Panic

(Note: This was written on Thursday, August 5th – the morning after my panic.)

Do you ever read about some software update or change on an Internet site and think I need to do something NOW? Having been a building technology coordinator for over 20 years, implementing software updates sometimes required an immediate reaction. Thus, when I hear about a bug fix or a major change in an often used website, I tend to respond immediately.

On Wednesday of this week, there was a blog post written about a change in Ancestry’s terms and agreements. The post, One Big Change at Ancestry, by Judy Russell captured my attention. And I reacted – or looking back I panicked.

My thoughts were along the lines of

Ancestry is going to sell my pictures. I don’t want Ancestry to sell my pictures.

So, I started looking at how to take down my pictures. I don’t know why I was so concerned. I have had a genealogy website for years. And my genealogy work, including images, has been out there for others to see and use. I would guess that some of the family photos have been so widely spread that even though I have the originals in my possession, I probably can’t claim ownership. Because I shared them freely, they now belong to the greater family.

But, I panicked.

And I had over 670 screens of images in my media gallery on Ancestry. With 24 images on a screen, that is over 16,080 images.. Many of those images are of census records and other Ancestry sources. Buried in that multitude of images are the family photos. So in my panic, I started scrolling thru and deleting the photos and stories.

Knowing that there was no way I was going to be able to go thru 670 screens of images, I started looking for the ‘easy’ button to remove those images. And the only ‘easy’ way to delete the images is to take down the tree and put up a new one without the images.

Now, I knew I didn’t want to mess with my tree. I knew I didn’t want to mess with my tree!

• My tree is linked to 4 DNA tests and I didn’t want to loose those links
• My tree is linked to my RootsMagic file via TreeShare
• I knew that a new tree on Ancestry is virtually invisible to other users until it is indexed. Indexing trees does not happen very often.
• I like getting the light bulb hints in RootsMagic that are only possible because my RootsMagic file is linked to my Ancestry tree.

I knew all of this and I still panicked.

• I uploaded a new gedcom file without images to Ancestry.
• I connected that new file to my DNA kits.
• I tried to delete my original tree. Fortunately, Ancestry’s slow response saved me!
• I even disconnected my RootsMagic file from Ancestry.

Then, I realized that those light bulb hints in RootsMagic were gone. And, what I thought at the time, the only way to get those light bulb hints back was to create a new tree by using RootsMagic to upload my file to Ancestry.

I didn’t like my options. And I totally regretted my panic!

Then, out of curiosity, I wondered whether I could restore a backup to my RootsMagic file and restore the RootsMagic connection to my original tree. So I dug in my folder for backups to RootsMagic 7 for the most recent file and restored it.

AND the light bulbs were back!

Since I am in the habit of backing up RootsMagic several times a day – with unique file names, I didn’t loose much. This is especially true since I have been spending most of my time in the preview version of RM8. Restoring the backup file undid most of my panicked reaction. I was even able to restore my RM8 file and get it connected to my Ancestry tree.

There were a couple of voices of reason out there that I did not read until after my panic. The first one I read was a Facebook post from Michael John Neill.

The second voice of reason was from Randy Seaver. His post, Ancestry.com and Your Ancestry Member Tree, provides a good perspective on the issue.

As I was deleting images last night, I found that I had the exact same image of an individual in my media gallery multiple times. It made me wonder whether deleting the images would help Ancestry reduce their server load.

Hopefully, I have learned my lesson from this panic. Hopefully, the next time, I will sit on an issue for 24 hours before proceeding.

I am VERY thankful that I had recent backup files for both RootsMagic 7 and RootsMagic 8.

I am VERY thankful that my backup file restored my link between RootsMagic and Ancestry!