On 24/02/2014 14:46, I wrote: >> >I have a question that related to ancestry.com and not about FTM. >> >Has any of you gotten mail on ancestry (e.g., in response to someone >> >seeing your online tree) and then received a notification from >> >ancestry to your regular e-mail address that you had ancestry mail >> >waiting in your ancestry inbox? I believe that the notifications >> >are not being sent, but others tell me that my spam filters must be >> >filtering the mail. I need evidence that the ancestry notifications >> >are still being sent. The last one I received was in 2012. As a >> >test last week I sent ancestry mail to a friend, and she did not >> receive any notification. Another person to whom I sent ancestry >> mail (in response to an online tree) replied and said that she saw >> my mail on ancestry, not via an ancestry notification. >> >> The reason I ask is simple. I look on ancestry and I see a tree that >> contains persons who are also in my tree. I then send ancestry mail >> to the tree owner, and 90+% of the time I get no response. I assume >> that people put their trees online so that they can get comments >> from persons who view the online trees. My contention is that these >> people are not ignoring my mail; they just are not in the habit of >> logging on to ancestry regularly to check for ancestry mail. And >> without a notification from ancestry, they have no idea that they >> have mail in their ancestry inbox. On 2/24/2014 5:15 PM, Nivard Ovington <[email protected]> replied: > Hi Barry > > I can't vouch for the workings of Ancestry internal email systems but > you are perhaps assuming to much > > ie that those who put their tree online actually keep up an interest > > I have rarely received a reply from people with trees online , Ancestry > or other sites, when you check you will often find these people have not > accessed their trees for over 12 months > > In other words they try some research, enter a tree, lose interest, > change email address etc etc > > If you let me know one of your more unusual names I can try and find it > and send you a message as a tester > > Nivard Ovington in Cornwall (UK) I do not have a tree online, so I am not sure how to find me on ancestry to try a message. My userid is finkelb, and I just changed my e-mail address to [email protected], which is my regular e-mail address. The address I used when I first joined ancestry, [email protected], forwards to my att.net mailbox. There was no spam in my account at ACM, but I do not trust the Postini spam filters used at ACM. Now, since I have full access to my spam folder at att.net, I can see if any ancestry mail is flagged as spam and not available via my Thunderbird IMAP4 connection to my att mailbox. ====== [email protected] replied: > No, I get messages from ancestry about on-line messages regularly. This implies that some ancestry notifications are being sent. ====== BJ <[email protected]> replied: > I have had a number of messages posted to my Ancestry.com subscriber > account but I don't remember ever receiving an email notification. I > normally notice these as "new messages" count on FTM 2014's Plan work > area in the Dashboard area. > > I just looked at Ancestry.com Knowledge Base where it describes the > different options for how to contact members. This may explain why > some receive email notifications while others such as yourself and > me do > not. I've copied the information below. As you can see, I exercise > the first option and don't receive any email notifications. I checked my account settings, and I have the middle box checked "Display my email address to other members." But this setting is for cases where people find my info on ancestry and want to contact me. I have no content on ancestry (except for a skeleton tree with me and my father). If someone had checked the third option - "Do not allow other members to contact me" - and I found that person's tree online, would ancestry allow me to contact that person? Or would ancestry tell me that the tree owner does not want to be contacted? I hope the latter, but I will have to try to run a test. ====== And "Earl Bonneau" <[email protected]> replied: >I've just noticed last week that I have not received any e-mail > notifications when queries were posted either. This is what I think is happening in some cases. As I wrote in my original post, I really need to talk to someone who has access to the outbound ancestry mail logs to be able to verify if notification mail is being sent to me. And the e-mail I received from my posting on the ancestry forum "Notification of new Ancestry email" stated, "... seems some people receive them but some people don't. Not sure if it's an Ancestry issue, or mail servers rejecting Ancestry messages because they look like spam, etc. ..." I contend that it is an ancestry issue, but I am not sure how to get to the proper person within the ancestry support staff. When I see an error on a census record transcription, I input a correction, and I do get the ancestry mail thanking me for making the correction. So I do get some mail from ancestry. And I cannot believe that the regular notification mail from ancestry could be treated as spam regularly. Maybe there is a setting that controls this, and no one knows what the setting is. --Barry Finkel Chicago

