3

Does anyone know whether there is a setting on Ancestry.com to control whether the "view relationship to me" shows on profiles?

John Smyth (below) is my 5th great grandfather, and until recently that was written under his name on his profile page, where it could be clicked to remind me of our intervening ancestors/descendants.

enter image description here

Improve this question
7
  • 2
    I am having the same problem. None of my people in my tree have the relationship assigned anymore. That is an important part of our trees. Have not been on for awhile and I am totally lost. I definitely preferred the old version. Hope someone has a answer for us.
    – user4525
    Dec 21, 2015 at 5:50
  • 1
    Welcome to G&FH SE! As a new user be sure to take the 2-minute Tour to learn how our site differs from bulletin boards, discussion forums and other Q&A sites. Here you are making what we call a "me too" comment rather than providing an answer, and so I'll convert it to a comment. I hope you will not be discouraged from asking and answering questions here as a result.
    – PolyGeo ♦
    Dec 21, 2015 at 5:55
  • 1
    The forums on Ancestry seem to indicate its being quite glitchy over the last couple of days, on a thread thatbwas started in March, its had a few posts in the last couple of days saying exactly what you have. One user put: "There have been quite a few posts in the last couple of days about the disappearance of the relationship calculator. The calculator has been glitchy on and off, and hopefully Ancestry is working on it right now. Be patient--I'm sure it will return soon." I can't see them removing such a useful feature especially for sending direct lines to DNA matches.
    – Danny Barber
    Dec 21, 2015 at 10:05
  • @DannyBarber -- in my opinion -- Ancestry planned with this new system to drop a lot of features that "no one was using" or that had been reported as not working reliably before the changeover. They don't care about what is useful to customers -- they only care about what they can offer with the least effort to themselves. This is why Family Tree Maker has been jettisoned, because it was too much trouble and expense to squash the bugs and get it working properly. We should NOT 'be patient' -- users who want this feature should speak up on EVERY feature update or it won't be reinstated.
    – Jan Murphy ♦
    Dec 21, 2015 at 17:52
  • 1
    @PolyGeo I've been posting comments on the Feature Update posts on the Ancestry blog. blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry
    – Jan Murphy ♦
    Dec 22, 2015 at 2:22

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4

Recap: this feature used to be invoked in "Classic Ancestry" by clicking a link underneath the name of the person on their profile header:

enter image description here

The "View relationship to me" link appeared on trees which had a person's name designated as "Who you are in this tree" on the Tree Settings page.

If the user clicked the link, the relationship to that person would be calculated, and the link would change to a relationship descriptor such as "your great-aunt", which would be "sticky" until you changed the person designated as You. If there was no person designated, the link would not appear.

However, since the transition to the 'New Ancestry' in 2015, the calculator has not been working reliably. On the same profile as the image above, the link to the relationship calculator does not appear. I checked some of the profiles which previously did show a relationship, and the lines with the relationship are not showing. Presumably if the feature was working, they would appear directly under the name of the person and their vital records, just as they did before.

Ancestry has admitted that users were reporting problems on their blog in the Feature Updates listed below (see Relationship to me string is randomly not appearing):

As of the December 11th Feature Update, fixing the Relationship Calculator had not yet appeared on the list of things Ancestry is working on.

Note that in the comments, user Jim Ackerman posted on December 20, 2015 at 8:56 pm:

Just wanted to add that I too am waiting for the relationship calculator to get fixed. I reported this problem months ago. I hope it doesn’t take as long to fix this as the phantom hints problem.

and @PolyGeo just posted:

I too am waiting for the relationship calculator to get fixed. Getting Ancestry.com to show "view relationship to me" on profiles?

Please post comments on the Ancestry blog -- and keep posting them with each new feature update. They will not restore the features that we had in Classic Ancestry unless people demand it.

Message from Crista Cowan in the chatroom after today's (22 Dec 2015) live broadcast of her Barefoot Genealogist talk:

The relationship calculator was fixed and released onto the site yesterday morning. If you still don't see it, you might be working off an old cache of your page. Clear cache and cookies and see if that helps.

On 23 Dec 2015 the "relationship to me" seems to have returned to the profile in the question:

enter image description here

Improve this answer
4
  • I've flagged this as 'Community Wiki' so we can add news from the Feature Updates and other blog posts on one answer -- I suggest putting the most recent update at the TOP of the list and the others below (in other words, reverse chronological order).
    – Jan Murphy ♦
    Dec 21, 2015 at 16:56
  • Still doesn't work for me. As suggested will post on their blog.
    – user4554
    Dec 31, 2015 at 22:17
  • @MichaelTowers That's odd because the public profile I linked to still shows it working for me: person.ancestry.com.au/tree/32456697/person/18262459986/facts
    – PolyGeo ♦
    Jan 1, 2016 at 1:33
  • 1
    @MichaelTowers Have you cleared your browser cache and cookies as Crista Cowan suggested?
    – Jan Murphy ♦
    Jan 1, 2016 at 1:57

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.