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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: ggrocott on Wednesday 07 March 18 13:58 GMT (UK)
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Is anyone else having a problem with sharing trees on Ancestry?
Does anyone like the new font?
Does anyone else have the problem where they type a long reply to a message, press send and find the whole thing has disappeared?
Thinking I might revert to FindMyPast next year, but there search mechanism used to be even worse than Ancestry and you couldn't share tree with other family members or do DNA linking.
Advice much appreciated.
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1. Is anyone else having a problem with sharing trees on Ancestry?
2. Does anyone like the new font?
3. Does anyone else have the problem where they type a long reply to a message, press send and find the whole thing has disappeared?
4. Thinking I might revert to FindMyPast next year, but there search mechanism used to be even worse than Ancestry and you couldn't share tree with other family members or do DNA linking.
Advice much appreciated.
Re.
1. I can view trees as normal
2. What new font it looks the same to me
3. When that happens I think its me who has made a mistake and not watched what I am doing properly.
4. I think its best to belong to whichever site is most likely to give you access to the records you want rather than loads of records you will never use. On the point of tree sharing with relatives though I would suspect that Ancestry is streets ahead of findmypast
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No I don't like the new format either - definitely a new font and now all info in boxes. I guess its supposed to be clearer but because it all has to be squidged into a formatted box it doesn't appear that way.
Pheno
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Thank you for replying
Yes, I can view trees, but I want to share one, I can do it using an email address but not using their user name, which is a pain.
The new font appears on individual profiles, it is much blacker/bolder and gives me a headache.
I wish they would concentrate on making things work rather than fiddling!
I agree re. records, which is another reason why I might switch to FindMyPast so I can see the 1939 register and I think their parish record coverage might be better. The only advantages I can see with Ancestry at the moment are the abilities to share trees and link DNA but that is no use if
a) the sharing mechanism won't work and
b) looking at the site gives me a headache!
Vis-à-vis the disappearing messages I now copy before I press send and if it disappears I send again, however, several I sent disappeared from my view, but did actually arrive, others disappeared and never arrived.
Also, and this has been the case for a while, you type in a comment and then it introduces weird characters, seems to particularly happen if you dare to use an apostrophe, which perhaps says something about their grammar.
Sigh!
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I don't see any change in fonts?
Neither do I see "all info in boxes"?
I prefer to use email addresses; never have used Ancestry usernames ;D
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I see what you mean about the new font now. All I can say is that when another site "improved" their font last year it initially had a lot of disparaging remarks, however after a few days most had become accustomed to it and it wasn't mentioned again. Maybe you will get use to it in a few days, but getting headaches from it is no joke and I sympathise with you on that.
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Ancestry did a lot of similar changes last year too with fonts and colour schemes, the font change didn't worry me but the colour scheme was awful, following the avalanche of protest they gave you a choice on colour schemes, one of which was close to the original, which I think many people, including me, switched too. They also enable us to switch off the awful time line feature!
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Is anyone else having a problem with sharing trees on Ancestry?
Does anyone like the new font?
Does anyone else have the problem where they type a long reply to a message, press send and find the whole thing has disappeared?
1) Haven't tried so can't comment.
2) I like the new font & layout, although it seems I'm in the minority
3) Yes, and also sometimes it seems not to send but if you leave it about 5 minutes it does eventually go.
Other current problems:
a) Images not available - replaced by a 'placeholder' image and they have no idea when this will be rectified (London Workhouse & Soldier's Effects are particularly bad)
b) My 'last person viewed' no longer comes up on my home page. So if it's someone more distant or with a common name it can take some time to reach the individual I want to work on.
I honestly think they still see themselves as the undisputed market leader and it's made them greedy, lazy & arrogant. When I rang them earlier in the week I asked the call-handler to pass this on as 'feedback' and pointed to a few recently-failed retailers who made the same mistake ;D
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2) I like the new font & layout, although it seems I'm in the minority
Also standing up in defence of the new font and layout. I like it!
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Other current problems:
a) Images not available - replaced by a 'placeholder' image and they have no idea when this will be rectified (London Workhouse & Soldier's Effects are particularly bad)
British telephone books 'search' has not been working for quite a while and despite complaints they don't seem bothered. Images are there though. They have also said they don't know when that will be fixed.
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In case it helps answer the original question about Ancestry v. FindMyPast, there's an in-depth comparison of both in the March issue of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine (12 pages, by Chris Paton).
