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I never understand people making their tree private. I know they get copied, but why does that matter?  If you are confident your research is accurate, then it gets more credence as more people copy it.

Zaph

It is important to make 'quick and dirty' trees private precisely because they are created at speed with less regard for accuracy. Their job is to tackle a very precise question e.g. the identity of genetic forbears. It is correct that conventional trees should be far more accurately researched and as such we might be less concerned that they can be seen by others.

On your original question I tested with Ancestry in 2021 and since then have had hundreds of additional matches. I do not recall any of them contacting me until I'd contacted them. I currently have well over 20,000 matches on Ancestry and a similar number on My Heritage (albeit many are duplicates of Ancestry matches). On Ancestry only around 75 of my nearly 9,000 matches are at 40cM or higher and none are above 296cM. That means that the vast majority arithmetically are either very distant cousins or are false matches both of which reasons might explain partly why they don't bother contacting me. There are tables somewhere that show how many 4th cousins and more distant we might all have and it's a lot, which is why they are of less interest.

I am almost exclusively researching my paternal line and mostly my matches are from the USA whereas I am English which could persuade a lot of them that any link is false or weird or whatever. Yet another possible reason for lack of contact.

I also have one very good reason for lack of interest. I am not in my online tree because I do not know who my genetic father was, so anyone looking at my attached tree will only see my maternal side. Nevertheless roughly 40% of my matches are maternal and none of them contacted me until I I contacted them. 

Maybe I am an unusual case but I do agree that the large number of matches who do not attach trees, or whose trees are limited to one of two 'private' names, suggests that a lot are only interested in ethnicity. That's their privilege, irksome as it may be to those of us with burning questions.

Tony

Thanks for the heads up David. They've not changed mine yet but their press release confused me. Since my Ancestry DNA test in 2021, Ancestry have consistently pegged me as broadly half Irish, more specifically from Connacht and much more specifically from County Mayo. Their press release however states that previously Ireland was an undivided genealogical area and that the new release will drill down to much tighter areas and Connacht is exemplified. So logically, all my previous stuff was nonsense or the press release is.

I just logged in to Ancestry and found that all the Pro Tools features have disappeared despite my Pro Tools membership remaining valid, nd showing as such in my Account info. Has anyone else suffered this or can offer an explanation please?

Ancestry Matches by Cluster arrived on my computer today.

I have over 19,000 Ancestry matches, all bar 4 are clearly identified as Paternal or Maternal. 26 of my Paternal matches range between 65 and 292cM (the highest) but only 3 of my Maternal matches are within the defined clustering range. The clustering tool only captures 22 Paternal matches and some of those omitted are higher than the lowest of the ones included.

Ancestry gives me no option to cluster the Maternal matches (and the "ALL' button doesn't work either) and maybe that's because there are only 3 of them, but while it is curious, it doesn't really bother me because it is my Paternal side that I am researching. 

The Paternal clusters don't add anything to what I already knew, so I am probably long past that stage in my search. Interestingly at least one of the Paternal matches (130cM) omitted from the clusters is an important match because it doesn't seem to belong to the other 4 clusters which ultimately all link up, as you might expect. This omitted Paternal match does share cM with one of the other omitted matches but not with the other two omitted matches. Maybe Ancestry doesn't regard 2 as a cluster?



 

A few weeks ago I started to see something odd about my Ancestry matches (I have several thousands each of paternal and maternal matches). The total for the Paternal and Maternal matches had the same last three numbers i.e. the hundreds. Coincidence I thought, but the following day I had exactly the same number of new matches for both sides and the hundreds were again identical. Ever since then I've checked and the hundreds have increased by exactly the same amount for paternal and maternal sides and therefore the hundreds are still identical. This even includes a couple of days when I had no new matches.

I am not a statistician but I refuse to believe that this could be happening by fluke or chance. It appears that Ancestry is doling out the same number of matches for the two categories deliberately. Has anyone else noticed this or have an opinion about what is going on?