I am surprised of your mention that you find the Ancestry.com website unavailable. It is extremely rare that I have had this happen and when it does I simply click on the back button and try again with no problem. I agree that errors could be handled better, but I suspect that rather than having someone physically check each submission it is easier to have it automated. At least the corrections are posted in due course and are searchable. As for their search engine, I find it EXTREMELY versatile. Please tell me how many other online genealogy services offer as many ways to search for information? I cannot tell you the number of times that I have searched by using a first name and other criteria to find someone who was either enumerated or indexed incorrectly or the surname was spelled in a variation I had not thought of or misspelled. You can search so many ways! Have you tried searching for all persons in a specific ward in any given census in your location of research? Or how about a listing of all passengers on a specific voyage to look for others who may be related to the person you found on a particular ship? The search engine is one of the BEST features of Ancestry. I have never found more than one of my family tree online when I have updated so I am not sure what you mean? It is very reasonably priced when you consider that the US subscription is less than 50 cents a day and the World subscription less than $1 per day. Of course, paying for it all at once is difficult for some people and I can understand that. But for those of us who can subscribe, it is a very cost effective way to conduct research that would take a lot more time and money to do the conventional way. Linda in Costa Rica Monroe County, NY Records and Family Genealogy http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~monroenys/ Monroe County, NY History http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~monroenys/ ----- Original Message ----- From: karen and chuck To: ohmiami@rootsweb.com Sent: 12 February, 2008 12:41 PM Subject: Re: [OHMIAMI] OHMIAMI Digest, Vol 3, Issue 39 I look at Ancestry.Com two ways:1. Operational and 2.Data The operational side of Ancestry needs some work. Sometimes it is so difficult to review information. It is constantly being unavailable which is increasing in frequency. The organization of the data they have housed has become complex. I am not sure what is out there any more. The way updates are done for errors is old and antiquated. It does not work properly. When you change something it should update it to make the actual correction. Not just an informational marker. The functionality of it does not work properly. You would think they could hire programmers to make this work more efficiently. When you call to speak to a technician you never get a call back nor do I ever receive an answer from an email reporting an issue. Data on the other hand is another issue. When an existing tree is updated. It appears that the same information makes another tree based on update date. It should update the record you update. Not add another line. This takes up a lot of server space. Needless to say how many times have you had to look at the same persons information 3 or 4 times since it is a separate tree. There should be permanent standardized fields built in for data. For the most part I think it works great. It is time consuming as with any research. I use it a lot and I think it is very reasonably priced for the information on it. I can work from my home, print, copy and paste. I have a cost savings of not having to purchase materials from other resources. Most historical societies want you to pay to see their information online. So you pay either way you go.