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Other current problems:
a) Images not available - replaced by a 'placeholder' image and they have no idea when this will be rectified (London Workhouse & Soldier's Effects are particularly bad)
British telephone books 'search' has not been working for quite a while and despite complaints they don't seem bothered. Images are there though. They have also said they don't know when that will be fixed.
The placeholder image has been an issue previously although not on such a large scale and does eventually get resolved. Ancestry have never been known to be that quick fixing such problems, although in this case its so widespread that it may get fixed quicker.
Another issue being the recently released Wiltshire Wills & Probates. There are missing pages for a number of Registered Wills. Where an Original Will for the same person also exists, its not such a big issue. Ancestry are apparently working on it according to WSHC.
I also quite like the new bold heading font.
As to moving to FindMyPast, depends whether they have the record sets you wish to use and its worth bearing in mind that they do not have the same Family Trees facilities as Ancestry. While they have recently announced their new global one family tree in conjunction with Familysearch, cynical me thinks that all you will be doing is updating the one global family tree on Familysearch where anyone can change anything at any time. I've been told that the announcement doesn't say this but considering that the FAQs say that Familysearch has been selected as the "cornerstone of this initiative", personally to me that reads more likely that is the case but as its still in beta format only time will tell. Obviously if you are OK with how the Familysearch one global tree works then its not an issue.
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British telephone books 'search' has not been working for quite a while and despite complaints they don't seem bothered. Images are there though. They have also said they don't know when that will be fixed.
It took them nearly 5 years to move Somerset to England ;D
Some of my ancestors were from Taunton and when they released the 1851 census,they'd transcribed all of Somerset as Somalia (it's the first drop down place when transcribing).
They didn't give a hoot (that's the polite word 8) ) and as I say it was 5 years before they finally changed them all to Somerset.
Carol
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To me the hints are all over the place currently. There will be even more catastrophic errors if those people used to just attaching every one of the hints to their trees without due process do so at the moment as it appears to be pot luck what hint you get for each person - not always does either name match let alone both!
Pheno
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deleted - wrong topic
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Re. the font, depending on which browser you're using you can use custom styles to change the fonts and colours. You'll need an extension like Stylus (Firefox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/styl-us/), Chrome (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpeebahjckkjfobafhncgmne)) and be willing to spend a bit of time fiddling about but you should be able to get something more to your liking.
The attached image shows just how pretty it could be. ;)
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I hate comic font :)
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I would never change sites over a font.... even if it's annoying you'll get used to it.
If you're weighing up Ancestry vs Findmypast, then base your decision on which parish records are of more use to you. There are big differences between what's available at the two sites. And the 1939 register is a definite plus for Findmypast.
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I have found personally that the find my past site is much better for search results generally. Ancestry tends to through all sorts of unrelated records into the search results. It takes quite a lot of scrolling down sometimes to find the relevant record. I mean something as simple as putting a specific place into the search box and the results nearer the top arent in that place at all, but the ones further down are.
Find my past search results are more accurate. But then there is lots on Ancestry that is really useful, like the 'connected records' that can be viewed once you click on the census results.
I find that find my past has more 'original' parish records online, whereas ancestry has often just transcriptions of the parish register.
I think in an ideal world it would be great to have both find my past and ancestry at the same time! So then you can go between them to narrow down and highlight different search results.
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I find that find my past has more 'original' parish records online, whereas ancestry has often just transcriptions of the parish register.
I think you'll find in actual fact Ancestry have more than FindMyPast. They both have some the same but overall Ancestry has more exclusive digitised original parish registers from individual Archives than FindMyPast.
FindMyPast have exclusive:
Devon
Canterbury Archives
Westminster Archives
Leicestershire & Rutland
Staffordshire
Shropshire
Welsh Archives Service, so I accept more than one county but not complete
North and East Yorkshire
Cheshire
Lincolnshire
Portsmouth
Ancestry have:
London Metropolitan Archives
Dorset
Gloucestershire
Somerset
Oxfordshire
Wiltshire
Northamptonshire
West Yorkshire
Derbyshire
Lancashire & Liverpool
Bexley (Kent) Archives
Surrey History Centre and Sutton Archives
Birmingham
Wigan Archives
Manchester
Both have Norfolk and FindMyPast now have Warwickshire too which was originally exclusive to Ancestry.
I'm sure if I've missed any someone will correct me.
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According to Surrey History Centre's website FindMyPast have these records
Pre 1914 school admission registers and log books from 154 schools in Surrey
Surrey Recruitment Registers 1908-1933
Surrey Quarter Sessions 1780-1820
Surrey Military Tribunals 1915-1918
The Surrey Marriage Index, created by the West Surrey Family History Society
Surrey Institutional Records 1788-1939
British Army, East Surrey Regiment 1899-1919
British Army, Queen's Royal West Surrey Regiment 1901-1918
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Quite possibly Rosie, but I was responding to treesquirrel's statement about FindMyPast having more parish register images than Ancestry rather than other types of records.
