What works on the FamilySearch Family Tree and what doesn't

The FamilySearch.org Family Tree is a complex program that has several rather disparate objectives. Some of the aspects of those objectives work very well, others not so well. I will explore what is working and what is not working with a series of hypothetical users and the consequences of their interaction with the Family Tree.

Before getting to the hypotheticals, it is important to understand some of the underlying objectives or reasons for the existence of the Family Tree. The Family Tree is the creation of FamilySearch, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Its main objective is to provide a way to "turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers" as is expressed in Malachi 4:6. The members of the Church follow this admonition by providing vicarious ordinances for their ancestors in the temples of the Church. See for example, "The Purpose of Temple and Family History Work." All of the real questions about the Family Tree then become centered on how well it is doing in supporting that work.

The Family Tree does not exist in a vacuum. It is the end product of over a hundred years of attempts to provide opportunities to the members of the Church to fulfill their mandate to provide those saving ordinances to their ancestors. The Church has now built or has in progress over 170 temples throughout the world. The FamilySearch.org Family Tree is the presently the sole provider of names to all those temples (assuming the name extraction program has entirely ended.)

The FamilySearch.org website and specifically the Family Tree is the culmination of all of the previous programs that were used to prepare names for submission the temples. As such, the website allows and assists members (and others outside of the Church) to identify their ancestors and relatives, document their lives and then provide the saving ordinances for those ancestors and relatives in the temples.

So, the question arises, what does the Family Tree do that assists in this underlying objective and what doesn't it do so well? Where are the flat tires that slow done or prevent the work from being accomplished? Some of the good things about the website are not directly related to the ultimate objective as well as some of the difficult parts of the website that also do not affect the goal of advancing temple work.

Now I can start with the hypotheticals.

Hypothetical Potential User No. 1

This hypothetical user is entirely new to the concept of finding ancestors. I will call this hypothetical user the "Potential" users. The Potential User does not know about the Family Tree and if anything has only a vague idea about family history or anything associated with family history. So, how does this person fit into the picture of an online website called the FamilySearch.org Family Tree? By the way, at this level, there is no difference between a Potential who is a member of the Church and one who is not. There are many people who are members of the Church, who may have heard some talks or instruction about "doing family history" who have not yet connected those teachings with any type of personal action that they need to participate in. Outside of the Church, people may have heard the term "genealogy" or "family history" but have no interest or knowledge of what those terms actually mean.

This potential group is sometimes characterized as "having an interest in families" but that interest does not rise to the level of any action. They are part of the huge number of people in the world who are totally ignorant of the existence of an internet program called FamilySearch.

Combined with other large online genealogy-based programs, FamilySearch does a fairly good job of advertising its existence. By no means does it have the reach of a program such as MyHeritage.com with over 93 million users, but FamilySearch is pretty good at promoting itself. Are new users attracted to the FamilySearch.org website? Well, yes. Personally, I regularly help people both inside and outside of the Church sign into the program for the first time. I have done this hundreds, perhaps thousands of times.

We can leave Potential now and move on to another hypothetical level where the Potential User becomes an initial user.

Hypothetical Initial User No 2

The next hypothetical user is one who becomes aware of the FamilySearch.org website. What happens to this user? This is where we begin to see what works and what doesn't.  Quite frankly, the FamilySearch.org website is confusing and, in my experience, very few first-time users have any idea what they need to do. You would think that a big blue button that says "Get started" would help new users. But it doesn't. Some of these hypothetical Initials will explore the program, but many are put off by the program and give up. The key here is having a mentor, someone to guide the Initial user through the first few steps of becoming aware of what the website has to offer since the website itself does not provide that experience.

In essence, the website assumes an interest and a level of engagement that seldom exists in the Potential User and is only rudimentary in Initial User. If the Initial Users continue to try to use the website, they become Beginning Users.

Hypothetical Beginning User No. 3

The Beginning User comes to the FamilySearch.org website with some practical knowledge about families, family history, and online family tree programs. The program is still difficult, but with some motivation, this user is able to begin working with the program. Now we get to the issues of what does and doesn't work. The Family Tree has a rather complicated set of "rules" about how information is entered and supported. None of these rules are obvious. The Beginning User immediately is faced with warning icons and all sorts of arcane terms. At this level, the Beginning User is baffled by the program. Even though there are really helpful instructional materials available, the Get Help link is equally baffling. There is no way, easy or otherwise, to tell what information presented in the Family Tree is accurate and what is not accurate. There is no way for the Beginning User to know how to find information about their family or how to "properly" enter such information into the Family Tree. There is an underlying assumption made by the Family Tree that the Beginner can just "figure out" what needs to be done.

