Social Disgrace: Double Down

Note 1: I am going to refer to the admin as "he" in this thread but the admin may very well be a she. It is just easier to write and read a single pronoun rather than constantly using he/she.
Note 2: This is an updated post. After publishing (and sleeping) I, hopefully, figured out how to make this easier to read. There are also corrections to the comment timeline. The original post still exists and is after the jump if you're curious.

Ancestry.com's social media team is so inept I could write these posts on the daily basis. Sometimes their answers are just painful. This admin doesn't understand that the link he's posting contradicts the point he's making. Shirley and Jane keep trying to get him to see his error but he refuses. My comments are after the screen caps.

(1) Shirley points out that a post on Ancestry.com's blog clearly contradicts the admin.
(2) Shirley also links to Ancestry's help section that clearly states what is and isn't included with the purchase of an AncestryDNA test.
(3) The admin states that updates have been made and then posts a link that goes to the exact same page Shirley posted. Uh, okay.
(4) Shirley quotes the linked page.
(5) Jane quotes the linked page.
At this point, shouldn't the admin be questioning himself? "Maybe I'm reading this wrong. I'll should go back and read it again."
(6) Instead he blames the site developers because he couldn't possibly be wrong. Here's the link he suggests to Shirley, "Providing feedback about Ancestry."
How's this for feedback? Dear Ancestry, please hire competent reps.
(7) Now he just doubles down and posts the link again!
Dear Admin: Posting the same link again will not change the fact that it contradicts what you're saying. Here are some steps to follow: 1) Read 2) Comprehend 3) Answer customers' questions. If you can't do steps 1 and 2 don't even try step 3.
(8) The final comment looks to have been made by someone from a different department. Notice the "signature." Maybe they can give the previous admin a tutorial on reading comprehension."The information in the article is correct...Once again, we are sorry about the miscommunication," by other Ancestry employees who are clueless, "and invite you to send us a private message with your email address if you have any further questions about this issue. We can then provide you with information specifically pertaining to you and your account." It will also allow us to answer questions without other customers pointing out errors by Ancestry employees.

The thread above was from Oct. 31st and can be found here.


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Social Disgrace: Rat of God

It's been a couple of months since I've done a Social Disgrace post. That doesn't mean things have improved. If you aren't on Facebook you've missed a lot of AncestryFAIL posts on Barking's Facebook page. Ancestry's social media team really outdid themselves yesterday. The post was so bad it had to be deleted but luckily a friend was able to grab a screen capture for me.

Ancestry.com DYK our Sears, Roebuck and Co. Historic Catalogs span 1896-1993 and have some, shall we say interesting and spooky items for sale including this headstone with what we think is a rat or opossum on top? Take your best guess!

[Ad copy] THIS BEAUTIFUL TOMBSTONE with a sleeping lamb on the top is furnished at the heretofore unheard of prices of $11.65 in Acme Blue, Dark Vein Vermont Marble, and at $12.88 in White Acme Rutland Italian Marble. 

A rat or opossum? Seriously? "Sleeping lamb" is right in the ad copy. And I doubt anyone who has bought a headstone for a child would appreciate the stone being called "spooky" like some cheap Halloween decoration. We won't even go into the disastrous grammar.
An Ancestry.com employee commented with a non-apology apology. Of course once the thread was deleted so was her comment.

Juliana Szucs It is definitely a lamb as it says in the ad, and we meant no disrespect, but in all honestly [sic], when I look at the advertisement I see an opossum. We just thought we'd share it for fun. Apologies to those of you it offended. For those of you who want to browse, the Sears catalogs are here: http://bit.ly/hsD5nm

Got that? If you were offended she apologizes but no apology for offending you. No apology for creating the post. No apology for making light of grieving parents. No apology for their lack of reading comprehension. No apology for their lack of basic cemetery knowledge. Unbelievable.

Thanks to Madelyn for the screen caps!
The title of this post was taken from one of the comments in the deleted thread. Thanks, Jane!



