Wacky Hint in Ancestry

I have just 'ignored' a Hint for a marriage. The female in my tree was born about 3 months before the marriage date in the Hint.
The words 'get real' featured in my reason for ignoring the Hint.
I am not holding my breath for any improvement in the accuracy of Ancestry Hints.

 

Those sort of hints tend to appear when you've already assessed and considered all the credible ones. But I've had similar versions!

 

Too right, in the instance I cited I had already got the correct marriage recorded in the profile.

 

I've noticed that the hints tend to get worse and worse the more they offer, but occasionally (when a database is updated or a new one added) there is some gold in all that dross.

 

I totally agree and, probably like you, I know I'll never be able to clear them all. I have 3 trees that are for my ancestral lines with a total of 15,769 Hints. The in-laws tree has 2,703 Hints and I have a couple of smaller trees, one I did for a cousin and one for my son-in-law with a combined total of 2,005 Hints.
A grand total of 20,477.

 

I'm afraid I am going to add Find my Past (FMP) to the list. Of recent times they have taken to sending me emails with the subject showing... "You'll want to see this record, Robert" and opening with "This might be relevant to you" . They then provide a name and a link to a BMD (Census or 1939 Register) record within FMP. The problem is the person shown seldom does relate to me and as far as I am concerned is just a 'shot-in-the dark- relating to someone with the same surname, perhaps first name and possibly in the same locale and potential date range (if you are lucky). They are of course meant to be helpful and twice now they have offered the same person a second time.

I have to admit I do not have a Tree posted in FMP - nor do I intend to have - so what their algorithm is picking up revolves around research undertaken within FMP, usually within the previous week. So if I sought a William Rogers 1850 Rochdale, why not suggest a William R Rogers who died in 1910 in Bury?

To be fair to FMP I do check out Hints as given and can even fathom out why they are offered. I even recognise that as I do not have a Tree posted with them, they cannot do other than second guess the person I seek. Do I need such help? I am not sure but for ever the optimist I suppose there is always the chance they may latch onto a record that will be useful. But if past selections are anything to go by I am not hopeful.

 

I've only very rarely had a useful hint from Ancestry. Either the hint tells me something I already know or, more commonly, something which doesn't relate to the person concerned, and may be even wackier than a marriage at the age of 3 months. My response to the wackier variety tends to be a sarcastic "seems a bit unlikely!" but I think I like "get real" better.

 

I don't take much notice of hints unless I am desperate and then they are usually no help, however I am frequently sent hints about events I have recorded. Still, at least they are trying!

 

I've not even seen their suggestions as the link never works! (For clarity, the link is MS Windows specific and does nothing on my [X-windows based] system - though there's probably a "workaround" if I could be bothered to look for it!). I also tend to ignore e-mails with no message, just a web page which my e-mail client is setup to ignore.

 

Big brother is watching you Bob

 

I have completely given up clearing them all - particularly as my main tree has a whole stack of greyed out hints from when I last pruned it. There are pages of them for people who are no longer in the tree at all!

My main tree has 9624 hints.

 

Good grief! I thought the greying out had gone by the board as I have never seen it in my own trees. In my experience, a deleted person's Hints disappear as well.

 

Oh I wish. Unfortunately I have a bunch of greyed out hints for members of my tree who have been deleted. I have experienced both (also deleting someone and all their hints also vanish) - but I had a thought that it may depend on where you did the deleting - on Ancestry or in FTM (or similar). I may be completely off the mark.

 

A hint for a potential marriage at age 3 months is close, compared to some that Ancestry has given me --- hints in the 1800s for someone who died in the 1600s, and lots of hints in English record sets for people born, married and departed in the US.