After having taught hundreds (thousands) of beginners, I find that there is a long list of fundamental questions that need to be answered for any Beginning User. For instance, The Family History Guide presents an organized and structured explanation of the program, but there are only a few very obscure links to this resource on the website and there is nothing else that instructs a Beginning User about how or why the program exists. At this point, some people would ask, "where is the manual?" Except for third-party programs, such as The Family History Guide, no such manual exists.

At this time, if you go to the program and click on the Get Started button, you will be asked to register. If you register, you are basically lost. There is nothing telling you what to do next. The Beginning User is offered a number of interesting choices but there is no clear way to enter the program except a companion program based on a short paper book called My Family. If you have already begun using the program, you are taken directly to a fan chart. Again, with no explanation about what you are supposed to be doing and no consideration of what the Beginning User would like to accomplish such as finding a parent or grandparent.

Registered users also have a "personalized" and very busy looking startup page after signing into the website. In my experience with Beginners, this page gets mixed reviews. Many of the Beginning Users get bogged down in tasks that they do not want to do and do not understand. If they persist, they may find some of the links useful.

Hypothetical Basic Level User No. 4

Let's assume that the Beginning User somehow gets over the first hurdles to using the program and actually begins entering family information into the Family Tree or in the case of a member of the Church, wants to "find a name to take to the temple." Now the program gets really complicated. Programmers, engineers, and experienced computer users can figure out how to navigate the program, but the average Basic Level User is lost. Once again, instruction from a mentor is indispensable. At this level and every succeeding level, all of the Users begin seeing some of the results of working with a collaborative Family Tree program based on a wiki model. Almost universally, there is frustration with changes initiated by other users are observed and begin to irritate all of the users.

What about the hypothetical "young savvy computer user?" The real "savvy" part of the young user is that they know that they can click on icons and buttons and get some reaction from the program and they aren't afraid to do this indiscriminately. Yes, if you begin to click on everything, you will soon get an idea of how the program works. But this is not the way to learn the program's objectives and purpose. Many very young Basic Level Users see the program as a "video game" where the objective is to find "green icons." They are rewarded for finding all the green icons they are able to find and soon learn that random clicking on the extensions of the Landscape and Descendancy views will produce results. They have little or no idea about the major objectives of the program and only in rare cases add anything substantial to the information already contained in the program. What is more serious is that these young users only rarely connect the green icons with real people. If they have supportive parents who provide temple opportunities they can make the connection.

This level of use brings up an important question. Returning again to the topic of extraction programs, is this level of use just a substitute for name extraction programs? What is the real difference between taking a random name to the temple and taking a name randomly located in a vast family tree? Of course, there is the "Show My Relationship" link. However, most people I work with do not understand how these links work or understand their relationship to distant relatives.

Hypothetical Intermediate Level User No. 5

Moving on, the person who reaches the Intermediate Level finally begins to see how the program works. The Intermediate Level person is even more frustrated by "changes" in the program but can see some results from adding sources and looking at the records on the website. Many Intermediate Level users are fixated on the "end of line" people, thinking that this is where they need to focus their attention. But here is where the person reaching this level has the most questions.

Here also, we reach one of the fundamentally fatal flaws in the program's operation: Hoarders. If the objective of the program, as understood at this level, is to "find names to take to the temple," then the person with the "most names" wins the game. I have heard from a usually reliable source that some people have filled their Temple list with hundreds of thousands of names. Given that each person and family has a finite number of opportunities to attend the temple, these huge accumulations of names are defeating the main purpose of providing names for the temples. FamilySearch has imposed a two-year limit on maintaining lists on the Family Tree, but these users bypass that restriction by printing off thousands or names. I see these people all the time with briefcases and notebooks full of names. Some boast about the number of names on their list. The program desperately needs limits on the number of names that can be reserved and a concerted effort to ferret out the large caches of cards. Oh, by the way, it is my understanding, if one of the ordinances on the card is done, then the two-year limit doesn't apply.