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Quite possibly Rosie, but I was responding to treesquirrel's statement about FindMyPast having more parish register images than Ancestry rather than other types of records.
I was not querying what you had posted, just adding to it :)
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Quite possibly Rosie, but I was responding to treesquirrel's statement about FindMyPast having more parish register images than Ancestry rather than other types of records.
I was not querying what you had posted, just adding to it :)
Sorry, its early. ;D
I initially posted as was rather surprised at the statement from treesquirrel stating FindMyPast had more original parish registers than Ancestry, something that doesn't really appear to be supported by the evidence. Granted that Ancestry's exclusivity for Warwickshire PRs has obviously expired as they have been released on FindMyPast but otherwise I would still state that Ancestry have more. FindMyPast also have in my mind considerably more Parish Register transcripts than Ancestry. Both have data sets pulled from Familysearch, but in the case of FindMyPast some of the extra is due to the fact that much of the data that was on the Federation of Family History Societies' own website was transferred over to FindMyPast when it was closed down.
Both have the non-conformist registers that originally were exclusive to BMDRegisters and TheGenealogist and while FindMyPast has exclusivity on catholic registers, neither are really "parish registers" in the true sense of the usage in England and Wales anyway.
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smudwhisk,
I must admit that recently I have been researching in North Yorkshire and Westminster and Middlesex on both Ancestry and FindMyPast, so perhaps that ties in with the list you gave, as at least the North Yorkshire and Westminster areas seem to be biased towards FindMyPast.
I suppose it's all down to which county you are researching as to which website holds the most parish registers or BTs. Along with how user-friendly each person finds the search process/display of results :-)
I think using both sites is an 'ideal' situation, but that's not always possible unfortunately.
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I have to say first that I have subscriptions to both. I put up with problems because it is the data that I want. As an IT professional, I can get by with all sorts of quirky systems.
Before committing to one or the other, check carefully what is available. Some county records offices have done deals with one or the other, but there are records which are available on both and for free on FamilySearch. Some areas have virtually nothing online. If there's an area which is important to you, ask on RootsChat for opinions.
FindMyPast's disaster when they rehashed the site to make it smartphone-friendly and changed the search method at the same time has faded from view. They have eventually got the search working, and as long as you search by dataset rather than their suggested "here are all the records we have. Now apply filter after filter to get things down to a manageable level", it works well.
I find FindMyPast a bit more responsive in their handling of problems. They do eventually correct transcription errors rather than leaving the bad version in place, and they don't demand that only those places in their incorrect gazetteer can possibly exist. When we found the 1939 register had all of Blackpool transcribed as Blackburn, it was dealt with in short order.
I have a feeling that Ancestry now have so much on the go that they are losing track of existing data. Maintenance of the databases is being skipped. The UK phone books are just one example; I've just emailed to tell them that their 1900 US Census is now missing over half of every source citation, which is a very serious problem for any non-frivolous researcher. When I complained a few weeks ago that the Page Number field had disappeared from the 1891 England census they just claimed that nobody ever used page numbers.
Your Mileage May Vary!
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Thank you everyone for your replies, much food for thought.
Much as I would like to subscribe to both sites it really isn't feasible so one or other it will have to be.
I realise that font seems to be a strange criteria to choose on but due to my particular, admittedly rather odd visual make up the new Ancestry font is almost impossible to work with for more than short periods.
Have to say I had a lovely day in Hertford Archives making use of FindMyPast, which also seems to have exclusive use of some of the Hertfordshire records and was impressed with both their records and search facilities. Thankfully I did not get a headache.
My local library offers free use of Ancestry but not FindMyPast so when current subscription expires I will probably move to FindMyPast.
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My local library offers free use of Ancestry but not FindMyPast so when current subscription expires I will probably move to FindMyPast.
That's a good plan - thankfully my local library (in East Sussex) has a subscription to both sites, and it's so useful to be able to use both of them.
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Have to say I had a lovely day in Hertford Archives making use of FindMyPast, which also seems to have exclusive use of some of the Hertfordshire records and was impressed with both their records and search facilities.
