General Chat

why cant Genes get their act together and sort these blooming hot matches out ? I wouldnt mind if they were in the same country Ive had twenty today and only about five of those were in England, it makes my blood boil {which isnt good for my blood pressure} Jean.

Have to agree jean, I had over 12 pages of Hot Matches the other day. My view is that if only one name matches then delete it!!!

I am still wondering 18 months on how I can have a hot match with a question mark

I agree with Jean completely. I waste a lot of time deleting loads of "hot Matches" which most clearly are not. I am tempted to pull my subscription because of Genes pseudo phishing vehicle!

Genes came up with a lame excuse that filtering places of birth by country could let genuine hot matches slip the net. Sorry - that is feeble. Genes can easily tighten up how hot matches are found and presented to members.

I too, received five pages of Hot Matches this week.

If you click on 'My Account' (top right of this page) you will find a section on Email Preferences. This has different selections for you to choose. You can elect not to receive hot matches if you prefer to do your own checking via Search Trees.

GR gives us these Hot Matches to bring the matter to our attention. I know that sometimes there is a glitch and the 'match' isn't one at all - but if the Name and Birth Date match, then it is quite possible that the Place of Birth could be wrong in either your tree or the other person's tree.

I would be happier if the name of the ancestor appeared in the list, so that I could just zap it from there if I am not interested in it, rather than go to the trouble of opening it up, deleting it, then returning to the list again.

This is the third thread on the subject in less than a week. Yes, it would be nice if Hot Matches checked the place of birth field, but it doesn't. GR have stated that they may look at the possibility in the future.

The reasons for this have been mentioned many times before and is due to the complexity of writing a program that will recognise all potential possibilities of spelling a place name

i.e.W Brom as a match to West Brom, to W Bromwich etc.

You are not obliged to look at Hot Matches (you can always search and match manually) but most find useful connections from time to time, that they wern't aware of, despite the limitations.

This is what GR say on the subject

" At the moment we just match the name and year of birth. However, we may make changes to the way system works in the future and add in the place of birth as a match. The problem is that members add the place in different way, or it can be mis-spelt. Some might add the town, others the full address. This makes it difficult to match. By keeping the search broad we feel you have a greater chance of a match.

If you'd prefer a closer match then we suggest you either look at the matches we suggest against your tree. You'll see matches in a drop-down box when viewing your tree. There is also the My Tree Matches page which matches the surnames in your tree."

It would be good if we could see the Place of birth on the Hot Matches list, but I don't think they really need to match to be included - as long as the Name and Date are matched.

Some researchers 'assume' that the entire family was born all in the same place - but what about those who moved from one address to another? or from one country to another?

I do understand that the placename could be correct but different in that one says England and another says Liverpool - but again, a quick glance would tell us whether it could be our relative or not, so it would be better not to insist that the placenames match.