Friday, December 16, 2016

Desperate to Rid Yourself of
Those Shaky Leaves? Try Hint-Be-Gone


I don't know whether there is a correlation between the number of people assembled in a pedigree chart and the number of hints assigned to said tree at Ancestry.com. I do know, however, that for my maternal tree at Ancestry—now numbering well near ten thousand entries—my hint count is perilously topping twenty thousand. That makes it just over two hints per person. And that's after several go-rounds on purging the extraneous.

Not to be outdone, my mother-in-law's tree—also at a formidable nine thousand some-odd individual entries there at the same website—is staggering under the weight of another eighteen thousand hints. It seems like only yesterday when I did another spring cleaning there.

Since I am on Ancestry.com at least once a day, it isn't unusual for me to receive those requests to take part in a survey by the independent company Ancestry hires to do their customer satisfaction checks. You'd think I'd remember my hint avalanche when they ask for any other suggestions for making life better at Ancestry.com. But I don't. I'm so ecstatic over being able to locate documents that would otherwise take ages to stumble upon—like ancestors who moved from state to state as if they were the nineteenth century's precursor to the jet age—that I forget there are a few rough edges to the system still needing attention.

Not that I'm an avid fan of inbox-zero thinking, but from time to time, I just wish I could obliterate those shaky leaves. Most of the ground-breaking discoveries I make at Ancestry, I hooked by going fishing on my own. A good deal of those shaky leaves showing up in my trees rank somewhere between "Gee, thanks for saving me that step" and "Oh, duh!"

I usually save those mind-numbing hint-cleaning sessions for moments when I'm otherwise having some down time. For the past three weeks—getting over the flu only to be smitten again by pulling out my back—I've had plenty of that down time, indeed. Plenty of time to open the "all hints" section on the tree's drop-down menu and click through "ignore" oh, a few hundred times at a whack.

It's times like that—perhaps in a febrile delirium—when I dream of the ultimate tonic to solve this nagging problem once and for all. Don't you wish for a handy-dandy answer to runaway hint counts? Imagine: the next time yet another new subscriber logs on to Ancestry and spots that quaint photograph of Aunt Mary's British tea set and adds it to her tree, you won't have to scrub your own tree clean of this intrusion once again. This time, you'll have...drum roll...Hint-Be-Gone. One click and all unwanted photographs—and their specific multiple iterations—will be refused, in perpetuity. Not ignored once; ignored each and every time the photograph meme comes knocking at your genealogical door.

Alas, Hint-Be-Gone was only the result of a fevered imagination; there is no such product. Perhaps it was a good thing that that Ancestry survey came knocking at my door when it did. By that time, I had recovered, was in my right mind (or as close as can be gotten, considering the circumstances) and seated at my computer, enjoying my favorite online pastime.

The good life can sometimes suck all criticisms away—much more effective than having one's mouth washed out with soap. But it sure would have been nice to stash some Hint-Be-Gone in the genealogical medicine cabinet, just in case.



Above: Undated nineteenth century advertisement for Scott & Bowne's Palatable Castor Oil; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

8 comments:

  1. I don't agree. I work through ALL my hints and, more often than not, they contain BMD records (actual images) that confirm or add to the record. Occasionally I get rogue hints for people of the same name/age who live in US. I routinely ignore these as I have no US connections.

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    1. Absolutely! This is not to say I don't appreciate Ancestry's hints, per se; I work through all my hints, just as you mentioned.

      However, I've found that quite a few of those hints don't seem to materialize until I have already done the hunting, myself, through Ancestry's immense collection of digitized records and indices and attached the records to my tree--then the hint appears in the lineup!

      My main source of irritation with the hint process at Ancestry is, in clearing hints through the bulk aggregating process (not on each individual's profile page but on the overview page section labeled "all hints"), I often dismiss (what I consider) extraneous material such as private shared photographs, only to have them re-appear in my hints overview once again when another Ancestry subscriber picks up the same photograph (or Confederate flag, or clip art bouquet of flowers, or splashy "1st cousin" labels, etc.) and adds it to the same individual in their tree. Somehow, that triggers the hint-worthy radar at Ancestry to once again notify me that I should also add that picture.

      While some may find those 60 to 90 extra photographs of Aunt Millie's splendid mansion to be charming, I don't. And I am not into resurrecting memories of the Old South. Perhaps no one else has ancestors whose descendants tend to linger over such memories; but I do. I just find it tiresome to click "ignore" once again. It would be nice to ignore a hint I don't want once and let it be done at that.

      As for the regular hint process, though, yes, what a wonderful gift this online resource for genealogical documentation has been. I'm all for the ease of verification Ancestry has brought to the research table. However, that is not to say there is no further room for fine-tuning. I think Ancestry's regular practice of surveying their users acknowledges their agreement to that point.

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  2. Jacqi, I do agree--so many of the hints are shaky at best, and even though there are true, hidden gems, I'd like a "hints be gone" app or how about a rating app? Rate each hint from 1 to 5, with 5 being YAY and 1 being NO WAY.

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    1. Actually, Marian, your idea of rating hints is a great idea! Next time you get selected to participate in one of Ancestry's surveys, I hope you mention it!

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  3. I hope you are on the road to recovery now with the flu and your back...no fun. Hope you find a solution to the shaky leaves:)

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    1. Thank you, Far Side. It's been a rough three weeks, actually, but I'm back on my feet and ready for the holiday cheer!

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  4. Even a minor update - like making the leafs not shake would be nice... they be less ... irritating. I have a problem with photos that get "approved" by others and then I see the same photo from another person with the same original source (that I ignored) ... so the ignoring cascades and becomes endless (in terms of hints).

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    1. Exactly! Funny how these little things can grow to be so irritating.

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