tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512311610334754148.post5848196945511632708..comments2023-04-20T12:46:11.858-06:00Comments on The Ancestry Insider: Ancestry.com Bloggers Day: Search (Part 2)The Ancestry Insiderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02490682912125335188noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5512311610334754148.post-74518773697050296552010-02-26T11:40:45.533-07:002010-02-26T11:40:45.533-07:00AI, thank you for reporting on the HD Search.
I c...AI, thank you for reporting on the HD Search.<br /><br />I can see troubles from "old" New Search repeated and maybe made worse, in part because of the way some underlying databases are indexed but also in part due to how the databases are arranged internally -- as well as the search interface's instruction to the search engine.<br /><br />For example, you say "Usability showed that changing the label from “Birth Place” to “Where did your ancestor live?” was much easier for new users." Oh, ugh, eccccch.<br /><br />New Users, esp. those new to genealogy, have little idea of the life-paths of their ancestors. They are often beginning with the 3rd quarter 20th-century, when a great many families never moved. Of course current databases will not retrieve the huge numbers who moved from the South to jobs in Northern industry during WWII, and the many migrations during the Depression (city directories for the 1940s-1950s will retrieve many of these people but not with helpful information about where folks came from).<br /><br />The switch to "where did they live" will make retrieving relevant data for people who made dramatic moves after the Revolutionary War and through the 19th century more difficult. The "old" New Search system already makes this difficult, particularly due to its lack of sensible sortability either alphabetically or by geographic location **of the record**.<br /><br />IMHO, tailoring a search interface to user ignorance is unwise.<br /><br />The 2nd major element, underlying search problems, is that the "old" New Search fails to instruct the search engine to retrieve results *for* a given locality **but not** databases that merely have that locality name appearing as a keyword, and **not** a database that has the same word as a locality in its title (as well as in numerous parts of the database).<br /><br />For example, searching for someone who "lived in" Delaware will bring up innumerable results containing no matching firstname AND surname from a book about the Forks of the Delaware (Old Northampton Co., PA), one about the Lenni-Lenape or 'Delaware' Indians, several books of extracts of early Ohio records that mention Delaware, a book on early Tennessee settlements where the word "Delaware" occurs, a book on Natchez, MS early settlement (ditto), and so forth.<br /><br />Ancestry.com has not elected to fix its "State" groupings to consist in databases **about and/or for** each state, and the underlying indexing problems still exist.<br /><br />These underlying indexing problems also include misspellings (putting two "L's" in the name of Vermilion Co, IL; Worchester instead of Worcester for the MA and MD counties, and many thousands more such aggravating errata. The ways the indexing has been done for English localities has really major problems as well.Geoloverhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12050268303916428230noreply@blogger.com