Ancestry Website: If it aint broke dont fix it!

[groom]

Does anyone know when Ancestry are going to switch permanently to the new format? Surely the fact that so many are switching back to the old one must tell them that people are not happy?

[Treetotal]

I thing when you are paying subscriptions you should have the right to chose which format you prefer. I have given my feedback when asked why I had switched back.
Carol

[ThrelfallYorky]

Perhaps if we ALL moan ... there's a faint hope.... no, I'm fooling myself .... no chance ...

[JenB]

Perhaps if we ALL moan ... there's a faint hope.... no, I'm fooling myself .... no chance ...

The same thing happened last year with FindMyPast. The format was completely changed.
The chorus of moans reached a terrific crescendo (including several threads on Rootschat).
What happened - precisely nothing. They knew that if they waited long enough the moans would subside and people would accept the 'improved' website. They tinkered a bit around the edges, but that was all.

[Aulus]

As I have said many times on other, similar, threads:

All Ancestry have changed is the format of the screens you look at, and the way that they interpret the data they have.
The underlying data hasn't changed!

True, they have a problem with that interpretation - as I have told them myself!

But from what I can make out, if you have omitted the country on any of the place names in your data, then Ancestry assumes you mean USA?!

E.G. if you put a place of birth as simply "Glasgow", rather than "Glasgow, Scotland" then it will make that erroneous assumption.

As an IT Professional, I wouldn't think it would be hard to assume that if you logon to the .co.uk site, then UK names should take precedence?

But, Ancestry is an American company, catering manly to US subscribers.

Yes, I think that's right.  I discovered many years ago that not putting England/Scotland/Wales after town,county transposed several people over to the USA.

I'm hanging on to old Ancestry as long as I can, as like most (all?) here, I really don't like the new version.  Some aspects of the new version, I can see why they've done it - to make it more accessible to new users and newcomers to genealogy.  Many websites do this (not just genealogy) as they feel obliged to keep developing "new looks" and "refreshes." They're all out to bring in new users and make it all look at easy and "fluffy" as possible.  It'd be interesting to know (but they'd never say, I'm sure!) how much of their revenue comes from new subscriptions/PAYG and how much from subscriptions from long time, hardcore genealogy nuts like us.   Must be harder getting new subscriptions now WDYTYA is also using sites other than just ancestry.

[CarolF5]

I have been using Ancestry.com for a few years and am using the new one now-would prefer the old one as I like the trees in it better. It is just one of my go to sites among Family Search, Roots Ireland and Scotland's People.

[Gibel]

Having just been moved onto the new site I can live with it because it has kept basically the same look as the old one. I don't have a tree on the site so cannot comment on that as it is irrelevant to me.

I do think that by keeping a similar look to their search page they have avoided many of the complaints that their rival Find My Past received when the whole look and way to search was changed completely and things that had been their disappeared or where moved somewhere so obscure that no one could find them. It still takes me ages to find things and their search criteria system is very user unfriendly at least to me. The one that got me at the time was that Cheshire Church of England Parish Registers were suddenly stored as Diocese of Chester Parish Registers! At least they saw sense and did put Cheshire in front of Diocese after a number of complaints.

What really annoys me is all these special free days and £1 for a month or really cheap subscription offers but those of us who have a yearly subscription get no benefit at all except the odd one day upgrade on the special weekends when you can't get on anyway because of all the freebies! Personally I think both sites should give us long standing subscription holders a far greater discount when we renew perhaps on a sliding scale depending on years of subscribing and acknowledge that without us they couldn't offer all the other special offers we can't benefit from!

[AnneMc]

just got am e-mail from them saying it will change over in November. 

Cheers
Anne

[groom]

just got am e-mail from them saying it will change over in November. 

Cheers
Anne

Oh dear, better make the most of the next few days then!