Displaying relationships in Ancestry

[Norman]

Not wishing to stir up the private v public tree discussions again but I have just come across an anomaly.

Having just started with AncestryDNA I decided that it might be beneficial to me to have my tree "public". I have, up to now, kept them private to stop people copying and posting my data as their own. I even found living people's data on a couple of on-line trees.

I switched my tree(s) to "public" and immediately saw that the relationship was not displaying on the profile page.





I've asked Ancestry "why" but wondered, whilst waiting for their response, whether this is an issue for any others here.

 

[Tim]

I've seen that happen. On the tree in question when you go into Manage Tree, you need to make sure that the Home Person and who you are in the tree are set. It can then work out the relationship and display them for you.

 

[Norman]

I don't think it was that. Both "home person" and "who I am" are/were set. However the problem is now resolved. When you change from private to public the relationship details disappear. I checked that the display was OK after changing back to private. Switching, again, back to public and they were not showing again.

Some time later the information was displayed again. I think that the information is generated for the whole tree rather than as you display each profile. With my tree at over 2000 profiles I guess it takes some time to generate the database entries.

 

[Bob Spiers]

Having been away I read your post Norman I was about to respond when I read Tim's answer (which would have been my own) and then your follow-up and realised you had arrived at the answer yourself. I call it the 'Ancestry delay blip' which often occurs when you change anything. For instance if I edit a date or place name and then click Save, it is not uncommon to find the original information still showing. You have only to click on another family member and return to see the new information displayed. It pays not to 'cry wolf' to quickly with Ancestry especially if it is going through one of its 'busy' periods.

 

[Norman]

I don't think that was the problem. Browsers will use what's in their cache unless forced to refresh. This will happen, as you say, when it needs to generate a new page with new data. My problem manifested itself and could be reproduced by switching between private and public environments and viewing different profile pages, that's how I could produce images from both environments. The problem didn't resolve itself for an hour or two.

 

[peter]

You don't have to make your tree public to get tree-based matches with AncestryDNA - they give the impression that you do, but it clearly isn't true because I got a match with an 8th cousin (and my trees are all private).

If you do feel it necessary to provide a public tree I suggest you make it an ancestors-only tree, as this will minimise the damage that name collectors can do. You can have as many trees as you like - many people have both public and private trees.