Some of this hoarding is justified by supplying "names" to ward and stake members. Again, we are back to the issue of extraction. What difference is there in obtaining a name from a friend or from the temple?

Of course, not all Intermediate Level Users are hoarders. Most of the regular users of the program probably fall into this category and much of the real work of adding new names to the Family Tree likely comes from this group also. But this is also the group who would benefit most from making all of the parts of the program work together. For example, few users of the program realize that the search engines only search through indexed records and that there are millions of unindexed records that still must be searched in the same way they have been for years and years. It is also noteworthy that many resources on the website are underused because they are so obscure. The digitized books are an example in this category.

Eventually, with persistence, the Intermediate Level User gains information and research skills and has a good experience using the website.

Hypothetical Experienced Genealogist User No. 6

Some experienced genealogists have "grown up" with FamilySearch. Some come from different backgrounds and learn about the program after spending years of research. Either way, the program's value is directly proportional to the level of expertise of the user. So advanced researchers appreciate the resources and use them far more than those with less experience. For an Experienced Genealogist, the program still has some of the same frustrations experienced by less sophisticated users. But the resources more than make up for any limitations. An experienced researcher will overlook the less developed aspects of the program and find the wealth of information that is available, so found in no other place.

Personally, I love the program. It works wonderfully for me. I think is it only getting better all the time. But even for programs that I love, I can still find issues and things I would change. For example, I would like a way to opt out of the "personalized startup page." I don't use it and don't find anything helpful in a page full of information about people I am not researching. On the other hand, some users may find the concept really helpful.

The main issue I have with the program is that it sometimes looses its focus on the ultimate objectives set out at the beginning of this post. I am really privileged and happy to be able to help add even more digitized records to the collections on FamilySearch. Some of the older records we have seen so far at the Maryland State Archives really need preserving. Let's all hope FamilySearch keeps improving the program and we keep finding new people to add to the Family Tree.

A Family History Mission: Working With the Documents

No. 31

Note: You can do a Google search for "A Family History Mission James Tanner" to see all the previous posts in this ongoing series. You can also search for "James Tanner genealogy" and find them.

From the photo above, you can dramatically see why we need to digitize documents. The damage shown is actually pretty mild compared to some of the documents we have seen already. This particular document is beautifully written. Some are not so easily read. Here is an example of an unbound book that we will be digitizing in the next day or so.

My wife, Ann, and I are taking turns spending time digitizing and preparing documents. This pile of paper will take some special handling. We will be digitizing the pages in order so we need to take two side-by-side images at the same time. Then turn the page and go to the back side of the right image on the left side and the new image on the right side. So, we work our way through the document. Unbound images, such as this one, are actually easier to digitize than bound books. As you work your way through a book, the distance from the camera to each page changes, so you have to constantly adjust the height of the book with spacers. Here is a photo of a book that is being digitized.

You can see part of a foam wedge used to level the pages on the right side of the image. You can also see black foam mats that are used to mask off the rest of the book. This book is about two to three inches thick and weighs about 25 pounds. If we don't mask off the cover and other pages, the camera will not be able to properly focus and the images will include a lot of extraneous parts of the book.

Here is a photo showing what some of the books look like when we receive them. They have protective wrappings with velcro fasteners.

Part of the job is the moderately heavy lifting of the books. Here is a different set of books. The books come from different repositories. These books are all from counties in Maryland. We work on a project to complete all the probate books from a specific county. We are presently working on several counties. There are four cameras and each camera is assigned a specific set of county books to work on. Our camera is currently doing Mongomery and Harford Counties. We have around 500 books in this project. Here is a closer look at a probate inventory.

You can click on an image to see a larger view. I will be returning to this subject from time to time.

Ten Problems With Using Ordinance Crawlers

Ordinance crawler programs are those programs that purport to find temple ordinance opportunities by searching the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. I returned to this topic because a popular version of one of the programs was prominently mentioned more than once in talks given during a local Stake Conference meeting. Evidently, those advocating the use of these programs are unaware of the nature of the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. All of the programs operate on the premise that the information in the Family Tree is correct and reliable. In fact, there is no basis for such an assumption. The accurate parts of the Family Tree are those where people have recently been working and correcting the existing information. These parts of the Family Tree are also the least likely to contain green icons indicating the availability of temple ordinance opportunities.