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Social Disgrace III

The more I see social media's so-called "experts" at work the more I am convinced they are the snake oil salesmen of our generation. They convince unwitting suits that they have the cure for all their company's ills while knowing nothing about the company's products or services. Managing social media is needed for many companies so there must be people competent at it. Unfortunately they don't work for Ancestry.com.
Ancestry.com has a number of knowledgeable genealogists on staff. Unfortunately knowing anything at all about genealogy, the Ancestry.com website or Ancestry's other products is not a requirement for employment in Ancestry's other departments. Sometimes it seems as if Ancestry prefers to hire people who know nothing at all about genealogy. It would be nice, however, if they at least knew something about their field of expertise.

Can you spot the errors? If you found more than I did add them in the comments. My list and much more after the jump.

Apologies Only Go So Far

From poor spelling to a complete system-wide crash, Ancestry.com seems to be failing on many fronts.

Basic proofreading skills seem to be lacking in just about every department. Here is a "pricess" example from their corporate mission statement.

It was corrected only after it was joked about by fans on the company's Facebook page.
There seems to be some discrepancy about the hours that help is available by phone. This is from a recent email (25 Sep 2013) about getting started on your family history with Ancestry.

This is from the "contact us" link in the help section of the website.

I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt on the difference in phone numbers and assume the number in the email bypasses the options menu and goes directly to subscriptions. But why the difference in times?
If there are site issues between 11 p.m. and 9 a.m. ET then you are definitely out of luck. In this day and age how does a website that is accessible 24/7 (theoretically, though that hasn't been the case lately) not have 24/7 customer service? If you don't want to call for customer service be prepared to wait, possibly days, for a response. This customer posted this to Ancestry's Facebook page on a Friday.

I decided to see what kind of response I'd get from the different addresses, support@ancestry.com and socialsupport@ancestry.com. A few weeks ago I reported a help page that had erroneous, outdated information and copied the email to both addresses. I received a reply from the social address within 24 hours simply saying they passed the information on. The day after that the help page had been deleted. Four days after the initial email I finally received a reply from support@ancestry.com asking me to explain the problem because the link I sent them wasn't working. [heavy sigh] I told them it had already been taken care of. I still do not know what the difference is between those addresses except that one will respond in half the time.
Are there other web-based companies who do not have a live chat option for customer service or is Ancestry the last dinosaur? Here is an example of excellent customer service from a web-based company with live chat.

This customer was so pleased she posted the screen cap on Facebook to share with her friends. My friends and I share Ancestry customer service experiences but for completely different reasons.
James' initial question asked when we could expect photo tagging to return. It disappeared when global commenting on photos changed.

The admin probably decided she didn't want to be fired and edited her comment.

She also posted some revealing comments.

Thanks to Kristin for getting that screen cap of the edited comment. Seconds after I posted this comment:

Let's see...
Customer service and social media reps don't consider learning about the website to be part of their job.
Hiding threads is not just censoring fans but is used to CYA. (This thread is now hidden.)
Admins don't know that everyone can see their previous (rude) remarks just by clicking the word "edited" under their comment.
They also don't realize that screen caps can be sent to bosses. And I don't mean KW.

...the entire thread, and NF, disappeared.

After the jump:  The Crash

Social Disgrace II: Photo Edition

Lots of images in this post so apologies to those of you with slow internet connections. Today's post covers Ancestry.com's Facebook page, their blog and their "online support community."
First up is a Facebook thread with just a screen cap of the image and no links at all. The admin who posted it is assuming that 1) everyone can recognize a Google Doodle and 2) Rosalind Franklin is a household name.

Link to original thread.

When asked about relevancy here was the admin's reply:

No "historical tie in"? How about a tie-in to the company you work for? I know it might be difficult to figure out how to relate a scientist who made significant breakthroughs in DNA to Ancestry.com but maybe if you think really hard.
The photos-of-kittens Facebook mentality has crept its way onto Ancestry's blog.

Link to blog post.

