Can some-one please translate ?

[emanday]

Catriona is absolutely right about that.

I've had occasion to remove several duds from my "Mistakes" file after discovering they were rellies after all.

As you build up your tree you'll start adding branches and "twigs" . We all usually started out planning only to research our immediate ancestry, but it never stays like that. Something will pique your curiosity and you'll go off at a tangent. (Oh yes you will - we all do ).

When this happens, it's always worth checking back in your "duds file" before running a new search.

[DorothyCoe]

Catriona, I wonder if anyone who uses this site discards anything at all...even my scribblings in notebooks are all retained

[CatrionaL]

Dorothy

Less work for the bin men!

Catriona

[Kathy]

I have 12 pages of searches & 7 pages of viewed images on SP, I'm not a bit unhappy at the cost, I've had a lot of pleasure in the search, and especially the finds, I wish all sites were as reliable as SP.

what would make me really happy, would be to be able to find a reliable Irish website as good as SP, then the plastic would really get some use.

Kathy

[emanday]

what would make me really happy, would be to be able to find a reliable Irish website as good as SP, then the plastic would really get some use.

Gosh yes, but I'd have to sell my son to pay for it

Anyone got any use for a 30 year old, good lookin, tidy about the house bloke

[Russell]

Now Mary

We promised we wouldn't go down the commercial route and here you're offering a bargain - a fully functioning, living relative in exchange for a few lang deid folks.

Don't sell him! Hire him out

Russell

[emanday]

Now that is a very tempting thought! He can cook too!

[Kathy]

Mary,

There's a catch, I know there is? no one gives away a good looking, tidy about the house, and he can cook bloke, without their being a flaw somewhere.

Kathy

[emanday]

Erm! Do these count as flaws?

• Knows everything
  NEVER reads instructions
  Thinks anyone over 50 is simple minded (including forgetting his Mother was the DIY queen while his Dad was away at sea )
  Convenient memory (only remembers if remembering suits him)
  and...
  The most irritating thing of all, his "tidy about the house" nature means he's putting stuff away before I'm finished with it and I can NEVER find anything.

[Currie]

It is nice to see that there is finally a faint glimmer of a debate on the cost of researching family history through ScotlandsPeople. There has never been an occasion, when I had finished spending my 30 credits and come away without feeling I had been somehow cheated. This is most painful when I have to spend a credit on a search and end up with 4 more or less useless remaining credits. I can understand how difficult it can be to resist the temptation of buying more credits, putting them in the slot and pulling the lever “ad infinitum”.

I think that Dorothy Coe has put things very clearly and I don’t think that Trish has any reason to be sorry about anything. I certainly am not sorry about my comments following her post in which she mentioned cost. I repeat that many people are clearly precluded from researching their Scottish history because of the high cost of SP services and I feel that many others are being taken advantage of. I recall an earlier post in which there was a warning regarding gambling sites and feel that SP operates in a similar fashion with the odds stacked against the punter to enhance the profit of the company.

I could never understand why there was any time limit to credits. Granted it is currently 90 days but previously it was some ridiculously short period. Why was there any limit at all, especially on a site which keeps records of searches and images? (which I could do without). It was almost as if they wanted you to lose credits. Why was the original period extended? Was it anything to do with customer dissatisfaction? A bit more customer dissatisfaction could be passed in their direction rather than blindly accepting whatever they care to dish up.

The current Ancestry short-term plans for UK are (1) one month access for less than 10 pounds (I could download countless census images in that period) and (2) 12 images for less than 7 pounds. i.e. England/Wales census images cost at most less than 60p each and can cost practically nothing. There is no additional cost for searches or for the transcription of the census return. Scottish census images from SP cost 120p per image and is actually higher (possibly much higher) because of the higher failure rate. (Sorry, no pound sign this keyboard)

Much amusement has been made recently of the occupation and other transcriptions on Ancestry. I have noticed however that the search facility at SP is being “propped up” by that on Ancestry. This should not happen in a situation where the Ancestry searches are “free” and SP searches are “paid”. If the quality of the searches on SP is inferior to elsewhere this should be reflected in the price charged.

Did I hear correctly that SP won the contract or whatever for the 1911 England census? That will be interesting to see. I assume that the 1911 England census will be available from many sources just as the 1901 is at present. How will SP cope with that sort of competition, do they know the meaning of the word? Will the cost of images of the 1911 England census be the same as the cost of the 1911 Scottish census over which I suppose they plan to have a monopoly.

Much has been made of the so-called “cheap certificates” available on SP, but if half of the certificates obtained are “duds” the cost is doubled and if two thirds are “duds” the cost per certificate is tripled.

On the question of image quality. Census images as delivered by SP are “1bit” i.e. black and white with no shades of grey. The disadvantage of this is that any fine pen strokes etc are quite often not recorded on the image and the writing can be very difficult to read. This applies also and especially to certificates. I suppose this would have been the main problem with the blue census page issue mentioned at some time in the past.

From my experience the Ancestry images vary from “4 bit” i.e. 16 shades of grey, “8 bit” i.e. 256 shades of grey to “24 bit” i.e. 16 million colours. The images are like or identical to photographs. The problems with “1 bit” do not arise.

The SP images are more like photocopies. A “1 bit” image as supplied by SP is often inadequate for the purpose and could be described as “cheap and nasty”. I cannot believe that all the documents were scanned only in that format. That would be gross stupidity. I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that higher quality images are held by SP and that they are supplying low quality versions to their paying customers. Why? download speed? hardly.

GROS and the Scottish Parliament or whoever have chosen to connive with a private company (whose interest is profit not Scotland despite the impression they try to create) to set up a monopoly. Like all monopolies they can do whatever they like and charge whatever they like because there is no competition. Even the absence of the 1881 census from the LDS site is clearly connected to this desire for a watertight online monopoly.

My intention in raising these matters is not to support Ancestry.com but to suggest that SP should lift their game rather than hide behind the skirts of a monopoly and to point out that Scottish family history belongs to all Scots and descendants of Scots not just to those who have plenty of money to spend and certainly not just to ScotlandsPeople.

I apologise for the length of this post but I badly needed to get this off my chest and hope that it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

All the best,
Alan