Today’s chuckle on Ancestry trees

[Pheno]

To me it is pretty much like Amazon.  When you put a purchase into your basket on Amazon it then offers you all the other, totally unconnected things that someone else bought who also bought your product.  You don't just merrily click on those and order do you - you evaluate and discard - just the same as you should do with Ancestry hints.

Pheno

[kiwihalfpint]

There was a tree who had her correctly married to my great grandfather and having children in Dundee, Scotland. At the same time she was married to another gentleman and having children by him in America according to this tree.

Dorrie

I can go one better, while my ancestor married in Glasgow, he had time to go to Amercia, get remarried, six months later get a divorce, he then went to Ireland and had more children, before returning to Glasgow, to live his life out with another woman ... if only the tree owner followed up with the right certificates, instead of going with random names.


Cheers
KHP

[Treetotal]

I saw one of my OH's relatives listed in one online 🌲  as a soldier in the Royal Artillery having fought in 🇫🇷 in WW1 and was awarded three medals. He was in fact a partially sighted piano teacher!
Carol

[tillypeg]

Hope you are all ticking the boxes when you accept or ignore a hint for your own tree, to say whether the name, place, relationship, dates etc are all correct or total rubbish  

Is this just to remind oneself or do the ticked boxes get back to Ancestry?

[warncoort]

I have not ticked any boxes for Ancestry,this is just a ploy to have users sort out their mess.

[hurworth]

Hope you are all ticking the boxes when you accept or ignore a hint for your own tree, to say whether the name, place, relationship, dates etc are all correct or total rubbish  

Is this just to remind oneself or do the ticked boxes get back to Ancestry?

Where's the box to tick if you accepted the hint 'because it will make my tree look pretty with lots of pictures'?

[Chilternbirder]

I have found a tree including my father and his sister with offspring. My grandparents' names are matched on surnames but are a totally unconnected couple.

I am still wondering who the woman at my father's funeral was if, as this tree claims, his sister pre-deceased him by 13 years.

I felt quite angry about this at first, there was something almost violating about seeing my family suddenly appended to a line of strangers. Now I can just laugh at their incompitence.

[pharmaT]

From a computer science point of view it is perfectly possible to filter out records that ae completely impossible eg a census record for someone who would be 150 years old.  No matter how many people may have added it to their tree.  I think Ancestry should do this.  It would greatly reduce the hints people have to sort through.  I have over 1000 hints and it's likely a good 500 of these at least will be impossible, not just wrong.  I don't mind looking at a hint and deciding it doesn't apply to the person in my tree but looking at a hint that is 100% biologically impossible really annoys me.

[M_ONeill]

From a computer science point of view it is perfectly possible to filter out records that ae completely impossible eg a census record for someone who would be 150 years old.  No matter how many people may have added it to their tree.  I think Ancestry should do this.  It would greatly reduce the hints people have to sort through.  I have over 1000 hints and it's likely a good 500 of these at least will be impossible, not just wrong.  I don't mind looking at a hint and deciding it doesn't apply to the person in my tree but looking at a hint that is 100% biologically impossible really annoys me.

This is entirely true, but I think the problem isn’t one of computer science, but of economics.

From the perspective of any of the subscription-based genealogy websites, a dollar from a patient, thoughtful, meticulous researcher counts just the same as a dollar from someone who is just chaining surnames together back to the Middle Ages. What’s more, there’s probably considerably more of the latter than there are the former.

I’ve always felt the purpose of these hints is to generate that thrill of discovery even where there are no discoveries to be made. From a cold-hearted business perspective it’s far better to have happy customers ‘discovering’ impossible new people for make-believe trees and who keep subscribing than have those same people get discouraged by the lack of ‘easy’ progress and stop paying money.

Maybe I’m just a cynical sod, but that’s how I’ve always seen it. The best thing to do is trust in your own critical thinking skills and build up your own logic muscles.