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General => Ancestral Family Tree DNA Testing => Topic started by: Glen in Tinsel Kni on Friday 14 March 25 20:17 GMT (UK)

Title: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: Glen in Tinsel Kni on Friday 14 March 25 20:17 GMT (UK)
Their version of autocluster reports

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7JiCLzsOfE
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: GailB on Friday 14 March 25 22:27 GMT (UK)
I just watched that and was going to post it, but you beat me to it. :-)
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: Glen in Tinsel Kni on Friday 14 March 25 22:42 GMT (UK)
I just watched that and was going to post it, but you beat me to it. :-)

Every chance you could have beat me as I struggled to stay awake at yet another lacklustre effort of a 'feature'.

I have the MH equivalent and last used it almost a year ago though I said I run it maybe twice a year in my comment on the upload. I don't know what the parameters Ancestry will set but if it's the same as MH I would only have gained one additional match in the last 12 months. It's a once in a blue moon tool and not easy to interpret. 
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: Biggles50 on Saturday 15 March 25 07:32 GMT (UK)
I just watched that and was going to post it, but you beat me to it. :-)

Every chance you could have beat me as I struggled to stay awake at yet another lacklustre effort of a 'feature'.

I have the MH equivalent and last used it almost a year ago though I said I run it maybe twice a year in my comment on the upload. I don't know what the parameters Ancestry will set but if it's the same as MH I would only have gained one additional match in the last 12 months. It's a once in a blue moon tool and not easy to interpret.

I too struggled with the pretty dismal effort that My Heritage produced.

I had a large cluster of zero use, no useful matches at all.

I should have two fairly prominent clusters, these being Irish and Italian.

They are there, right at the bottom of the chart and all bar one was already known and in my Tree on Ancestry.

I do hope Ancestry’s no doubt Paid For effort will be worth it.

Cannot see it until such times as real birth names and a rudimentary basic family tree are required to be included by default.
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: SouthseaSteel on Saturday 15 March 25 08:14 GMT (UK)

Thats good news!!  Thanks for the heads up

It will be nice to have such a tool that is hopefully actually populated by meaningful Matches as opposed to the rats and mice as per MH!!

Meanwhile I have just been invited to Ancestry Beta Networks.  Anything described as a "game changer" or "exclusive" by the supplier is usually anything but that but we will see
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: LizzieL on Saturday 15 March 25 08:36 GMT (UK)


Meanwhile I have just been invited to Ancestry Beta Networks.  Anything described as a "game changer" or "exclusive" by the supplier is usually anything but that but we will see

Just been invited to Beta networks too !

I am really excited .... Not!
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: Glen in Tinsel Kni on Saturday 15 March 25 14:45 GMT (UK)
I ran a fresh report on MH as there is a match that came up after my previous attempt. Instead of being in the small cluster of three or four I expected they have been put in with some unknown US matches. I wish they had tested with Ancestry as there would be dozens of matches back to a common ancestor but the constant 'sale' MH have on kits is starting to cause real issues for me and I would imagine many others as well.   

Also just had the Beta invite, I'm going to lie in a dark room for a while, someone give me a nudge when common sense returns.
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: familydar on Sunday 16 March 25 15:16 GMT (UK)
I'm disappointed to not have been invited yet, given that Ancestry evidently think so highly of me.  My proof?  Four days ago, a notification, "here is an interesting detail about Eliza Linton.  Explore this hint now".  So I did explore the hint.  It was for someone else's tree.  Eliza had a solitary source "ancestry family trees".  Ok let's view these trees, perhaps one of them has something I don't.  Trees was a bit optimistic.  Just one.  Mine  ???

Jane :-)
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: Biggles50 on Sunday 16 March 25 15:37 GMT (UK)

Thats good news!!  Thanks for the heads up

It will be nice to have such a tool that is hopefully actually populated by meaningful Matches as opposed to the rats and mice as per MH!!

Meanwhile I have just been invited to Ancestry Beta Networks.  Anything described as a "game changer" or "exclusive" by the supplier is usually anything but that but we will see

Network is showing in the Pro Tools Shortcut window on the Ancestry Home page.

I created a Network based on my tree and nothing.

Its there but has to be populated manually.

Added my Sister.

Went into my tree to a DNA match who I am in contact with and there is presently no means of adding them directly from their Profile page.

Went into my DNA matches to one who is in my tree but again there is no method of adding them to the Network.

Not impressed, hopefully it will become useful one day.
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: Glen in Tinsel Kni on Sunday 16 March 25 16:42 GMT (UK)
Remember how not so long ago 'circles' was the latest and greatest thing to encourage people to contact and collaborate with each other and solve mysteries? I think the most telling thing for me in the upload was Christa saying she doesn't attempt to message someone until she has worked out who they are.  To message or not to message? That is the question (but don't ask Ancestry as they don't seem to know themselves).
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: SouthseaSteel on Monday 17 March 25 00:03 GMT (UK)

Going back to autoclusters if I may, what does each cluster actually "represent"?  Is it a specific MRCA (single or couple), or is it something else?

Tx
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: louisa maud on Monday 17 March 25 00:19 GMT (UK)
Good question, I would like to know as well.

