Is ancestry.com "broken"? If so, when will it be repaired?
Have you heard anything about ancestry.com having issues with “Sources”.
Ancestry.com (for church members only) has a slick feature (“Comparison Page”) that allows members to compare FamilySearch with ancestry.com.
In the first part of November, I noticed that ancestry.com changed the appearance/function of choosing sources. It became a 3-step process.
About that same time, when I go to the (church member) “comparison page”, the many sources that I’ve found in ancestry.com appear on the “Comparison page” as “[No source title]" with a URL — no name of title and details contained in the source.
This is true ONLY for those sources identified November 2020 - thru today. Sources found summer 2020 WILL sync and show source details/title.
I’ve tried to report the “comparison page" as “broken”, but people in other countries have no idea what I’m talking about when I mention “church membership”. If they don’t have a church membership account, then they cannot view the “Comparison page”.
Has anyone else heard/seen anything about this??
It has brought my research efforts to a screeching halt.
Thank you.
Answers
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This pertains ONLY to TREE(S) that I have created in ancestry.com.
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Support at ancestry.com had me cancel my [church] member account and obtain a new one. Said my account was "too old". No change.
Had me try different browsers (Mozilla/Firefox and Safari). No change.
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@2008 rj
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FYI
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Jut my thoughts ...
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More likely an INTERFACE problem/issue, with the INTERFACE between, 'FamilySearch'; and, "Ancestry_com".
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IF, either one, makes a "Change" to their "System"; and, that "Change" is NOT followed through (with "Testing") in the INTERFACE between them; THEN, problems/issues WILL ensue.
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That is what needs to be looked at; and, by BOTH parties - not just one.
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Brett
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I have tried EVERYthing I could possibly think of, including ***numerous** calls to ancestry.com, emails to ancestrysupport@ancestry.com, and communications with FamilySearch support.
The problem DEFINITELY occurs on the ancestry.com side.
No problem on the FamilySearch side . . . . UNLESS and UNTIL someone "syncs" ancestry.com with familysearch. At that point, FamilySearch will then ALSO show the defective sources.
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@2008 rj
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FYI
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I am not saying that it is not on the "Ancestry_com" end ...
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But ...
That said ...
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It still could, in fact, be on the 'FamilySearch' end ...
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There is generally a major release/update, every Week, on Sunday night/Monday morning ("Mountain Time") in 'FamilySearch'; and, it is usually after that that problems/issues start surfacing ... due to the lack of extensive "Testing".
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I know; because, the 'Time' of the release/update for my 'locale' is usually late in the afternoon to evening on Monday (as, my 'locale' is 11 Hours ahead of "Mountain Time").
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[ Not to mention the myriad of smaller "In-Line" releases/updates, constantly occurring ]
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Remember, the 'slightest' CHANGE (in either "System") can result in the BREAKING, of some part of, the INTERFACE between, 'FamilySearch'; and, "Ancestry_com" - Especially, if not extensively "Tested" beforehand.
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Brett
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Could possibly be because the Ancestry sync of sources to FamilySearch has problems. If a user syncs from the FamilySearch Family Tree to Ancestry, then adds more sources in Ancestry and then syncs back to Family Tree, ALL of the sources from the Ancestry tree dump back into Family Tree. This includes duplication of the FamilySearch sources that are already in FamilySearch. There are some users that sync the same people in the FamilySearch Family Tree multiple times. Adding dozens upon dozens of duplicated sources. Perhaps Ancestry is working on a fix for this?
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I don't personally try to keep up the small tree that I have at Ancestry.com with my lines at FamilySearch Family Tree. However, I do often find Ancestry to have sources that I cannot locate in the FamilySearch Historical Records despite numerous attempts to get a result so that I can link them as a source in Family Tree.
Because of the problem of not being able to locate the sources in FamilySearch either because they are not there to be found or because of being indexed in such a way that I cannot find them, I use RecordSeek to move sources from Ancestry.com to Family Tree. It works very well without taking a huge amount of time. Using RecordSeek might be a solution until you can get the syncing working correctly.
One thing that I do when I use RecordSeek to bring the source over is to Edit the source in Family Tree is to add the Event Year to that the sources are listed in Chronological Order.
If syncing Ancestry trees with Family Tree is causing duplicate sources as suggested by Amy, it seems like an improvement not to do that. (We already have duplicate sources linked to Family Tree from FamilySearch Historical Records because of the way that some of the sources are put into Collections or Indexed more that once because of a collection.)
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I posted my workflow at top of page. Try it and see if it works for you.
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Good news:
I searched a "new" person today in ancestry.com. Found multiple sources for him, and these new sources (found today) DID sync correctly with Family Search.
Bad news:
The sources searched and found in November 2020 are STILL showing as [No source title]. Unfortunately, this Morgan Family Tree has 389 people and 1,489 records/sources that will NOT be synced with Family Search. I have made the tree public, but ONLY people with ancestry.com memberships will be able to view same.
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I forgot to mention:
The **OLD** way of selecting sources is BACK!! When evaluating sources, I am **NOT** viewing the 3-step evaluation process that appeared in November 2020. So glad to see that!!!
Thank you to those who helped accomplish that.
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Ancestry.com must STILL be working on the issue of evaluating sources. Website NOW struggling with sources. (Sources crash since sending last message).
Sorry to bother all with frequent updates. I thought ancestry.com had finished (gone back to the old way).
At least they are working on it!!
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thank you so much for this answer. Like you, I no longer build my own trees at Ancestry, and have wished for an easier way to source records from other sources like Ancestry. I will look into RecordSeek. I just installed it as a chrome extension. Now to figure out how to use it. Thanks!
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This is a good youtube video about using RecordSeek.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMXc2UkoYmQIf you do a Google search on "RecordSeek Youtube", you can find several videos.
I found watching the videos when I first started using RecordSeek very helpful.
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that was helpful, thank you. It was a little outdated (2 years old) for what FS sources look like now, but good enough that I was able to play with it to get satisfactory results for the records I most often source. I think it may save time in the long run- especially if trying to source something to more than one person and you don't wish to encumber your own source box.
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Later this afternoon, when selecting a source a new screen popped up. It is a "Survey", asking the user to evaluate the changes made to "Sources".
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If you don't want you user name to appear as "doubledouble", place a space between your names. Then it will appear as double double. Give it a day to show the update.
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I am so discouraged!! It's been almost **SIX WEEKS** and the comparison page on ancestry.com is STILL showing "[No source title]".
Does ANYONE know what is going on with ancestry.com and **IF** the comparison page (compare FamilySearch to Ancestry) might be fixed?
Six weeks is a LONG time to have an error such as this continue.
Thanks for any information.
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