Ancestry has taken down its Engalnd and Wales 1837 - 1983 Births Index database and replaced it with England & Wales Birth Index 1916 - 2005. Apparently they must think no-one wants to research pre-1916 births.
David Graham is a product manager for Ancestry.com. Feel free to contact him with your thoughts about the site, in particular the community areas of the website. This includes the different tools you use to connect with each other and to help each other on Ancestry.com. His email is dgraham at tgn.com.
I have.
I also note that Ancestry support is 'experiencing a large volume of email enquiries at present.' I bet they are!
David
ID:3394
* Ancestry strikes again!
Ancestry strikes again!
I've been contemplating a sub to Ancestry for a while, but have heard tales of exactly this sort of scenario. think i might stay loyal to Findmypast with whom i have no complaints
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NickWalker
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Ancestry strikes again!
The indexes still seem to be available here:
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/default.aspx?cat=34 although I get an error searching on births - the death one works.
I guess now that FreeBMD is almost complete up to 1915 they are pushing that as the best way to search as you will find actual names rather than having to look through the BMD pages.
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/default.aspx?cat=34 although I get an error searching on births - the death one works.
I guess now that FreeBMD is almost complete up to 1915 they are pushing that as the best way to search as you will find actual names rather than having to look through the BMD pages.
Ancestry strikes again!
Deaths and Marriages are still there, it's only Births that have been 'updated'. However, when I needed to trawl a period of about 10 years c 1960, no images doesn't help, and searches do not give any sensible results - they don't even find me!!!
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ChrisBowyer
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Ancestry strikes again!
My guess is the reason they've done this is because of the significant proportion of errors in the page range indexes. They transcribed the first and last names on the page and assumed that the range of names is whatever is alphabetically between them. 2 serious oversights in this strategy...
1) If the first name on the page is mistranscribed, any name you search for between that name and the last name on the page will appear to be on that page. Sometimes (if the transcribed name is too early) that means spurious matches, sometimes (if it's too late) you get no match at all.
2) If the last name on the page is wrong (and it frequently is, because corrections are written at the bottom of the page, and they foolishly transcribed these rather than the 'real' last name), the names after the correction, that are on that page, are never found. Most pages have at least one correction; so on average half the names on a page (or on the last column where they're multi-column) will appear to be missing. Hence the common complaint 'I looked for my own birth and it said Not Found'.
On subscription it's just irritating to have to browse forward and back from where it got you, but for pay-per-view users I can imagine Ancestry having to spend an enormous of effort handling refunds.
Since most sites license these index transcriptions from each other, I imagine the same applies whoever you access it from, not just Ancestry.
1) If the first name on the page is mistranscribed, any name you search for between that name and the last name on the page will appear to be on that page. Sometimes (if the transcribed name is too early) that means spurious matches, sometimes (if it's too late) you get no match at all.
2) If the last name on the page is wrong (and it frequently is, because corrections are written at the bottom of the page, and they foolishly transcribed these rather than the 'real' last name), the names after the correction, that are on that page, are never found. Most pages have at least one correction; so on average half the names on a page (or on the last column where they're multi-column) will appear to be missing. Hence the common complaint 'I looked for my own birth and it said Not Found'.
On subscription it's just irritating to have to browse forward and back from where it got you, but for pay-per-view users I can imagine Ancestry having to spend an enormous of effort handling refunds.
Since most sites license these index transcriptions from each other, I imagine the same applies whoever you access it from, not just Ancestry.
Ancestry strikes again!
A point that seems to be being ignored here is that the new database has been indexed and is searchable, a major advance. I found my own birth immediately. A downside does appear to be that there is no longer any option to trawl through the pages as before, so, if an entry has been mistranscribed, it might be much more difficult to find. It is also a bit confusing in that links to the old database still exist on the site but don't give any results.
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TimTreeby
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Ancestry strikes again!
Having just tried it.
Would say that they have decided that for 1837-1915 will use FreeBMD Indexes. Although they are incomplete and still have errors.
But on saying that you can still access any actual page you like.
If you scroll down the page you get an option to choose which year, then quarter, then starting letter. mAkes it hard to get to right page first time, but can go through every one. Especially for those that FreeBMD have not indexed yet.
Would say that they have decided that for 1837-1915 will use FreeBMD Indexes. Although they are incomplete and still have errors.
But on saying that you can still access any actual page you like.
If you scroll down the page you get an option to choose which year, then quarter, then starting letter. mAkes it hard to get to right page first time, but can go through every one. Especially for those that FreeBMD have not indexed yet.
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jmurphy
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Ancestry strikes again!
I can confirm that the problem you describe also happens at FamilyRelatives.com.ChrisBowyer said:
Since most sites license these index transcriptions from each other, I imagine the same applies whoever you access it from, not just Ancestry.
On a free trial, I was given some PPV credits and downloaded several pages, at least one of which did not have the surname I was looking for.
Very frustrating.
Jan
Ancestry strikes again!
I reported this problem to Ancestry on 30th Jan. I haven't had a response and I now see that they've removed the Births index completely!
How can Ancestry claim to have an 'ongoing commitment to providing our members with the richest and most diverse set of historical records' whilst removing access to one of the important record sets?
I'll be taking this into consideration when deciding whether to renew my subscription this year.
How can Ancestry claim to have an 'ongoing commitment to providing our members with the richest and most diverse set of historical records' whilst removing access to one of the important record sets?
I'll be taking this into consideration when deciding whether to renew my subscription this year.
Ancestry strikes again!
The 'new' births index is still there. I always find it quite difficult to navigate through all the ever-changing database options on Ancestry but what seems to be happening (at least to me) is that if you click on the option to search 'Birth, Marriage & Death Indexes [sic]' on the home page, you get taken to the 'England & Wales Birth Marriage and Death Indexes 1837-2005' collection. Somewhat perversely, this collection does not include the new 'England & Wales, Birth Index: 1916-2005'. One way to access that is to go to the search page, scroll down to 'Go Directly to a Specific Title or Collection', click on 'See More' under 'Birth, Marriage & Death' and then filter/sort the list of 2862 databases to find the one you want. Filtering on 'England' is a good start.
I assume that eventually Ancestry will do the sensible thing and include the new index in the existing collection, but who knows?
I assume that eventually Ancestry will do the sensible thing and include the new index in the existing collection, but who knows?
Ancestry strikes again!
One trick I've learned when having to search for a page when it's been 'lost' in a search because of manual amendments at the bottom of a page is to note the page number and number of pages when a hit is found. Divide the page number by the number of pages to get a factor that gives the approximate relative position of the person's name in that part of the index. Then go to the quarter and surname letter you want, and load page 1, which will tell you the numnber of pages, multiply by the factor previously calculated and go to that page. It's reasonably accurate to +/- 1 page.
I have, before now, trawled manually through every index entry from 1837 to date looking for a specific surname and variants, and the lack now of a simple way to get to the birth index page I need just makes searches like these more time consuming. Ancestry really needs to recognise that quantity of search 'hits' does not equate to quality, and searches for a specific date range that return results +/- 50 years is simply not good enough.
David
I have, before now, trawled manually through every index entry from 1837 to date looking for a specific surname and variants, and the lack now of a simple way to get to the birth index page I need just makes searches like these more time consuming. Ancestry really needs to recognise that quantity of search 'hits' does not equate to quality, and searches for a specific date range that return results +/- 50 years is simply not good enough.
David