Two Months In: Ancestry Tree Checker Frustrations

 

While I do continue to pay monthly for Ancestry.com's Pro Tools, I have to say, I'm more than a little frustrated and disappointed with the Tree Checker. This is the Pro Tools feature I tend to visit most often and there are several issues I've encountered. While I suppose it's better than nothing, especially for those who aren't meticulous about creating people and facts or those who have never run a consistency checker on their tree before, it has a long ways to go to be a truly useful tool...and I'm beginning to question if Pro Tools is worth keeping.

When first rolled out, I was presented primarily with suggestions of potential duplicate people (who weren't). I took the time to clear them all, marking each as "not a duplicate". This was time consuming, especially since many were unknown children matched to other unknown children AND to other known children. When the list was finally empty, I felt satisfied. A few days later, I'd have a new slew of possible duplicates. Wash, rinse, repeat. This went on for a couple of weeks. It's clear the checker either isn't running through the entire tree when presenting possible issues, or it simply can't keep up with the rejection of duplicates in quick succession and it's presenting the same potential errors over and over. This was quite disappointing,, but I could understand. Since Ancestry has a lot of users and if they had a lot of people subscribing to the new tools at once, perhaps it overtaxed the system. I decided I'd chalk it up to being a new feature.

Finally, I was done with the tedious "not a duplicate task" and looking forward to more relevant results. For the past 2 weeks, Every time I've checked for errors, I've been shown a particular person. When I click to see the errors - there are none. There's a slide out saying "Nice Work! That's all the errors we found." If there are no errors, why is Ancestry still showing me there's a problem for this person? I know it can take a few minutes for the system to refresh depending on how busy the site is, but really? Weeks of showing me the same person with no errors? I'm paying for this? 

Yesterday, in addition to the one person above, there were 2 more people with potential errors. OK, here we go! Maybe something useful? Nope! "Nice work! That's all the errors we found." So then I was up to 3 people who supposedly had errors, but didn't. I have no way to clear them off the screen. I only have 3 filters: Possible duplicates, People without relationships and Other possible issues. Since none of these people are duplicates, none are hanging without relationships and Ancestry can't show me any other possible issues...WHY are they showing in the tree checker? 

I understand Ancestry has a history of rolling out features before they're entirely ready to be rolled out. In a bid to stay relevant, I'm sure this was a strategic move. On the surface, it does make it seem as if they're developing new features (even if they aren't new to those who've been using them on other sites for free for some time). But when it's been a couple of months and the kinks aren't starting to disappear, I have to wonder about the future of Pro Tools. If users are going to pay for additional features, I'm pretty sure most of us want them to work consistently. If you've been using Pro Tools, connect with me on social media. I'd love to hear if you're experiencing the same type of concerns and whether you're planning to keep or scrap Pro Tools.