New functionality has entered into Beta on the FindMyPast website that suddenly makes their Tree Builder much more useful – Hints have been added.
Those of you who have used another popular online tree builder will know, Hints aren’t new, so rather than strain my brain over the ‘what took you so long’ bit, I thought that I would take a look at this new functionality.
If you’ve already found the Tree Builder on FindMyPast, then you’ll know just how crisp and uncluttered it is. I was pleased when the new tree builder was unveiled at the 2014 Who Do You Think You Are? Live show. Now, the added Hints feel like they are going to help you discover what’s in the billions of records that the team at FMP have been adding recently.
Hints should make this easier – sifting through records for you (although of course, always go looking too!), and these will no doubt encourage you to grow your tree.
In my test run, I found the hints to be very clearly indicated (an orange circle with a number suggesting the number of matching Hints).
These appear in a number of places, ranging from the tree itself, to the Profile Page of your relative:
..and they appear on the Profile Summary (when you click on a linked relative for example):
When you click through on the Hints you get a nice visual style to show you what type and some basic details before you decide to click for more information, or click to accept, maybe, or reject it.
I’m pleased to see Hints reach Beta. As someone who has spent a lot of time using FindMyPast and Ancestry, I know that the Hints on the latter have been very useful.
I’ve already uncovered a few new things whilst playing around with the new tree builder and the hint suggestions. Therefore, I’m looking forward to continuing this, to see how they can help me further explore their ever expanding range of data sets on FindMyPast.
What I can’t tell yet, is whether these Hints will ever alert me to the appearances of my relatives in other FindMyPast trees.
That, in Ancestry, has been available for ages, but whilst that allows members to connect and build upon their family knowledge, it has also helped others to ‘rob’ and ‘butcher’ family trees, allowing me to see information that is complete rubbish – along the likes of how a grandfather, who lived all his life in one place in an English county, and whom I knew well, had spent 40yrs living in Indiana, married 3 times, appeared on the correct 1881 UK census, but which was listed as a UK village, in a UK county, in England but which in turn is situated within Detroit.
Will FindMyPast go down this route? I’d like to think they won’t. Ancestry’s hints have already alerted me to too many rotten trees out there, with swathes of nonsense information that’s all too easily and/or accidentally just one click away to being added to your own nurtured mighty oak.
History Repeating 