After attending the conference session, I went back to our apartment and downloaded the app mentioned in the talks. I ran the app for quite a while until it found the first reserved ordinance after examining 5888 names. The person found was already on my reserved list. As I began to analyze the situation, I decided there were, at least, ten good reasons why these programs were more of a problem than a solution. Here I go with my list of reasons why I think these programs are a very bad idea run amuck.

Now, I am not saying that these programs never find valid temple opportunities. There is always the possibility of finding a valid need for temple ordinances just sitting there in the Family Tree. But even if the opportunity appears to be valid, there are some issues that are not obvious and all such opportunities need to be validated.

1. The ordinance crawler programs all assume that the family links in the Family Tree are accurate which is not the case. 

As I have written many times before, the Family Tree is a conglomeration of all of the family history work submitted by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and others outside of the Church for over 150 years. Over the past few years, those of us working on cleaning up the entries have spent a huge amount of time and effort correcting and adding sources to support the entries in the Family Tree. We are far from finished with this work of correcting the entries. Many of the entries and links between individuals, especially those dating back more than 200 years, are either inaccurate or simply entirely incorrect.

How do I know they are inaccurate? Because I can look at any portion of the Family Tree and go back on any ancestral line and fine totally inaccurate information including children born after the death of one or both parents, mothers having children at a very young age, such as three years old and so forth. Not all of these errors are marked by FamilySearch with red icons. Some of the errors are less obvious but only require a minimum amount of research to correct. One error connecting one child to the wrong parents can result in an entire ancestral line being wrong.

Note: As I was writing this post, I kept the ordinance crawler searching. The second name it found was descended from a person in the Family Tree who had two wives and ten children listed and every single child listed was born after the death date listed for the father.

2. Ordinance crawler programs tie up online resources that could better be used to speed up the FamilySearch.org website on Sundays and other days. 

What the developers and users of ordinance crawler programs do not realize is that their programs use up a huge amount of computer resources continually searching through thousands of names. This is one contributing factor to the "slow down" seen while using the FamilySearch.org website on Sunday afternoons. Some of these programs search the Family Tree for hours at a time.

3. The ordinance crawler programs are a substitute for research that would add individuals and families to the Family Tree.

I have taken the time to research some of the names supplied to me by the ordinance crawler programs. In every case, I find unverified or obviously wrong links leading up to the conclusion that I am related to the specific individual found by the program. This may not be true for some users, especially if the links shown are quite recent and if relatively few of the ancestral links have been discovered previously. But the real tragedy here is the fact that additional research usually corrects the deficiencies and provides more viable and supported and entirely new people to add to the Family Tree. This is an opportunity lost on those who are fixated on finding the "easy" names which are usually unrelated to the person using the ordinance crawler.

4. Because they present the Family Tree as a place to look for ordinance opportunities, the ordinance crawlers discourage real research.

As I examine each of the ordinance crawler programs, I note that there is no mention by the programs of the fact that research into original, historical records will produce many more opportunities than the superficial ones that are already on the Family Tree. Since our family has been coordinating research into historical records, many of which are now available online, we have added hundreds perhaps thousands of people to the Family Tree. Each of these additions is completely supported by sources to carefully examined historical records. Clicking on the start button of an ordinance crawler is no substitute for actual research.

5. The number of ordinance opportunities that are "just waiting" for someone to find are decreasing every day. 

I was able to do research and find so many temple ordinance opportunities that recently I began unreserving the names on the temple list so that others who could find validly researched names to take to the temples. But even with this type of addition to the "green icons" with the ordinance crawlers allow people to harvest hundreds of names at a time, the number of green icons is dramatically being reduced. What will happen when the programs cannot magically produce green icons?

6. There is no emotional connection to a person who is only known by a line of unfamiliar relatives.

If one of the purposes for doing genealogical research is to turn the hearts of the children to their fathers, how can this happen when the name is simply produced with a line chart showing a distant relationship? Attending the temple can be an uplifting experience but taking a name that is produced by a program does not particularly add to the experience.

7. Ordinance crawlers reinforce the idea that FamilySearch somehow manufactures temple opportunities.

It is not unusual for me to talk to members of the Church that somehow have the impression that FamilySearch is doing all the work to locate their ancestors. We have had people come into a Family History Center and ask to see their family tree, expecting that someone somehow has already done the work. This idea is reinforced by ordinance crawlers that give the impression that FamilySearch or someone else is doing all the work and, of course, they don't have to do anything but click and print.

