Friday, May 11, 2018

Ancestry.com Says They Will Work on Technical Problems

Crista Cowan of Ancestry.com just posted this on the Ancestry.com Facebook Group page:


Hi everyone,
I’m reaching out with the following message from our Executive Vice President of Product and Technology, Nat Natarajan at Ancestry.

"Some users have recently been experiencing technical issues when using Ancestry.com.  We appreciate how frustrating this has been, and we wanted to give you an update on what is happening and why.

"We are in the process of making planned system enhancements and infrastructure upgrades which, once complete, will improve site performance and enable more records, more hints, and more connections, making the platform even more valuable for our community.

"The issues we are experiencing are directly related to the complexity of the infrastructure upgrades and they will end after the transition is finished. Please know that your data is safe with us. All the work you have done on your trees will be preserved even if you are experiencing some difficulties as the result of this upgrade.

"These intermittent issues will include the Ancestry.com search and other parts of the site not working in the way you expect and, some of your data being temporarily unavailable. It’s important for us to say that these issues are not continuous and are unrelated to any specific group of users. Currently the site works as expected over 99% of the time, and in almost all cases if you experience something not working, if you try the site feature again later the issue should be resolved. We appreciate this is frustrating and want to thank you for your patience.

"We expect the transition to be completed by Thursday, May 31, 2018, and we will let you know if this date changes. If you notice an issue with the site, please report it using the link below, include your Ancestry username and our developers will review the issues and prioritize them according to the number of users impacted. While we cannot guarantee a personal response to your feedback, we can guarantee we will review it carefully and will incorporate it into the resolution process. We’re working to quickly make improvements and address issues that are reported during this time of site enhancements.

"After the system enhancements are fully operational, Ancestry’s platform will provide a significantly improved experience to everyone in our community. In addition to the technical improvements we from the upgrades, from now through early June, we are launching 22 new collections and over 60 million new records. In the same time frame, we will expand the number of records available to our Shaky Leaf hinting engine by approximately 700 million, add a Family Group Sheet view, and broaden the ability to perform searches from person profiles in public member trees to our Family History experience. These are just a few early examples of the improvements you can expect as we enter the next chapter of our journey. We look forward to continuing to have an open conversation with you on the products and features you’d like to see to enhance your family history experience.

"Thank you very much for bearing with us during this period. Everyone on the Ancestry team really appreciates it."

Feedback link: https://ancstry.me/2wxzQOB


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My comments:  This is really GOOD NEWS.  May 31 is three weeks, so seems reasonable, considering all of the technical issues they seem to have.  We'll see.  It is obvious they have to do something to recover their reputation, and if this works, it should make everyone happy.  

On the other hand, the statement that the site works 99% of the time is laughable.  I think the problems that have been raised over the last few weeks by users demonstrate that, at this point in time, users cannot trust that a global search finds all of the matches whether you use the Records or Categories results.  Searches with a specific database seem to be reliable, and might meet the 99% measure.


Hat tip to Barry Sheldon for pointing me to the Ancestry post.


Copyright (c) 2018, Randall J. Seaver

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10 comments:

Dan Bodenheimer said...

I think that it is good news that they recognize this is an issue and will have a fix in about a month.

I think it is really bad news that we all pay a monthly subscription, and have been paying for really horrible service for the past few months. I have seem nothing about any plan to compensate or extend the subscriptions of their loyal long-suffering users.

mbm1311 said...

I am appreciative that a senior person at ancestry.com gave us a detailed explanation.

firstbuddha said...

I appreciate a senior executive provides an update.

What I don’t appreciate is this is posted in a secret facebook Group and not on ancestry’s main website. Or posted to the support articles of Ancestry. Or emailed out to Ancestry users. Or even passed to Ancestry support staff when customers are complaining.

How can we join a secret FB group without invite?

Found Out the Hard Way said...

Doesn't matter anymore. Providing this update to a secret group infuriates me even more. I will not renew.

Anonymous said...

Its good news Ancestry is adding things we have asked for in the past. I don't get why some are upset over a secret group. This message from Ancestry was shared on several other groups including their Ancestry product page. One can not join the secret group. There is no secret about this group other then it is closed to new members because it is such a large group. There are many many other genealogy facebook groups.When someone tried to share it with another group the Admin went all postal over it and said it was not allowed per FB TOA ( which nobody has been able to find as of yet). So before you get upset over a secret group maybe get upset that when it was shared with another group the admin did not allow it, sounds more like personal then it is any rules of FB.

Maxi1 said...

One month ~ Does this mean that Ancestry will be refining 1/12 of the annual hefty fee that I am now paying ?? 🤷🏼‍♀️

Unknown said...

Don't care about a secret group. I care that this information is posted right on your login page.
Facebook should not be the portal for such information or any other genealogy site.
Too much money gets spent not to be open and honest.

OK-now what? said...

Humm, it is now August 2019 and I have the same problem. Did I miss something? Could the problem be due to a larger database /- 5,000 people and lots of citation references collected?

Frank in Alabama said...

It's now mid September 2019, and the Ancestry web site gets slower and slower. As I write this post the site is locking up. I have constant problem with the site locking up. When it comes to looking at photos in my Gallery that's a joke. I'd like to hear less excuses from Nat Natarajan, and have the site work. I pay for world wide access and wish there was another site besides Ancestry and Family Search.org to do my research. I'd switch. I watch numerous "How To's" videos and listen to music on Youtube.com with no lockups. YouTube runs circles around Ancestry.com.

Jeff said...

After more than 25 years with Ancestry, I have cancelled my subscription. They implemented of the new popup hint system that many long term subscribers do not like at all was the las. Straw for me.I called “support” to complain and find workarounds to avoid the new hint system. Someone who spoke almost no English told me I was out of luck. Back in the day, people in Ancestry support may not have have known much about genealogy, but at least they spoke English.