Welcome to The Briercliffe Society Forum

Just tried it Charon but it goes to the new set up-----can't explain why it doesn't for you though.

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Gloria

I'd be dangerous with a brain.

I think I'll keep quiet in case Ancestry changes mine too!

Charon

I click on Ancestry.ca and from there it takes me to 'Browse by Location.' I click on UK - England - All eleven census and voter lists, or whatever I need.

I subscribed for the first time last week, but I have a broader subscription than UK only. Maybe that does it.

Joan

I don't like the new set up either....nowhere near as user-friendly as the old version.

Charon, I can switch back to the old.

Gloria, after doing a search, you should get a pale peachy coloured bar across the top giving an option to switch back...I'll try to do a screen grab to show you what I mean.

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Mel

Searching for lost relatives? Win the Lottery!

Have a look at this image Gloria, it gives the switch option but I have only ever had that after doing a search for someone from the homepage.

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Mel

Searching for lost relatives? Win the Lottery!

Thanks Mel. I was trying to persevere and use the new one, but its a right "blip blip".

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Gloria

I'd be dangerous with a brain.

So have you managed to switch back then?

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Mel

Searching for lost relatives? Win the Lottery!

Yes, I had been doing that before, but sometimes the link didn't appear to be there.

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Gloria

I'd be dangerous with a brain.

Oh I see. I would like to see it on the homepage and nt just after a search.
I filled out one of their surveys a while back to say that I was not so keen. Maybe they need to be inundated with unimpressed comments?

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Mel

Searching for lost relatives? Win the Lottery!

I will join the queue and do just that.

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Gloria

I'd be dangerous with a brain.

http://lostcousins.com/pages/info/augho ... STRY_PROBS

HIDDEN PROBLEMS AT ANCESTRY

John from Lincolnshire recently wrote in to point out a major problem with the 1881 Census at Ancestry - one that must have confused tens of thousands of users over the years.

If you search for someone born in either Lincolnshire or Herefordshire you're unlikely to get any results at all - because the county names have been recorded as Lincoln and Hereford respectively. Even if you type 'Lincoln' or 'Hereford' as the county of birth you still won't find the entries - because you have to input it under 'Parish or place'. Unless you know this, it can be really mystifying, and I'm sure that this bug alone accounts for many of the relatives thought to be missing from the 1881 Census. And even when you are aware of the problem, it's annoying when you're searching for someone born in the cities of Lincoln or Hereford - because you'll get the results for the entire county.

Here are two other problems that I've found myself - and the first is a real nuisance! Did you know that you can't search by age for someone who was less than 1 year old at the time of the census? If you type in 1880 as the year of birth (and leave the rest of the Search form blank) you'll get just 626,000 results for the whole of England - but they're all people who were at least 1 year old. Type in 1881 as the year of birth and you'll get just 174 results - about 640,000 less than you'd expect.

The last problem is relatively minor, but it still affects over 72,000 entries. Search for people living in Hammersmith in 1881 by typing in 'Hammersmith' as the civil parish and you'll get 0 results - not because nobody was living in that West London suburb, but because the name has been repeatedly misspelled as Harmmersmith. A mistake anyone could make, you might think - but for the fact that Ancestry's UK offices are in…… HAMMERSMITH!

In total these flaws affect around 5% of the 1881 England & Wales Census entries - so must have affected a great many LostCousins members. Each one of them is absolutely mystifying until you know about it, and if you'd given up in your search, nobody could have blamed you. Note: none of these problems seems to affect either FamilySearch or findmypast.com, even though they use the same transcription.

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Mel

Searching for lost relatives? Win the Lottery!

http://lostcousins.com/pages/info/sep09 ... m#ANCESTRY

HOW RELIABLE IS ANCESTRY?

It can be difficult enough finding information about your ancestors - the last thing you need is a website that promises more than it delivers. But since my article last month about the problems at Ancestry.co.uk which affect as many as 5% of all the entries in the 1881 England & Wales Census, I've been inundated with emails from members reporting other issues, some of which seem to have arisen recently. Note that these problems affect not only censuses, but BMD indexes too - my tests suggest that as many as 10% of these entries are missing or have been incorrectly transcribed, and there are other problems too with these new and supposedly 'complete' indexes.

