Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Another look at Mundia.com - FAIL!

I saw the Mundia Blog post today titled Introducing the Family Tree Side Panel and thought that the new feature looked interesting.  I decided to look at the website again to see how it's changed.  I last reported on Mundia on 15 December 2009 in Mundia.com on Facebook.

What is Mundia.com, you ask?  Mundia.com is a free family tree site that adds family trees submitted by GEDCOM uploads, or by building a tree one person at a time, and they are incorporated into the Ancestry.com Member Tree system.  Mundia is owned by Ancestry.com.

Here is the home page for http://www.mundia.com/ for persons not already signed in:



The home page has a sign-up box, and a sign-in link at the top of the page.  Below the world map, there is a number that denotes the number of persons in the Mundia family tree system - it was over 2.3 billion persons when I captured the screen.  These are, of course, the number of persons in the Ancestry.com Member Tree system - both public and private. 

I logged in using my Ancestry.com account, and saw my home page:



It told me that I had four messages (they're the same ones in my Ancestry.com Messages).  It noted that I have -2.3 billion members in my family tree.  Hmmm, what's that mean?  I clicked on the "Go to my family tree" link in the lower left-hand corner of the screen above, and saw:


An "Error Loading Page" message shows on the screen above.  Aha!  I know what happened.  I deleted earlier family trees late last year and Mundia cannot find the earlier database.  Right?  Okay, how do I make it show my current Ancestry Member Tree?  Ah, there's a "Manage your tree" link on my home page.  I clicked on that, and saw:



I clicked on the green "Set as my private tree" next to the "Randy Seaver's Genealogy Database" and the system worked...and worked... and after two minutes (I timed it), the dreaded FAIL page appeared:

  Why can't Internet Explorer display the webpage?  I tried this three times and it happened each time.  I know, why waste so much time doing it three times - that's a sign of sheer stupidity.  And why write about it - don't I have anything else to blog about these days?  I blog about it because I want Ancestry.com to fix the problem, because if it happens to me, it happens to everybody. 

I went back from the start - the sign-in page, signed in, and clicked on "Manage my tree" and selected the right database, and got the same result.  Therefore, it will probably occur for any user that has deleted their earlier selected tree.

7 comments:

paulcito said...

Yes, This exact thing happened to me - and continues to happen as of today. I am not sure i see the need for Mindia -- why not just make ancestry.com truly milti-language and leave it at that?

AnnieB said...

My issue is even worse, as of today, 26 May 2011. I went to the mundia.com site because of a a post on the ancestry.com site, suggesting that "outsiders" can make changes to my ancestry.com tree, by way of mundia.

I logged into mundia, using my ancestry.com credentials. I get as far as the "loading" page for my primary ancestry.com tree - which takes FOREVER - I have not timed it but it takes a long time. When asked to accept the mundia terms, I do, and then am dumped out to a "email address already in use" page! I've tried 2 browsers on 2 computers, multiple times. I've given feedback - no reply.

One can only hope that ancestry et al have shut down mundia, after 2 years in Beta!

AnnieB said...

-

Steve Hayes said...

I find that Mundia encourages cut-and-paste genealogy. It makes it easier to copy something from someone else's tree than to contact the person and discuss the family and share information.

Anonymous said...

I am really annoyed about Mundia. I have been paying and building a tree for years on Ancestry.com and recently I clicked Mundia and found my Grand Mothers face, my Family pic staring at me. I do not mind sharing my Nanas pic with the World but not for free.

I have gradually seen a rise from $240 a year to near $400 AUS which is very hard for me to sustain.

Anonymous said...

I love that Mundia is free, because I can't pay the fee Ancestry requires, but what does it matter? It doesn't work most of the time! How frustrating!

Anonymous said...

I have maintained a private tree on ancestry for years, so imagine my surprise to see my private photos publicly posted on mundia without my knowledge. Why aren't folks screaming about the breach in privacy committed by ancestry?