FAMILYSEARCH - Old site vs New site

[johnxyz]

There is still a link to the old site at the bottom right of the help page on the new site.

It took me a while to get used to it, but I now find the new site has some advantages:

The surname matching has been "tweaked". I have discovered one important set of christenings as a result. (New site finds DOCSCIE as a variant spelling of DOXEY, which the old site did not.)

I find plain text place name searching a great improvement on batch number searching, especially for places with multiple batches. It works at parish or county level, but you do have to get the spellling right! There is an "exact" box to tick. I suggest always ticking it unless you have a good reason not to.

The old patron submitted data of the type "born abt year" and "of place" has been removed, so there is less need to wade through what was usually garbage.

New data has been and is being added. My wife's family is from east Kent and the indexing coverage is steadly improving.

When searching with parents named, it is now possible to use father's name only or mother's name only - the old site required both.



For me the biggest downsides are:

The new output format. It was relatively simple to pull out the old blocks of 200 names and post-process. I've not yet  found a simple way with the new output.

The removal of some data from batches that began with "7" or "8". They were volunteer submitted, but tended to be fairly reliable.

Some of the new Kent data has erroneous parish attributions.

So at the moment, I tend to use both.

[Sloe Gin]

One thing I find very tiresome on the new site is that results often include events where the name you are searching for is not the main protagonist.  Thus I may be searching for the baptism of Joseph Bloggs, and they give me baptisms of other Bloggs children whose father is Joseph Bloggs.  Same with marriages and burials. 

I don't want to tick the 'exact' box as that may eliminate spelling variations.

[Ruskie]

One thing I find very tiresome on the new site is that results often include events where the name you are searching for is not the main protagonist.  Thus I may be searching for the baptism of Joseph Bloggs, and they give me baptisms of other Bloggs children whose father is Joseph Bloggs.  Same with marriages and burials. 

I don't want to tick the 'exact' box as that may eliminate spelling variations.

I agree with you Sloe - this basically gives you unwanted and irrelevant resuts, which I find more tiresome than the old sites 'submitted' records (there were some of those that were correct).

I also prefer the pull down menu for place names. The new site lets you write in the place name - I never know whether to write the reg district, county, town or whether simply "Durham", for example, will give me all place names in the county as well as results they have listed under "Durhamshire". 

I have been trying to use the new site as I know there have been new records added, but I find myself always going back to the old one due to ease of use.

John, thank you for letting me know where to find the link to the old site on the new site.  It doesn't seem to make much sense to move it, unless they are phasing it out. I know they've done a bit of fidding with the site recently - one thing I noticed is that the Biritish Isles records have been moved from Europe and now have their own link (this is an improvement).

I was going to close this topic since Pels gave me the answer I required, but I see that it has a bit of interest, so I will leave it open. I would still like to know if the long term plan is to remove the old site permanently.  There have been discussions about this before and I know in the early days, that there was a lot of negative feedback about the new site. A rep from Familysearch even joined in one of the RC 'discussions'.

I got the impression that the plan was, once the new site was up and running, then the old one would be closed down, but after all the protests, they decided to leave the old site accessable via a link on the new one.

I wonder what the latest is?

[curvey]

how do i get onto old sit been on new but do'nt understand

[Ruskie]

how do i get onto old sit been on new but do'nt understand

Welcome to rootschat curvey. THis is a fairly old post, but I have recently read other discussions about Familysearch - apparently the old site has now been phased out completely.

I don't use the site much as I still find it throws up all sorts of irrelevant results and LOADS of duplicate results for some reason. Just can't seem to get on with it, so generally steer clear of using it.

[coombs]

The new site is a vast dis-improvement not improvement. It throws up all kinds of hugely irrelevant results. I type in anyone born to parents John and Sarah for example and it throws up baptisms 100 years later of children born to a John Doe etc.

I miss the old FamilySearch site.

[Ruskie]

Something (else) I can't understand is why there are so many repeated results. I often get several exactly the same. 

[Gadget]

Something (else) I can't understand is why there are so many repeated results. I often get several exactly the same. 

Don't you remember that the old IGI had lots of repeats as well 

[Ruskie]

Yes, but they were often submitted records. I thought that the new site was omitting submitted records?