Genealogy Chat

Not sure that I like it.

I think it is an improvement. So far I do like it.

No doubt we will get used to it-- but having had a look at it is it possible to return to the "old" tree on Ancestry ? :-|

Too many changes coming along at the same time :-)

Not sure what I think.

However, I have noticed something that I don't like.
My tree was started on Ancestry back in 2008.
On a number of profiles the place of birth or marriage was entered simply with the town or area.
EG
My parents married in Bridgeton but I see that I omitted "Glasgow"

Ancestry kindly updated this for me on the new version
It now reads:
Bridgeton, New Jersey


EDIT:
It takes two amendments.
One for each spouse.

Can't see any difference on the tree view.

The only thing I've noticed over the last few days is when viewing an image. There is now a dark grey band at the top of the web page. It used to a shade of white, I think.
There are other bits relating to the image that have been added or fiddled around with a bit, none of which detract from the previous version.

One is a 'related content' icon which I haven't noticed before. Click on that and a slideout thingy comes in from the right listing listing some of the other records attached to the name. That could be quite handy.

I've just had a go at the new ancestry. The tree itself seems fine but I can't stand the profile page - much too busy.

There is no point telling me the official source for an entry when all I really wanted to know was which idiot assumed that my ancestor was also their ancestor on the other side of the world.

I have found with a tree I am currently working on - the parents married in February 1785 , the first child was also born in 1785 with no specific date, the birth has now appeared before the nuptials in the new version despite the baptism showing September -have managed to get it in order by putting a speculative "September" in for the birth

I am wondering how many more are going to surface :-|

OMG I didn't know about this!

Just been on it and I thought it was actually pretty good UNTIL I looked at the facts for my grandfather and discovered his half brother died in Milton County, Georgia when he was 10 years old!

The only thing is he actually died in Milton in Scotland.

I have the same problem as you GlasgowLass. If I haven't put a county down, ancestry have found an American place and added it.

You can change back to the 'old' ancestry if you hover on your username and click on the option to change back. You will also be asked what you don't like about the 'new' version.

Thankies Alviegal,
I switched back ....Phew!

You should always put place names as unambiguously as possible when building your tree. Ancestry has always had a tendency to assume US towns in such cases.

Right. I take back what I said earlier. There was a 'try it now' button on the Home Page. So I did.

The tree looked, in my opinion, Clunky/Industrial rather than Elegant. The Profile pages were confusing, and the Hints symbol not that obvious.
Showing the births and deaths of close family on the time-line could be useful.

I've reverted to the 'Old' version and will rely on my off-line programme for display purposes.

Kense

I'm not sure I agree with making all the data I add to my tree completely unambiguous.

My tree on Anc is personal so if I put place of birth as Manchester I, and my relatives who have access, know this is Manchester, Lancashire, England. I don't feel I am being ambiguous - just economic. Similarly I would put a place of marriage as something like St John's, Old Trafford. I miss out the word Church as I don't expect anyone to think it could be St John's Railway Stations, or some random house in St John's Avenue.

Surely it is up to us what we enter and not for Ancestry programmers to erroneously "correct" our omissions.

Just a thought.

Totally agree with Ken2.

What Ancestry *should* be doing is, instead of trying to map place names from events, just picking up the actual text that is in the Location field for the particular event.

I do not like having the list of events down the side :-|

I have twins boy and girl born in 1816 baptised together and there is this narrative at the side of each entry telling me one was born before the other was a year old :-S

If there is just a year entered for a death with no date, but a buriel date is entered the buriel appears in the list before the death-irritating !!

The death/burial (and birth/baptism) problem applies to the old tree. The solution is to use before when specifying the death date.

Has the handling of place names actually changed in the new tree?

Some years ago I made sure my places included the country because of the irritation of being offered US place names.

As far as I know when you start typing a place it will offer you the full names of matching places. As you type more letters the number of options reduces and eventually there is only one or none if you put in a place Ancestry hasn't heard of.

It is quite happy to accept whatever you type as long as it doesn't match the first part of one of it's stored places.

Kense, I've never yet been offered the full name of e.g. a church when entering it .....

I think Ancestry expects the place to be Town, County, State, Country; but it usually seems happy with Town County, England which is how most of mine are.

For more detailed location such as addresses I would put them in the description.

I believe if you put in a location as say 999, Letsby Avenue,Coptown, then it would offer you that the next time you started typing 999.as a location.

I still stand by what I posted earlier - they should NOT be mapping from gazetteers but should simply be picking up the text that the user has entered.

There should be no need to add addresses to the description - if my great grandparents married in St George's Church, Anytown then that was the LOCATION of their marriage, not the description of it.

Yes, e.g. 999 Letsby Avenue, would be a "remembered" input but it would NOT be recognized by Ancestry's gazetteers - this is where how the whole debacle occurs.

I should add that I have on some entries put the house number, street, town AND country for an event but the timeline shows e.g. his son was born at Street, England - it is not picking up the correct text and is mapping to the town of Street.

There are some interesting posts on :
http://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/forum/topic12242.html