Until very recently there were massive gaps in the coverage of Hertfordshire PRs on FindMyPast and had been since the collection was launched several years ago. That appears now to have finally been resolved. I understand this has been done with the help of Familysearch according to an email I received for the Hertfordshire Archivist a couple of years ago when she mentioned this was happening. That said until recently it did make the collection of little use because of the size and coverage of the gaps.
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FindMyPast Friday's seem to be more and more American records instead of doing what they should do and releasing more UK records. I feel they are trying to compete with Anc.
I do find the search feature on FindMyPast much easier. But I feel Anc releases more records with scans of images as opposed to mere indexes and transcriptions.
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FindMyPast:
9 March - Ireland and Wales
2 March - USA Catholic records
23 February - Derbyshire and London
16 February - USA, plus Norfolk, Aberdeen, Yorkhsire and Nottinghamshire.
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FindMyPast:
9 March - Ireland and Wales
2 March - USA Catholic records
23 February - Derbyshire and London
16 February - USA, plus Norfolk, Aberdeen, Yorkhsire and Nottinghamshire.
Well if you read the FindMyPast Friday comments via Facebook for the 2nd March, many other users are saying there are too many USA records, and any British ones seem to be indexes or patchy coverage.
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We all have our priorities/preferences :) I personally have absolutely no interest in US records (and you don't want to know the reasons :-X) - luckily I don't have anyone who migrated in that direction :-*
I have subscriptions to both Ancestry (UK) and FindMyPast (world), so I'm fairly well covered. Almost anything is a bonus.
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Instinctively, If anyone asked for my advice on dual subscriptions, I'd have said World Ancestry and UK FindMyPast.
Does FindMyPast have advantages on the World front ?
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Find My Past is not good for Canada
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Instinctively, If anyone asked for my advice on dual subscriptions, I'd have said World Ancestry and UK FindMyPast.
I'd agree with Steve. Whenever I've looked, Ancestry's non-British coverage is far better than FMPs. FindMyPast I think have some more Irish records than Ancestry but otherwise I'd say Ancestry was better for non-British records and as for England & Wales, really depends on where you are researching and the exclusive records each has.
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So for researching a Scottish family with forrays into the commonwealth and US but next to nothing in England and Wales a world sub for Ancestry along with use of Scotland's People would be preferable ?
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In a nutshell, FindMyPast is quite good for Britain at least. Some areas are more covered than others.
I have just bought a new 1 month subscription which gives me access to the 1939 register. Managed to spend hours gathering more info on rellies now.
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So for researching a Scottish family with forrays into the commonwealth and US but next to nothing in England and Wales a world sub for Ancestry along with use of Scotland's People would be preferable ?
An Ancestry world sub for occasional forays would be an expensive sledgehammer to crack a nut IMO
Might be better using the money on trips to a library with a subscription
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I use the free library editions in my local library which are very good and cover most of what I want. Do all libraries have some free access or does this depend on where you live? Currentlt I finf findmypast better than ancestry for my purposes.
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I think most (UK) libraries offer the Ancestry Library edition, unfortunately that is not the case for FindMyPast. However, when they do the FindMyPast version is better as you can access your own tree and add to it. Have to say that my recent trip made me feel the 50 mile drive to do it was worth the effort, but as a regular thing would not be cost effective!
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I use the free library editions in my local library which are very good and cover most of what I want. Do all libraries have some free access or does this depend on where you live? Currentlt I finf findmypast better than ancestry for my purposes.
Depends where you live. East Sussex libraries have subscriptions to both, so I'm lucky. Usually your local library's website has a list of which sites it subscribes to.
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I've stuck with Ancestry for some time, mainly because it has most of the areas I need - but I really do wish they had a button to "exclude records from...." I've almost nothing U.S.A., and any fairly wide search seems to result in umpteen USA records trolling down the page.
I've had few issues with Ancestry - others have mentioned London records, that's true, but I find it quite well set out on the whole.
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I've stuck with Ancestry for some time, mainly because it has most of the areas I need - but I really do wish they had a button to "exclude records from...." I've almost nothing U.S.A., and any fairly wide search seems to result in umpteen USA records trolling down the page.
I've had few issues with Ancestry - others have mentioned London records, that's true, but I find it quite well set out on the whole.
ThrelfallYorky - you can restrict your search to UK records only, would that help?
When you edit your search, there's a box called "Collection Focus" and you can select "UK and Ireland".
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Yes, I always do do that, but quite often get things - births in Philadelphia USA, etc, that I'm clearly not after. It does seem to have a problems with wandering geography!
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I also find that although I untick all catagories except Historical records it regularly reverts to all searches. ::)
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It does seem to have a problems with wandering geography!
Indeed ::)