I was going to list all the problems that have been reported by members, but then I realised that because it's quite a long list, you'd probably find it boring reading - and in any case, the errors reported to me are probably just the tip of the iceberg. What I'm going to do instead is give some general advice:

Avoid using the 'new search' if you can - at various places in the site there's a link near the top right that takes you to the 'old search' (note: you can recognise the 'new search' by the lightning symbol on the Search button)

Tick the 'Exact matches only' box, otherwise the record you're looking for could be so far down the list that you never spot it; use wildcards to overcome spelling mistakes and transcription errors

If you really must use the 'new search', be very wary of the place name prompts; for example, if you select "Bristol, Somerset, England" you'll get less than half as many results from UK databases as when you simply type "Bristol"

Always search individual databases rather than using a global search, or searching multiple censuses simultaneously

If you suddenly find yourself at the Ancestry.com site (it keeps happening to me, though I don't know why) go back to Ancestry.co.uk immediately!

If you're entering relatives from 1841 on your My Ancestors page, check the references against the census image - Ancestry often omit the folio number from the transcript, but even when it is given, it is often wrong

Think very seriously indeed about switching to findmypast.com when your Ancestry subscription expires (you can cancel at any time before the renewal date - it won't affect your current subscription). No site can ever be perfect, but at least findmypast.com is good and getting better, whilst Ancestry seems to be getting worse

I'm going to end this article with a quote from a brief extract from a complaint sent to Ancestry by one of their subscribers who is also a LostCousins member:

"I am extremely disappointed in [Ancestry's] census transcriptions. On many, many occasions (at least 25), I have had to go to findmypast after being unable to zero in on a particular person. In 95% of the cases, findmypast comes up with the person immediately. The number of transcription errors is outrageous. I have sent many corrections to you. Some have not been corrected after months of waiting…."

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Mel

Searching for lost relatives? Win the Lottery!

http://lostcousins.com/pages/info/oct09 ... RY_SUPPORT

ANCESTRY SUPPORTERS HIT BACK!

It's good to know that despite the shortcomings reported by some Ancestry users, and summarised in my articles in the last two newsletters, there are others who think the site is wonderful. Several members have written in recently to point out how extensive a range of databases Ancestry has, and on this point I have to agree with them.

Nevertheless, anyone choosing between different sites can ascertain which records are included before they decide to subscribe - what isn't so obvious is when something doesn't work properly. In my first article I wrote about the problems which affect over 1 million records in the 1881 England & Wales census, and I'm prepared to bet that 9 out of 10 Ancestry users weren't aware of them before that article appeared.

I get emails every day from members who tell me they can't find their relatives in the 1881 England & Wales Census (it's the main census we use at LostCousins), and so I think it's important that readers of this newsletter are aware of the flaws that can prevent them finding people in that census - especially when it can be searched free at either FamilySearch or findmypast.com, neither of which has the same flaws.

My second article wasn't planned - it was prompted by the large number of members who wrote to tell me of other problems, many of them relating to the recently launched birth and marriage indexes for the period from 1916 onwards. If it sounded like a bit of a rant that's because as I researched the problems reported to me by members I discovered others, some of which were even more serious - and so I couldn't help wondering whether Ancestry had been rushing out new databases in an attempt to boost their profits before they head for the stockmarket.

I do think it is appalling that in my tests of the marriage indexes between 5% and 30% of entries from the 1920s and 30s were missing or wrongly transcribed. Of course one has to expect a small number of transcription errors when handwritten records are transcribed - but in this case the source data was almost all typed or printed!

I haven't had a chance to check the birth indexes, but since one member wrote to say that the births of all three of her sons were missing, I'm concerned that they may be equally flawed.

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Mel

Searching for lost relatives? Win the Lottery!

My Mother in Law and Sister in Law were missing too, I told them they probably didn't exist.


Stephanie.

the updated bmd database had passed me by - I don't use ancestry much these days but can't bring myself to let go of it.
I finally found myself - but it's got me as Marueen.

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Maureen
If you can't fight, wear a big 'at