Barking Up the Wrong Tree: De-lightful and De-lovely

09 March 2015

De-lightful and De-lovely

By now you are probably aware that changes are coming to the Ancestry.com website. From Ancestry's perspective these are their priorities:

Isn't it great that they finally listened to their users? I mean, haven't we all been asking for a more "beautiful" and "delightful" site? I can't wait! [eyeroll] And "usable"? Shouldn't that be a given? Apparently Ancestry programmers need to be told specifically that the site needs to be usable.
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks the design team's goals are a joke. Here a few comments from a Facebook thread on Ancestry's fan page:

Too bad "functional" isn't one of the goals.

I´d really rather see that they fixed the problems, first, before creating, possibly, more.

how about not seizing up every few minutes, or being down entirely a lot; that would be an awesome change....

The comments on Ancestry's blog post are worth reading too. Here are a couple of examples:

Don’t forget that Function is the first and foremost need of the customers. All the pretty bells and whistles in the world won’t make up for the issues that customers have been encountering for several years now (system instability, phantom hints, poor messaging system, duplicate databases, etc.) Make sure those things are fixed before ever rolling this out

FUNCTION is the most important issue. Let’s not put lipstick on a pig.

Right now the media gallery is not functional in beta but there are plans, big plans, for a complete makeover.

"The Media Gallery makes it easier for you to manage all your media – records, videos, photos, stories – in one place to enhance the story of your family."

Um, that is different from the current media gallery how?
For years the most requested feature has been the ability to change the order of photos on a profile. If that isn't part of the coming changes the entire update will be a giant fail. All the emphasis has been on storytelling and the easiest way to tell a story is by putting photos in chronological order. As it is now the only way to do that is to upload and attach photos in reverse chronological order.
Yesterday a new site glitch made an appearance.

That's a sign that Ancestry's programmers are doing something. They've never been able to add anything without breaking things in the process.
Are you a beta tester? What's your opinion so far?

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2 comments:

TMonday, 22 June, 2015
The ancestry beta feed back. Do you think those comments that disagree with any of the ancestry beta agenda are considered? I don't. They have a plan and those stupid customers will take it. Well, I won't. I'm not paying them any more. There ARE alternate sites. It requires work. But no more work than the NEW ancestry. I'm dumbfounded at how quickly ancestry went from a top notch research site to a scrap booking site.
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seo pormotionThursday, 28 November, 2019
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Blog Reviews

Barking has been "deemed offensive to [Ancestry.com's] brand" and is banned from their Facebook pages. In Ancestry's "Community" comments with links to Barking are censored.
Dear Emma, Hannah, Jemima, Mary Jane, and all of her other personalities agree that I use "the banner of 'education' to actually mock, deride and laugh at [Ancestry's] own customers" and I "can make [my] point concerning tree inaccuracies & cock-ups and their effect on our 'hints' system without being downright unpleasant and sarcastic about it."
Allen says, “your cute little blog is a waste of bandwidth at best”
Ann thinks I'm "...copying and pasting mistakes on trees and calling it a blog" and that my readers are "mean-spirited people...who like to have a laugh at the expense of others."
Sue was really offended by the “...continual stream of sarcasm and constant poking fun...What a nasty taste in my mouth your blog left me with. Unpleasant, sarcastic and jeering at people who you obviously see as your intellectual inferiors. Won't be reading that again.”
And finally from Les, "You truly are a horrible woman, pointing out mistakes is one thing but blatantly laughing and taking the p is completely out of order."

Why?

Researching our family histories we are bound to make mistakes. Hopefully we are quick to correct them. Unfortunately some people refuse to read or think before adding information to their family trees. Some trees have been abandoned so the errors are there for eternity. Here we will laugh, mock and shake our heads at the carelessness, stupidity and/or ignorance of those errors.
All examples are taken from trees published online.
I'll also post tips occasionally, though the messed up trees are a great example of what NOT to do.
If you have an online tree to suggest for a future post please send me a link: buwtree(at)gmail(dot)com

The Fine Print

1. Copyright: Barking Up the Wrong Tree is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License and is owned and administered by Loretta Gillespie.

2. Content: Barking Up the Wrong Tree is responsible for the content of this site, not including visitor comments. Barking Up the Wrong Tree reflects the personal views and opinions of Loretta Gillespie.

3. Credit: Credit is not given to tree owners to protect the clueless. A tree owner who discovers their tree on this site should correct their mistakes so no one else realizes they were once a clickophile.

4. Accuracy and Validity: While there are helpful pointers on Barking Up the Wrong Tree a majority of posts are intended to be humorous. The disastrous trees are copied exactly as they appear on Ancestry.com. These trees are being used to show others what NOT to do.

5. Images: Attempts are made to source images used despite the fact that the trees they are taken from do not include source information.

6. Comments: Barking Up the Wrong Tree will exercise its right to delete comments which are deemed to be spam, offensive, childish or just plain stupid.

7. Liability: The content at Barking Up the Wrong Tree is not to be taken as fact nor absolute. Barking Up the Wrong Tree contains posts that are humorous and posts that are research tips. Barking Up the Wrong Tree is not responsible for anyone who cannot tell the difference between the two. The sites that Barking Up the Wrong Tree links to via hyperlinks are not under its control. Those sites are responsible for the content of those sites. If you do not find the humor on Barking Up the Wrong Tree to your taste then stop reading. If you choose instead to send an email to the owner it may be published on Barking Up the Wrong Tree and mocked publicly.

Thanks to Thomas MacEntee for allowing the use of the GeneaBloggers terms as a template.