I for one am happy they got rid of all the noise. My 250,000 matches
have now been pared to a much more manageable 180,000. More
significantly, it seems -- perhaps my imagination? -- that the matches
are loading faster because the system isn't plowing through so many of
them. I wish Ancestry offered more options for customizing, but, baby
steps.

I do appreciate that tiny segments can have value, but since you can't
see chromosomes on Ancestry, you can't really triangulate. Though I use
the Shared Matches a lot, it's never clear what I'm looking at since I
can't tell if they share with each other. 23andMe is much better in that
regard.

Because my German side is well documented, Ancestry often points out
fifth and sixth cousins to me, people with whom I share minute amounts
of DNA, way down in the 100,000s on my list.  But do we share that DNA
because we have the same 7xgreat-grandparents? Or because most Jews are
related a few different ways? I tend to think it's the latter, and
without additional info from Ancestry, I have no reason to believe
otherwise. I'd rather focus on my top ten mystery matches, and the more
tools Ancestry can provide in that regard -- largest segment size has
been a huge help -- the better!
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