Ancestry favoured me with a message that on Tuesday (that would be today) "Canadians will have the chance to try an updated Ancestry experience, with the site redesigned to transform how Canadians discover and tell their family story."
According to this information the new features are:
• LifeStory, which uses events, sources and relationships you’ve collected in your family tree to create a holistic, time-based narrative of these moments;
• Historical Insights will now appear within your ancestor’s life story, giving you context about the events that impacted their lives;
• Facts and Galleries will transform how you view, arrange and share the details of your ancestors’ lives.
You can check out the promo video.
It seems I've been seeing these new features for a couple of weeks, maybe longer although perhaps not on the .ca site.
It's best to refrain for making snap judgements on whether these are just new, or new and improved. Anything new involves a learning experience; I found myself floundering to find a path to things I previously knew how to access.
The historical insights are rather rudimentary. My great-grandfather died in October 1914 but the only two historical insights for his 77 year-long life were World War One-related.
Americans have had it for months, as they continue to try to work out the kinks (one could have wished they'd attempted that before they released it). My upshot is that I ignore the Lifestory page entirely. I may be one of the few people I've read who like what they did to the Facts page.
ReplyDeleteI opted out and I told them why when asked: I don't like Ancestry's choosing what events and facts to highlight on a timeline or "life story", especially in the case of relatives who have died in the past century and have unconventional families. Ancestry's "improved" version of their life can become, at best, misleading, and at worst, a threat to the privacy of living descendants.
ReplyDeleteNot happy to hear about the NEW Ancestry at ancestry.ca. It's been my sanctuary against the US one, which I do not like at all. damn!
ReplyDeleteI've tried it a few times over the past ?2-3 months and keep going back to the 'classic'. Each week I get an email telling me what they've 'fixed' or 'improved' on the 'new improved' format....but waiting to try it again. Hate wasting my research time on something that was ill thought out, I just get annoyed at them! ...but...i will give it a try again, when I've regained some patience!!
ReplyDeleteI've been using the Ancestry.com page for a few weeks, and I do like the Facts page, finding it quite easy to work with it.
ReplyDeleteBut the LifeStories? What a farce. So many errors and misunderstandings of some of the information... I think Ancestry should have let us learn to write our own stories, thank you so very much.
Ditto with Historical timeline information... Why bother adding this in? Were they not aware that there are Timelines companies doing this more or less well, already? The Ancestry site does not have to do EVERYTHING, for heavens' sake!
For Canada, their Timelines are not particularly useful. Can I say, 'useless'?
So, one plus, two minuses, and we'll see what comes next.