That's right, a photo of cats jump roping with a doll. I doubt it even crossed her mind that this post would be more appropriate for a personal blog, not the company one.
While the social media team expects everyone to adapt to their way of doing things (more on that after the jump) they refuse to learn anything about an important aspect of genealogy, sourcing. After the Cindy Crawford episode of Who Do You Think You Are? there was an Ancestry.com blog post about some of the research. If you go to that link you'll notice a change from the original post which is screen capped below.

The original post had no reference whatsoever to the professional genealogists who actually did the work. Now the first "we" is changed to "our ProGenealogists" with the link going to the ProGenealogists.com homepage. Well that fixes everything.
No mention that ProGenealogists wrote the summary for the case study section of their website. Meanwhile, Dick Eastman is giving credit to Kristie Wells. To her credit, she does manage to plagiarize well. [Note: I attempted to comment on Mr. Eastman's post to let him know about this the day his write up was posted but when I clicked "post" my comment would just disappear. No "waiting to be moderated" or error notice. I tried multiple times.]
Ironically while Ms. Wells doesn't see the point of giving credit to others for their work she wants all the credit for hers on the Ancestry.com Facebook page and doesn't want to be hidden by posting as the company. She and one other member of her team insist on commenting from their personal profiles without identifying themselves as Ancestry employees. Well no one new ever visits the page and all of the 600,000+ fans read every post the page makes so everyone knows who she is, right?

She claims that she is also part of the community and should be able to comment from her own profile but the comments are almost always (I've only seen one exception) made as an Ancestry.com employee, not as a fan of the page. If the other members of the team are fans of the page they are smart enough not to comment as employees unless they are signed in as a page admin.

After the jump: Censorship, a.k.a. The Borg

Social Disgrace II

Today and Friday will be my last posts on the ineptitude of Ancestry's social media. Writing about the crazy trees is much more enjoyable. I find people paying to add nonsense to their trees amusing. On the other hand, people getting paid by our subscription dollars when they should be flipping burgers or working at Wal-Mart is just infuriating.
Most of this will be about the Ancestry.com (not .ca, .co.uk or .com.au) Facebook page because it's the only social media site I waste time on. If there are issues with Ancestry's other social media, including the other Facebook pages, feel free to discuss them in the comments.
Let's start with the "About" page. It looks like website addresses are the only thing Facebook allows in the "Contact Info" section. Is "Mission" really the next best option for a phone number and email address? Is the mission of Ancestry.com to hear our thoughts and comments and to let us know about the initials at the end of comments by the page?

Maybe it's just a coincidence but the initials started showing up on posts soon after this comment was made by an admin.

That's right, an admin is claiming that Ancestry.com has customer support 24/7/365. I can hear your laughter from here. Maybe the initials will be used to identify admins in need of another training session. I'm sure someone will claim the initials are for the benefit of those who use the page. If that were the case wouldn't it be easier to use first names?
Of course requiring your team to identify their comments doesn't mean they will actually do it. This admin either forgot or decided not to sign their work. [The screen cap is from last week.] Lecturing fans in front of hundreds, possibly thousands, is usually frowned upon by most companies.

After all that the admin didn't even bother to tell Troy about Mundia.com.
Admins can't stand to look bad. You can see from the time stamp on this screen cap that I commented after the Ancestry.com admin but their post has been edited.

While viewing the edits is not possible on the Facebook app, anyone using a browser can click "Edited" and see exactly what was changed. This admin edited their answer to basically add my comment to theirs. I would have a lot more respect for them if they had just commented again and said, "I hadn't thought of that."

This comment took the admin three tries.

Editing is only possible with comments, not an original post. In the case of a post admins will post, delete and post again. On pages it's possible to create a post that will go live at a later time. Once you create the post and set the time (an hour, a week or a month from now) you can see exactly what it will look like. There really is no excuse for deleting and re-posting. So far I think the record is posting the same thing three times before they just gave up. The admin couldn't spell genealogy correctly in any of them. *head/desk*
[Thanks to Aggie for grabbing the screen cap!]