Hi Barry Your enquiry has made me look at the message system on my Ancestry home page Frankly I never look at them, the little red letter icon is there minding its own business and I never look at it, or at least not for some months Not having an online tree I don't expect messages that way but now realise the error of my ways as the messages can come from a variety of ways where a user is found on Ancestry (corrections, Trees, notes etc) I wonder if that is your problem, ie Ancestry users who simply don't look at their messages? I feel sure that at one time I had an email notification for these internal Ancestry messages but haven't seen one for a long time The internal system is clunky in the extreme so I can see why some would not use it, even if they did check it I have checked all the various options and all are checked as I think they should be, nowhere can I see an option for email alerts to be enabled to my email address So I am wondering if some bright spark at Ancestry has tweaked the way these internal messages are fed around, ie has removed that email prompt that I think used to exist ==================== A little digging has proved that to be the case, in amongst the messages I had was one dated March (no year would you believe so can only assume it was 2013) The start of it follows Messages Team Mar 11 11:48 PM GMT Introducing a better way to connect with the Ancestry.com Community. Did you know Ancestry.com has the world’s largest online community dedicated to family history? Our members help each other make new discoveries every day. Find others researching your family. Connect privately and conveniently. The further you follow your story back in time, the more likely you are to find other members who have ancestors in common with you. The new Messages feature is a great way to connect with these people. (This feature replaces the email-based Ancestry.com Connection Service, which we’ve now discontinued.) ----------------------- So clearly some berk at Ancestry has thought they would try and keep all messages in house and in the process has made a right pigs ear of it I have just been trying to check the messages I had, I was filing those I had replied to (which in itself was hard to ascertain) after a few goes I could not understand why the number count kept returning to the same as I started with, I found it does not like the go back in the browser but you have to use the onscreen go back to inbox or it reverted to as it was, and of course every time you do that it changes the view to ten messages in view rather than the 50 previously selected, as I said clunky, messages I knew I had replied to where marked as unread, and some messages I had not seen before were marked as read, all very confusing I have now cleared all previous messages so hopefully will see any new ones arriving It would be interesting to know how many Ancestry users actually check their messages ? Another part of that March (2013?) message Find members who can help. All members registered with Ancestry.com can view and reply to messages received from others, whether you have a paid membership or not. Paid members can also click on the Contact link for other members they find throughout the site and initiate contact with them. Clearly if someone registers with Ancestry but does not visit on a regular basis, they will not see those messages and therefore will not reply It seems to me that Ancestry are missing a trick here, if someone has visited Ancestry in the past or has been a subscriber in previous years, if they received a prompt in their email inbox (ie not on Ancestry) some of those would then revisit Ancestry and might even resubscribe if it piqued their curiosity If those same previous users are blissfully unaware of those messages they are unlikely to ever know about them Nivard Ovington in Cornwall (UK) On 25/02/2014 02:44, Barry S. Finkel wrote: > On 24/02/2014 14:46, I wrote: > >> >I have a question that related to ancestry.com and not about FTM. > >> >Has any of you gotten mail on ancestry (e.g., in response to someone > >> >seeing your online tree) and then received a notification from > >> >ancestry to your regular e-mail address that you had ancestry mail > >> >waiting in your ancestry inbox? I believe that the notifications > >> >are not being sent, but others tell me that my spam filters must be > >> >filtering the mail. I need evidence that the ancestry notifications > >> >are still being sent. The last one I received was in 2012. As a > >> >test last week I sent ancestry mail to a friend, and she did not > >> receive any notification. Another person to whom I sent ancestry > >> mail (in response to an online tree) replied and said that she saw > >> my mail on ancestry, not via an ancestry notification.