LM
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: GailB on Monday 17 March 25 00:38 GMT (UK)
In general, it is a group of people who match each other. It could be one MRCA but could span a couple of generations.
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: Glen in Tinsel Kni on Monday 17 March 25 01:00 GMT (UK)

Going back to autoclusters if I may, what does each cluster actually "represent"?  Is it a specific MRCA (single or couple), or is it something else?

Tx

From the  'read me' file MH send with every report;

 "Each color represents one shared match cluster. Members of a cluster match you
and most or all of the other cluster members. Everyone in a cluster will likely be on
the same ancestral line, although the most recent common ancestor between any of
the matches and between you and any match may vary"



 
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: SouthseaSteel on Monday 17 March 25 07:17 GMT (UK)

Going back to autoclusters if I may, what does each cluster actually "represent"?  Is it a specific MRCA (single or couple), or is it something else?

Tx

From the  'read me' file MH send with every report;

 "Each color represents one shared match cluster. Members of a cluster match you
and most or all of the other cluster members. Everyone in a cluster will likely be on
the same ancestral line, although the most recent common ancestor between any of
the matches and between you and any match may vary"

Thanks. TBH I posed the question after reading exactly that as although I understand it and it cant be argued with, it is vague and doesnt actually say what a cluster "represents".  Mind you neither does a 90 minute video from Family History Fanatics!!

My hypothesis is that a cluster nominally represents a MRCA along with all the vicissitudes and exceptionalism of DNA analysis.  I hope somebody can confirm or dispute that.  Cheers
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: 4b2 on Monday 17 March 25 11:28 GMT (UK)
Crazy it's taken them so long to even think of this, never mind implement it.

I believe that there used to be a website that did this for you, that Ancestry requested to cease and desist. Yet they've taken years to actually roll this out.

I also have a script I built to download all matches and then build auto-clusters. It took about three days, with almost all of the work on figuring out on how to best cluster matches. Don't know why it takes them a year to just roll out 64 groups (which is still not enough).

There are so many tools Ancestry could make, but it seems they are very slow. Another I use is compare matches between two tests. This is useful as Ancestry only show some common matches - not sure exactly how that works as they obviously don't all share the same MRCAs. So with something like a 3rd cousin, you might share a few hundred matches, while Ancestry only shows maybe 20-30 common matches. When those 'hidden' shared matches form themselves into clusters, while others are just coincidental via non-shared ancestry. When you have mutual clusters, that Ancestry doesn't show as shared, the most likely explanation is shared ancestry, while not sharing the same 8cM+ cluster as yourself.
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: Glen in Tinsel Kni on Monday 17 March 25 13:48 GMT (UK)
I might have an example of clusters/grouped matches showing some of the limitations

On Ancestry a group of over 50 shared matches all traced back to an ancestral couple, along with a dozen shared matches I can't trace back primarily due to consecutive generations of illegitimate births and possible migration so no bmd records in England/Wales .

An MH match from the UK has also been traced back to the same ancestral couple but the shared matches on MH are all from the USA, one of the 50 Ancestry users did upload to MH but is too distant to the UK MH user to be in an autocluster report.

I only know the UK MH user links to the Ancestry users because I have built a large floating branch on my tree with matches from the different platforms, for obvious reason the site reports can only use data from within their own database but somewhere there's a split in the family resulting in UK and USA descendants but looking at each site independently and without the floating branch available they look like totally separate/unconnected families. 
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: rsel on Thursday 15 May 25 16:45 BST (UK)
Has anybody seen any sign's yet that ancestry is actually delivering this autoclusters feature ?  It was mentioned as being a couple of weeks, and its not been 2 months and i have not seen anything appear on my account (and i do have a pro-tools subscription, so its not hidden in that :-) )

Richard
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: 4b2 on Thursday 15 May 25 16:56 BST (UK)
Has anybody seen any sign's yet that ancestry is actually delivering this autoclusters feature?

Richard

Been keeping an eye out for it, but not seen anything. It's certainly a much needed feature. And as usual Ancestry are spending months, years rolling out something that should be finely polished within a month (given the scale of their data more time is needd).
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: Glen in Tinsel Kni on Thursday 15 May 25 18:58 BST (UK)
When it was announced at Rootstech it was just said to be 'this year' so read into that what you will, I wouldn't be surprised if it appeared just as the days start to get shorter, maybe I'm just getting
suspicious cynical in my old age though. 
I suppose I really have to let them off the three times I didn't renew protools and broke a 15 day run without a match when 60-90 matches dropped within an hour of protools ceasing to work.  For it to happen three times in the space of five month doesn't look the least bit odd and I'm obviously just unlucky.  ::)
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: rsel on Thursday 15 May 25 19:21 BST (UK)
I didn't see the actual announcement :-)  just saw the description on the video said the 'couple of weeks'....

I have been having a lot of dry spell's for new matches recently, and then get a drop of a dozen or so.  I wonder if they are having some processing capacity issues, which is causing them to bunch up
Title: Re: And the next Ancestry feature is.............
Post by: Glen in Tinsel Kni on Thursday 15 May 25 20:19 BST (UK)
My results went live in summer 2021 and the quantity each month as well as the frequency were really consistent  but it all changed when protools started and suddenly it all became very erratic. It's only when I have an active protools sub that it's inconsistent and when I cancel the renewal it goes back to the usual 4-5 daily matches. My last match was 22 days age and it's the longest dry spell to date, I wonder how much longer it will last seeing as I bought the 6 month protools offer back in February.