Admins seem to think we'll believe whatever they tell us. This one would like us to believe that a fan can make someone else's post disappear from the page. Anyone who has visited the page when the porn spammers are around knows that isn't possible. We can report something as spam and even report that it violates Facebook community guidelines but unless an admin removes it, or Facebook removes it which could takes months, the post will still be visible the next time we visit the page. The fact is that a few of the admins are actively censoring posts. I'll go into that more on Friday.

There's the admin that refuses to learn how to spell. It doesn't matter how many times she is told that "cashe" is not a word. There are at least half a dozen instances just this weekend.

There's the admin that either doesn't know what is available for free on the site they work for or can't be bothered to tell potential customers.

Then there is the admin that makes no sense at all. He/she says Janet's comment is correct and then states the exact opposite. [Note: This is before the use of initials.]

Much more coming on Friday. I'll start writing that post as soon as the headache from this one goes away :-P


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Social Disgrace: Photo Edition

Continuing the theme from Monday's post these are all posts by the social media team at Ancestry.com. All the examples are taken from Ancestry's Facebook page. It's like watching the Keystone Cops over there. It's worth checking out for sheer entertainment value but be warned. If you comment and you are as sarcastic as I am you might get reprimanded by an admin from their personal account. Yup, the professionalism is just overflowing. Since Monday there is already enough material for yet another post! I'll save those for another time and get back to the crazy trees next Monday.
Unfortunately I missed getting a screen cap of the post with a photo of LBJ signing legislation in "1946." A simple typo but it took the admins about 2 hours to respond to the comments. Of course by then the comments were in the hundreds, no one bothered to read the entire thread, and the thread was eventually deleted.
Here we go...

Truckee, 150 years: 1863-2013. #4thofjuly #ancestry
(link to original Facebook post)

How is July 4th significant to the history of the town? No idea. Are there any anniversary events that might be of interest to Ancestry.com fans? Who knows. Could there be less information in this post? I doubt it.
I had to look up where Truckee is because I had never heard of it. (It's in California just west of Reno, Nevada.)

 ✿

Who doesn't like a good spud? Cheers and wishing Idaho, the gem state, a happy 122nd birthday!
(link to original Facebook post)

1) Idaho is the "Gem State" not the gem state.
2) Idaho became a state on July 3, 1890. Anyone want to do the math? 2013 minus 1890 equals...
3) Any links? Nope. Ancestry.com has about 35 collections specific to Idaho but why clutter a pointless post with a link to the website you work for?
4) Did the map in the photo come from an Ancestry.com collection? We may never know.

We're just getting started ;-) More after the jump.

Social Disgrace

Those of you who visit the Ancestry.com Facebook page regularly already know that there have been some changes in Ancestry's social media staff. You would think the job requirements would include:

• basic grammar and proofreading skills
• ability to write coherent posts
• ability to incorporate genealogy into posts and promote Ancestry.com collections
• basic knowledge of history or at least the ability to use a search engine to confirm historical facts

Boy was I wrong! But what the new team lacks in those skills it makes up for with censorship. 

My friend David posted links on Ancestry's Facebook page to two excellent blog posts. The links were promptly removed. Both blogs have made Family Tree Magazine's 40 Best Genealogy Blogs in the last two years. The links were to Research vs. Proof in Genealogy from 200 Years in Paradise and Beyond Evidence to Proof from Genealogy's Star. Looks like the new social media team's job is to cater to clickophiles rather than educate them.
My post on junk trees was taken down, twice. Heaven forbid we offend those people who made a tree with three people on it five years ago and haven't been back since. The reason I posted the junk trees link a second time was because of this message:

 I also read you blog post from earlier today, and it is fine to share on our page if you wish to do so again and I will make sure the moderator knows it is ok. When your posts are informational and/or educational without calling someone an idiot for building a tree wrong, it makes it easier to defend. And defend you I will. That I promise.

My second post was deleted. This person either has no power over the moderators (but thinks she does) or is a liar. She was aware that it was deleted and discussed the situation with another Ancestry.com fan who happens to be a friend of mine. Any semblance of professionalism is sorely lacking.

More examples of incompetence are after the jump.