Genealogy Chat

Just clicked on my tree, they've changed it again...slightly narrower boxes, with names and year of birth. I KNOW one of my rellies was born 1858 and died 1859 because I have the birth and death certs, yet the death on my tree now says c1859, even when I didn't tick the circa box. I know it's been said every time they feel the need to play around with the site, but 'they didn't ask us first'!

I still havn't worked out the last time they changed the tree. I don't add anyone now to my tree on here, it takes me too long....

And with the new version, all deaths are shown as 'c' year, even when 'circa' box is unticked........... I wish they would do a test run before inflicting the changes on us............ Reg

WHY DO THEY TRY TO FIX SOMETHING THAT IS NOT BROKEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They've mucked it up again - birth and death dates are supposed to show in the boxes for each person, but the death date doesn't show until you click on the box. The little tree and piece of paper representing matches with other trees and census entries are totally useless, like hot matches, because they only take account of the year of birth, not the place. It's showing me matches on the English census for people who never set foot outside Australia.

Just to play “devils advocate” – I quite pleased to see the changes, at least it shows they are investing our subscriptions in one of the most important aspects of this site - tree management. Yes – there are a few niggles but nothing “fatal” – as a professional developer myself we would categorise such problems as shortfalls or cosmetic. I appreciate that change (and rapid change at that) can be unsettling, however I for one am pleased to see the changes and look forward to more :) Just my 2c ... Paul

I agree with Paul - I say well done and keep up with the changes. The death circa bit is hardly the end of the world.

I received a message from someone yesterday. Underneath the message I was asked if I was allowing them to see my tree. There were little cross and tick boxes in place for me to indicate my response. I clicked on the cross which generated a GR message above telling me that that person could NO LONGER see my tree. Does that mean they could before I ticked the cross and that they would have contiued to have access if I hadn't acted? Is it now the case that ALL new contacts are given access by default unless the message recipient chooses otherwise? If so, someone could have access for days/weeks if you don't read your messages straight away. I looked at my entire contacts list just to reassure myself that access to my tree had not been given to anyone else. It appeared to look normal. However, when I clicked on the crosses next to the names of some people who supposedly DIDN'T have access, the same message appeared telling me that that person NO LONGER had access. Does that mean they previously did have access whilst it appeared they didn't? Any thoughts?

Amanda, I think you are trying to find a problem which doesn't exist. I have tried and tried for this past week and checked with a number of different people but there is no evidence, at least so far, that access to trees is being made by devine intervention.

Peter, I'm very relieved to hear it! I was only puzzled as to why that particular message would appear (i.e. containing the words NO LONGER) if access had not been permitted in the first place. Best wishes Amanda

Really don't like this new tree! Some of the ideas are very good in theory, but awkward and fiddly in practice. As people have already said, the little tree icon is no more useful than Hot Matches. I don't like the way the screen suddenly changes without me having clicked on anything (or is that just a fault on my tree?) Previously you could choose to look at the 'Old tree' view if you wanted to. That option doesn't seem to be there any longer. Does anyone else wish they had kept the feature where your own names would appear in the list alongside the other results, when you did a name search? If you have six or seven people (or more) with the same name and you can't remember all their birth years, it's useful to see them in the results page so you can more easily cross reference them against names on other people's trees. Progress, eh?! lol

Amanda, I agree, the decision to remove your names from the search results was probably not the best one as it was a useful feature. As far as the ''New''tree is concerned I find it fine, and in fact haven't used the ''Old'' tree at all for several months. It was finally removed at the time if the recent main upgrade. There was the same outcry when the ''Old, Old'' tree was laid to rest. Again I was glad to see it go but there were pages and pages of messages about it, because the replacement was different, and the same spate of complaints when it was eventually removed. So it seems as the replacement wasn't that bad after all.....! People have very short memories. The new tree match is fine as far as I am concerned. Yes it does suffer from not matching the pob, but, as has been said before many times, adding pob will cause more problems than it will solve as different spelling presentations will not match, and then there will be even more complaints that the system is matching too few. Technically it can be solved by the system maintaining look-up indexes of all possible spellings but this takes time and money to set up and implement. Surely part of the fun is going through and checking for possible matches? If you don't like the option then you are not being forced to use it.

