Ancestry shakeup

[meekhcs]

In the latest Lostcousins newsletter it is reported that Ancestry are going to update their DNA matching criteria and all matches below 8cM in an individuals list will disappear in the next few weeks, unless they have been colour tagged, had notes added or have been contacted by the individual. Good time to review those lesser matches in case they provide a common ancestor etc.

[Hardwork]

I would have thought "Matches in Common" should be another criteria for retaining matches below 8cM. It is not until you get those that you can attempt to triangulate at such small thresholds, in my experience. I think they'd be fairly rare, however. Thanks for the tip off anyway.

[meekhcs]

Yes, good point. I hope Ancestry make an announcement soon.

I spent some time yesterday trolling through through my 6cM matches and was surprised at how many links I found to 20CM+ matches, some of which didn't have shared matches in their own right. Tedious job though............

[AdrianBruce]

Re the value of shared cM that you need to act on - if you want to.

Ancestry says: "... you’ll no longer see matches (or be matched to people) that share less than 8 cM with you - unless you have added a note about them, added them to a custom group or have messaged them."

Now I thought that meant that I only needed to think about maybe saving matches currently rated at 6 and 7 cM - because 6 and 7 are less than 8, but 8 isn't less than 8. However, that's not true, I now understand, because of rounding.

The actual shared cM value is not, it seems, a genuine whole number but can have a decimal part (e.g. 7.9 cM). Ancestry round that shared cM before we see it on screen. However, the looming cut-off works on the original, UNrounded value. Hence a match at 7.9 cM will vanish unless it's in a group, etc. BUT that 7.9 cM match is currently presented as an 8 cM match.

So, if you want to keep them you need to look at your 8 cM matches, as well as 6 and 7 cM matches.

[meekhcs]

As I mentioned in an earlier post I started to scroll through my matches at 6 and 7 level. I spent several days on this and barely scratched the surface because A. we each have thousands of matches at the lower level and B. Ancestry cannot cope with anyone trying to do this, and they start repeating names etc. In truth I suspect this is another reason why they are removing the lower level matches, because their system is beginning to lose the capability to cope with the numbers.

Now that Ancestry have made the official announcement they are so overwhelmed with people checking their matches that very often they are unable to show low level matches.

I would recommend the following:-
Check all your matches to make sure you haven't missed anyone who is shown as having a common ancestor with you - and -
then using the Search button, enter all the Family surnames that you have identified, and check out any lower level matches you find there.

People argue that lower level matches are of no use in DNA research, and I tend to agree, but if you are desperately looking to solve a Family mystery then I don't think anything should be discounted.

[AdrianBruce]

.... Ancestry cannot cope with anyone trying to do this, and they start repeating names etc. ...

Oh, I'm glad it's not just me - I thought I was losing my place on the scroll bar, because I was seeing some names at least twice. At a wild guess, I wonder if the results list isn't complete when I start processing them; then whatever I do kicks off a re-query that should put me back where I started but doesn't manage to get that far... That would tend to suggest a system under major strain.

[meekhcs]

I think so Adrian
Before I updated to a super duper windows 10 laptop I was using windows 7 and Ancestry was always “breaking” whether I used Chrime, Firefox or whatever.
Sadly the problem has travelled with me to windows 10!!
Sally

[paulr1949]

I've just received a further Lost Cousins newsletter and it says that the changes have been delayed "until late August"

[meekhcs]

Thanks Paul
Ancestry have updated their DNA page too, partly at the request of subscribers