Re: Ancestry's Drastic Changes Dash Hopes of Finding Connections #dna
Dahn Cukier
A few words about computers. All the former "matches" are still on the computers as are all non matches. Unless a person has demanded their DNA be removed, Ancestry should not be removing any results. We, the users, see only the data deemed relevant to us. I do not see any of my uncle's wife's relatives, but did find an 5-8th cousin in common, or so say statistics. Since Ancestry removed the ability to jump from page to page, I have not seen as many matches. I tried to scroll down when the new display first came out about a year ago, but after an hour, I was no where near the 150,000 matches I saw before the display change. I would appreciate Ancestry supplying a utility to request a spreadsheet of matches as MyHeritage does/did in batch form. "Batch" means it is produced during slow hours and a file is prepared for the user by request that can be downloaded. With so much endogamy, the results on any database are less than perfect. I have access to 7 direct relatives raw data DNA at Ancestry. When a new 1st-3rd cousin shows up, I always look at he person from my mother's data, my father's brother's data and my sister's data. If only I am a relative, it is most likely a false positive. By looking at 2nd cousins data, I can find if the person is related to my mother's father or mother, or my father's father or mother. As I write this, I begin to suspect that Ancestry may not be so much about genealogy as connecting living people. As families started to move around more and more beginning in the 1960s many have lost touch with 2nd generation relatives. While I knew my aunts and uncles, I have never met many of their 1st cousins. Dani Cukier Cukier/Zucker/Zukrowicz, Brif/Brieff, Sklawir/etc. Lisoecki/Lisobitki/etc. When you start to read readin, how do you know the fellow that wrote the readin, wrote the readin right? Festus Hagen Long Branch Saloon Dodge City, Kansas (Gunsmoke)
On Friday, September 4, 2020, 05:27:02 AM GMT+3, Teewinot <teewinot13@...> wrote: I beg to differ. In all my shared matches until about 7 days ago, I had matches down to 6.0 cM. So did my cousins I've been working with. If we didn't, we wouldn't have found some of the links between us. I also wouldn't have found other critical matches in the shared DNA. I know what shared matches are. I've been using them for the past two years, since I tested. I'm a retired medical professional and know about DNA, genetics and inheritance. In more distant relationships, DNA is more a guide, not an absolute. Due to the way DNA is inherited, you can have two siblings with vastly different DNA inheritance from even great great grandparents. Also, the estimation of relationship can often be way off. Someone with 8.0 cM could be as close as a 4th cousin or as distant as an 8th cousin. It all depends on how the DNA was inherited/passed down. (Ancestry had two of my 1st cousins once removed listed as 3rd to 4th cousins.) I paid for the data I was given (down to 6.0 cM). I did not in the least appreciate it being taken from me without even asking me. I worked feverishly for the last week to save as many matches as I could below 8.0 cM. Obviously, everyone else was, too, because the servers were sluggish, crashing constantly, and even going down completely for two hours at a time. They hadn't been prior to that. On Sept. 1st, they were back to normal. I managed to save just under 7,500 matches. I dread to think of all the valuable data I lost in the matches I couldn't save. I personally believe that Ancestry has done all this because they can't handle the storage of the massive amount of data that is being generated as more and more people get tested. I also personally believe that what Ancestry did was disgraceful and just plain bad business. I have never, in all my years, seen a business take away something from a customer that they had paid for. If Ancestry wanted to make changes, they should have started with the new customers as of Sept. 1st, and left alone all the data of customers who had paid for the service before that date. They've just made it far harder now to trace links between families. I had a long talk with someone in the corporate HQ today. He agreed with me, and is going to look into returning all matches to the shared DNA. As for the data below 8.0 cM, it's all been dumped. So now it's just wait and see. Jeri Friedman On 9/3/2020 5:54 PM, Adam Turner wrote: Only the 8.0 cM cutoff is a recent change. The bit about the shared-- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
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