Peter, Fair comment. Amanda

I think a big improvement would be for the hot matches and the matches on the tree program to match the country and county as well as the year of birth. That should be much easier to implement than matching the town or village, and it would eliminate a huge number of useless matches.

I work for a large financial organisation and we have computer programs which check daily to see that none of our customers names appear on various black lists. Before anyone gets too worried, we are looking for possible terrorists and criminals, not for people who haven't paid their milk bill.....! A new system was introduced last year, and it checks millions of names and addresses every day. Being in the business that we are, we cant afford to miss to many, or the regulators would come down like a ton of bricks, so the process has to look for all possible combinations of possible matches. The next day, someone has to go through the reported matches - rather like Hot Matches - and check them, deleting those that are not true matches - which on most days is all of them. The point of all this being is is not easy to build this sort of matching, even for large organisations where cost is no object. Mary is correct, it would be nice if GR could refine the process to eliminate obvious mismatches, but we keep coming back to the point that there are different ways of spelling a place name. e.g. Staffs / Stafford / Staffordshire or West Bromwich / West Brom / W Bromwich Newcastle / Newcastle upon Tyne / Newcastle on Tyne / Newcastle under Lyme A human can eyeball this and decide in a split second if they match or not but for a computer it is not as easy.

Amanda, I can see your point about people possibly being able to see your tree, but myself I think its a little strange the way people guard their tree's as if they were gold bars. Ok ok I know most of us have looked hard and spent lots of time an energy researching stuff, but i like to share my knowledge around, maybe its just me, but I can think of nothing more wonderful than being able to pass on a little bit of my history to someone who's desperate to fill in the gaps..... Or am I alone here, (and please don't shout at me) Vaughny x

Vaughny..... Please don't get me started! (lol) My previous message to Peter is the shortest message I've ever written in my life and Peter will confirm it. Check the other threads if you want to read my views on tree bandits, name collectors etc. I've worn myself out and haven't the energy to say anything else (lol). I'm supposed to be on holiday from work for two weeks. I've done more typing over this past week than if I'd been there (lol). Incidentally - a gold bar is far less precious than my tree!!! lol Very best wishes Amanda

I go through my hot matches patiently every time and even though I usually get the same name 25 times that obviously isn't in my tree, I have on 3 occasions found 2nd cousins didn't know about and a couple of other contacts that have given me really useful info and made the time spent worthwhile. I don't mind sharing my tree, except for living members. A lot of kind people have helped me enormously and I'm happy to do what I can for anyone else. Name collectors etc. aren't of any interest to me, it's their problem or choice, whatever. My problem at the moment is that the new tree doesn't show all my ancestors. On my home page it says 'you have ..... names and ........ surnames in your tree' but when I open my tree it only shows three generations. If I type in a name and date it comes up (not always) but if it's someone else looking at my tree they obviously don't know all the names on it. At first I clicked onto 'old tree' and up it all came but that's no longer possible. Does anyone else have thie same problem. I can't see the point in putting other names on my tree if they remain hidden in the bowels of GR. Regards Olivia Does anyone else have this same problem.

And I still can't upload photos!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It still keeps saying I must upgrade to a full member. Even though I AM A FULL MEMBER!. This site is driving me nuts its one bug after the other. I am also getting the Circa dates too, when I do NOT have circa checked. If this continues I will not be renewing membership. I don't want to keep correcting data that has been changed for me, that I didn't change.

Tina, If you are having a problem with photos report it, but be sure to explain exactly what is happening and the messages you get. As far as the ''circa'' bugette is concerned, it is hardly life threatening.....! No big deal Just ignore till it gets sorted. I certainly aint bovered with this little problem. Olivia, Are you aware that there are four different views? Immediate family which WILL only ever show up to three generations - you need to click in the top person to see the next generation above. Or, you can use the ancestor view which will do just that. You can also view descendants, or see the entire tree if you want - though not all at once if it is a big one.....!