8. Many of the ordinance crawler apps are commercially created and involve an advanced fee-based level.

FamilySearch.org is a free program. There is absolutely nothing wrong with add-on programs that are commercially based and charge a purchase price or annual fee, but for a Church leader to tacitly endorse such a program in a Church meeting seems to contrary to the intent and spirit of doing ordinance work in the temples. Most of the ordinance crawlers have a free component, but most have an advanced version that costs money. I think this distracts from the entire concept of FamilySearch as a free program.

9. Ordinance crawlers are not like training wheels on a bicycle, there is no incentive to learn or do more. 

There is an undercurrent of ideas about family history that it can be caught like a cold or the flu. You don't catch a case of family history. Competent researchers may have a variety of backgrounds but they have some things in common. They all have a desire to strive for perfection and a large measure of tenacity and persistence. They also spend years and decades doing research. Some learn to read foreign languages and old handwriting. Others become familiar with obscure record sets. Trying to make genealogy/family history into a simple activity that can be done with no preparation and little or no effort denigrates the time and effort spent by these valuable human resources. Why should I spend a year of my life digitizing records so someone can ignore those same records and find a name to take to the temple in a few minutes with no involvement in the records I digitized?

10. Let's face it family history is a difficult, time-consuming avocation. It is a disservice to our tradition as family historians to reduce the activity to a mindless clicking of buttons. 

Do I sound put out? I hope so. Enough said.

More Changes to FamilySearch.org

Announced and unannounced changes keep me closely watching the FamilySearch.org website. Since I go to the website dozens of times a week, I am usually doing some specific task and so I do not notice all the changes. From time to time, I get an email listing all the changes, but inevitably I fail to look at all of them immediately and some, I am just not interested in using or exploring. For example, FamilySearch has introduced a "Customize Your Family Tree" option.

We do so much work on the computer, we seldom print anything. We also have almost every spot on our walls in our house covered with artwork. The designs suggested are lovely, but we haven't decided to print out a design. The suggested photos would either require a personal color printer, which we do not have, or a service to make a paid print. I think this is a wonderful idea but we haven't gotten around to it. I know these are all excuses. I also have friends who have been in the chart printing business for years and have other lovely designs. I do recommend these print outs for reunions and other gatherings.

Some of the changes to the FamilySearch.org website are not noticable. For example, I recently wrote about a suggested "Temple Opportunity" sent out by FamilySearch that was not related to me at all. I then noticed the following in an email from FamilySearch.

Temple Opportunities removed from temple menu 

Impact: The temple opportunities from the Temple menu is using old technologies and not as useful as other related enhanced tools like Recommended Tasks on the homepage or Ancestors with Tasks in the Family Tree mobile apps. It will be removed from the header menu and from the options at the top of the temple page. This will also remove the red asterisk which appeared when opportunities were available. Patrons will need to use the other options, or partners, to find temple opportunities.
Timeframe: Possibly January 24th

 I welcome this change.

Other changes are even more subtile. Another example is that new languages are being added to the Indexing program. Another note indicated the following languages will be available in the Web Indexing program by April 2018.

• Albanian
• Croatian
• Czech
• Danish
• Finnish
• Hungarian
• Icelandic
• Latin
• Norwegian
• Slovak
• Slovenian

By the way, here are the Indexing statistics from the website as of the date of this post. 

FamilySearch is also sending out emails to registered LDS users of the website informing them of Temple Opportunities and Obituary availability. The emails go to a link that will show the user how he or she is related to the person. My only suggestion, from my recent post, is to check out the relationship carefully. If you are related to the person, go to the Temple and do the necessary ordinances. 

I recently got an email outlining upcoming changes to the website. I will be commenting on the changes in a future post. 

A Family History Mission: Some Random Impressions on Being A Senior Missionary

Digitizing Camera 

No. 30

Note: You can do a Google search for "A Family History Mission James Tanner" to see all the previous posts in this ongoing series. You can also search for "James Tanner genealogy" and find them.

I had quite a number of rather random impressions about being a Senior Missionary here in Annapolis, Maryland. None of these seemed long enough to be the complete topic of a blog post so I decided simply to put them in separate paragraphs. Here I go.

