Family Trees on Ancestry's Website (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Saturday, March 16, 2013, 01:24 (4272 days ago) @ rookancestrybest

Hi,
first "welldone" for being a cheapskate like me, true careful Vurrister methinks !
I kid myself that by not paying the subs I'm doing it the long-hard "proper" way....altho sometimes I do wonder why not just pay out, there are cheap ways if carefull, especially when the library site starts playing up.

Re your library internet speed/reliability of service:
I guess the quality varies hugely depending on size/"importance" of your library - I use the main Hillingdon(a West London Borough) library which covers six floors and has 2 dozen internet terminals etc etc. Usually the net service is very good but occasionally they do have server technical issues that really slows things up, fair enough but I wish they'd tell me when I'd phoned to book the slot. I strongly suspect if I went a mile or so away to one of the far smaller branch libraries their typical normal speed would be slower.
Also of course it depends where in the UK one is. eg do Forest and other rural libraries have fibreoptic (ie superfast) broadband yet I wonder, I know we do here, how about where you go ?.

I also know the speed/reliability of ISP service varies with time of day. I'm lucky and can go anytime during the day/week; the later in the afternoon/early evening it definitely slows up, no doubt as more people are using the library networks.
Similarly I suspect it might slow around lunch time, hence I use the terminals between 2-4pm. I wouldnt think of trying weekends for the same reasons, plus the library's always far busier and noisier (altho the net might be fine?).

I'm also sure the UK Ancestry website itself slows up towards the evenings/weekends, part because more UK users log on after work/school etc AND also because thats when the USA users are waking up & logging in too. This is also affected because the main Internet Service Providers, be they BT or Virgin or whatever, are getting more demand from home users after school/work as they watch online tv etc etc, so they may throttle some services to spread it more thinly, hence the libraries get a lesser share (due to local government cost restrictions/commercial agreements I think).

Does this seem logical/comparable to your experiences ?. I mean have you noticed any particularly good/poor user times/days with your library, have you tried changing the time of day and/or day of week you use the service, I know the internet speeds/reliability of service can and do vary depending on the usage drain.

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Re other peoples posts:
I have never subscribed to Ancestry or shown them any form of payment not even for a "free" (?!) trial. However I have signedup so as to use their website mainly to create my own family trees on, I like their format/presentation, plus I get their email newsletters. I did this BEFORE I started using the library to actually download the data(for future loading onto my trees from home), I don't think the Library Ancestry Accounts permit users to creat trees etc. Occasioanlly I will also take advantage of their free access periods eg Armistice Weekend, or last year's extended free 1911 Census access, and during those times can search and load census forms etc onto my tree the quick automated way. Normally my Family Trees are set to "private" for just my viewing. However last year I was surprised to receive an email from another Ancestry user who had seen one of my trees online, I'd forgotten to set it to private access only. Their email was unfriendly & abrupt "I've been researching this family professionally for x years and have never seen a lady called Kit in the family...". Because of his rude arrogance it unfortuantely took me a while to "remember" to tell him that "Kit" was the family's pet name for Katherine and surely he should know that....!?. I then promptly reset this tree to "private".

SO, as far as this amateur knows, yes you can receive Ancestry emails from at least SOME if not all tree owners depending perhaps on their privacy settings and definitely without my paying subs fees; whether I can email other tree owners without paying I'm nt sure. However I have also very occasionally posted against threads on the Ancestry Forums - maybe thats a way to approach this ?. Can't you click the relevant thread owner's user name and doesnt it give the option to email them that way ?.
Mu suggestion is try it from home (assuming you have home internet access of course which I'm sure you do) by first signing up for Ancestry emails/trees ONLY as I did.

Hope this helps if only a little, I'm sure others will know for sure.
Atb J.