sources from ancestry

Question

I've noticed something odd about ancestry.com lately. Many of my profiles on ancestry.com that used to be heavily sourced, the sources have now disappeared. I noticed this for many my profiles of people that once lived in the UK, particularly Scotland.

Is there any fellow ancestry.com users that have experienced the same thing? If so, any idea why this is happening?

Comments

Can you give an example profile this happened to?

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Thanks for your reply.

It's not happening with my profiles here on Wikitree, but on ancestry.com.

For example, my profile for Meldrum-498 has a mirror profile on my ancestry.com account. My wikitree profile is unsourced for this person, but my ancestry account is heavily sourced. My intention was to use ancestry to help bring sources to wikitree, But when I went back to ancestry, all the sources where gone. I did some digging around, and a lot of my sources for relatives from Scotland are gone.

I don't know what this has happened. My question really is for people who use both wiktree and aancestry.com, and if they had any idea what this was about.

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Many members here also have Ancestry accounts so providing a link to the tree you're referencing could be helpful unless it is private.

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https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/79466940/person/30403733277/facts

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I don't think this is what you are talking about, but I have noticed in the past few months a "glitch" on Ancestry. Often when saving a source, spouses, children, and sources disappear. If I reload the page or otherwise leave the page and come back, all the information returns. It is very annoying.

You should probably ask Ancestry directly. I am wondering if perhaps a Scottish database that Ancestry was licensed to present was withdrawn or something like that.

Answer 1

I'm just guessing here, but it may be that Ancestry had a contract with a provider of Scottish source material (or more than one), and that contract (or those contracts) have now expired, so the sources have disappeared, because Ancestry no longer has the rights to them.

Comments

I think you're right, as this sounds like the most plausible explanation.

Answer 2

I’ve and Ancestry account and a WikiTree account.  My main heavily sourced family tree on Ancestry appears to be okay ... nothing disappeared.

I am however on Ancestry.co.uk ...  it may be different  ... if it’s only the UK/Scottish sources where you appear to be having the issue?

(... just to let you know that all appears to be ok here in the UK)

I would get in touch with Ancestry (... may not get that quick a response ;-))

Comments

I have tried to get in touch with ancestry.com ... still waiting.

I thought I'd post my question here because I knew I'd get a faster answer from the good folks among the WikiTree community!

Answer 3

Just out of curiosity (I have seen this happen before), were the sources from other ancestry member trees, or actual sources (birth, death and marriage certificates, census records with images, etc.)?

If it was 'sourced' through another member's tree, and then that tree was either removed or set to private - all of this would disappear from your view.

Comments

No, it's my own tree. The original source is a handwritten tree from the 1970s, the size of a poster, and rolled up like a scroll. My intention was to enter the details into ancestry and wikitree, and source everything as much as possible.

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Hi Alex, I must be confused on the question. You originally stated that:

Many of my profiles on ancestry.com that used to be heavily sourced, the sources have now disappeared.

This is what my answer was in regards to, how your ancestry tree was connected to the sources. In your comment, you mentioned a handwritten tree. I am not seeing how your recent comment is connected to the original question. Can you help me out?

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Sure thing. Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear.

My tree on ancestry wasn't acquired from other members trees, but I put the tree together myself, using a written tree given to me. I wanted to compare that tree with sources and make sure there are no discrepancies between the handwritten tree and the public record. Also, I wanted to move the tree over to wikitree, so that it became available to anyone who was interested, and not stuck behind ancestry.com's pay wall. So I sourced it as much as I could, and found quite a few sources that were, thankfully, consistent with the handwritten tree. This was several month ago.

This week, when I went to create a gedcoms from the ancestry tree, the sources were all gone. Several people from the same family in Scotland are missing their sources. I find this very odd. I e-mailed ancestry.com, and have yet to hear back.

I strongly suspect that some of the responses to my question from other Wikitree members might be correct. There might have been some regulatory changes/contract updates between ancestry.com and other jurisdictions that meant that ancestry had to remove the sources in order to comply with these changes. I didn't think of that, but that seems like the most probable answer. Perhaps it has something to do with the recent European General Data Protection Regulations. I'm not sure yet.

It's really not that big of a deal, I was just curious. There doesn't seem to be much I can do about it. Thanks for your interest in my question.

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Ah, I understand now - thanks for clarifying. So yes, as others members mentioned, this is most likely an issue with licensing. In fact, this is a longstanding issue with Ancestry, as well other sites like My Heritage, and even FamilySearch!

The real problem with Ancestry is that when you ‘save’ a record, you are not really saving it at all. Instead, Ancestry is simply linking that record to the correct fact.

This is one of the great benefits of WikiTree and the way we handle sources! In general, I treat these types of records as if it were the only time I could access it. I complete a source citation and evidence evaluation, and if an image was provided, I try to download that and file it with my other genealogy downloads (you don't even want to know how much data I have saved on my Amazon Cloud drive...).

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Yes, I'm starting to see that. This is why I am moving as much over to Wikitree as I can, because (among many reasons) I like the permanence of it all. After being an amatuer genealogist for the last 6-7 years, WikiTree has become my favorite genealogy site, by a wide margin. I used to like Ancestry.com, but now I see they are just a means to an end.

Best of luck with you Cloud files.... sounds daunting!