One of the biggest challenges we found upon arriving in Annapolis was the traffic. We are used to living in Mesa, Arizona where there are wide straight streets. We have become accustomed to much narrower and winding streets in Utah Valley, but the streets here are even narrower and more winding. I don't think there is a 90° angle street crossroad in the entire city.

The drivers here in Annapolis and in Washington DC are about the same as they are in Utah Valley, so that much feels right at home. Of course, you have to remember that driving in Utah Valley is dangerous and awful.

I am amazed at the dedication of the Senior Missionaries. We are all roughly around the same age and have similar challenges. Despite being in the mission field, we still have to attend to medical needs, taxes, family situations, and the rest of the baggage of being old. The missionaries all get to work at 7 o'clock in the morning rain or shine or snow. Oops, we have yet to see the sun at 7 AM.

Working with old documents is not boring. The work of preparing and digitizing the records requires full concentration. However, some of the missionaries can listen to music while working. I have started listening to audiobooks. But I have to turn off the recordings while I think about the documents. But I can listen while I turn pages as long as no error messages show up.

 The missionaries don't talk much while they are working. It interrupts the flow of the work.

There is a distinct benefit from having a group of missionaries with more experience than we have. The work is fairly complicated and it takes some time to work out all the details. It is immensely useful to have someone who can clarify problems and issues with the work.

We found some of the working conditions can be improved. We went out and bought a new drafting chair to help with the digitizing process.

The books we are scanning right now are very large and weigh about 25 to 30 pounds each. Sometimes it takes two of us to arrange the book on the scanning surface.

Our apartment is nice but it is an adjustment from our very nice house in Provo.

Annapolis seems to have more emergency vehicles than any other place we have lived. We hear sirens day and night.

The weather here is about what could be expected. It is not as cold as Provo and it is definitely more humid than Mesa. We are getting used to rain about once a week.

We enjoy the work. We certainly enjoy working with missionaries. We are glad to have opportunities to help people with their own personal genealogical research.

All in all, we are happy to be here and serving. We certainly recognize the immense value of the records we are digitizing and appreciate the opportunity to help those in the Spirit World who cannot help themselves.

President Dallin Oaks to Speak at #RootsTech Family DIscovery Day

I received the following announcement from the FamilySearch Newsroom:

#RootsTech 2018 Family Discovery Day is pleased to welcome President Dallin H. Oaks of the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and his wife, Sister Kristen M. Oaks, as the keynote speakers at Family Discovery Day at 1:00 p.m. MST on Saturday, March 3, 2018. They will share insights from their family experience in family history work, the importance of individual families and family connections, the corresponding importance of temples and temple work, and insights into how each person can contribute to family history based on their circumstances. Family Discovery Day is a one-day, free event, but registration is required at RootsTech.org.

Additional Family Discovery Day special guests are Hank Smith, Jason Hewlett, Evie Clair, Kenya Clark, and Alex Melecio, who will celebrate families, the inherent strength of family, family history, memories, and family support.

You can read all about the remaining speakers and their backgrounds on the FamilySearch Newsroom post entitled, "President Dallin H. Oaks to Speak at RootsTech 2018 Family Discovery Day."

FamilySearch.org no longer supports Internet Explorer

Beginning February 1, 2018, the entire FamilySearch.org website will no longer be supporting Microsoft's Internet Explorer, including Internet Explorer 11 and all previous versions. Those continuing to use the Internet Explorer browser program will begin to experience bugs. FamilySearch will not be fixing those Internet Explorer bugs. Users of the FamilySearch.org website are being encouraged to use Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari.

I recently wrote about the issues accompanying continued use of the old Personal Ancestral File program. This is another example of how software continues to change and, in some cases, abandoned by its developers. Microsoft discontinued support of the Internet Explorer back on January 12, 2016. Quoting from a Wikipedia article on Internet Explorer:

On March 17, 2015, Microsoft announced that Microsoft Edge would replace Internet Explorer as the default browser on its Windows 10 devices. This effectively makes Internet Explorer 11 the last release. Internet Explorer, however, remains on Windows 10 primarily for enterprise purposes.[10] Starting January 12, 2016, only Internet Explorer 11 is supported.[11][12] Support varies based on the operating system's technical capabilities and its support lifecycle.[13]

I left in the links and footnotes for further information. I would guess that many genealogists are still using Internet Explorer. Some of them are probably experiencing problems with their internet activities and I would assume that some of them do not realize that the problem is with their continued use of Internet Explorer.