you've ever had any contact with Ancestry.com's "help", but I'll see it through ....

The suggestion was to send a more detailed email (yeah, I know) including the screenshot.

So I did.

Two days later I get a response: "Thank you for contacting Ancestry through one of our social media channels. Sorry to hear you're having issues with a family being duplicated in your family tree. That is very odd, there is likely a relationship mistake which has taken place which has caused this to happen. We've included a link below that will show you how to correct any relationship mistakes in your family tree. If the error does not show on Ancestry please focus on the steps in the second article relating to family tree maker.

Answer Link: Fixing Relationship mistakes in Ancestry Member Trees
Answer Link: Fixing relationship mistakes in Family Tree Maker

Thanks again for your email, we wish you a lovely day today! 
 If you need additional assistance, please feel free to reply to this message."

Nope. NOT a relationship mistake. That was one of the first things I checked. Plus, it's all fine on FTM. Additionally, the links that were supplied did not work ......

I responded that their links did not work, however, I knew it was not a relationship mistake - I'd already checked that. On both ends.

Ancestry.com response: "Thank you for your response. In this case, please follow this link first and follow the instructions in full to optimize your browser to function properly with our site: Optimizing your Ancestry Experience"

Well, that link didn't work either, but I already knew where it would send me.

Steam boiling out of my ears, I wanted to punch someone. It is NOT my cache and cookies!!! No!!! No, it's not!! Why, Ancestry, is that always your solution? If only it were that easy, we could solve all the world's problems by simply clearing the cache and cookies!! And not taking any responsibility ....

By this time, I had already solved my own problem. How? EASY!

I deleted the Ancestry.com tree and re-uploaded it.

Works great.


Silly me for thinking Ancestry.com just might want to know about this glitch. Or care.


Incidentally, I noticed today that others are experiencing similar issues ..... this time on already existing trees ...... oh boy.


Thanks for letting me vent. ♥