None of my DNA matches have ever contacted me

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

As my old dad would say 'as shallow as a puddle in a drought that one'

[SouthseaSteel]

Just look at how many Matches have minimal or no trees - linked or unlinked you have and I would hazard that the lion's share of those dont give a tinker's cuss about who they Match with - hence zero dialogue with Matches, either way.

I also find that many of those who have photographs and/or state that they are willing to help on their profile tend NOT to respond - virtue signalling I guess.

Btw, today I received a new Ancestry message that simply said " How do you know William Saunders, my grandfather?" .  That attitude combined with the fact I manage over 40 different trees under my Ancestry name means I'm not particularly eager to help out any time soon

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

I had a 9cM match earlier with 190 trees (had to count them twice), at least ten of them contain 750,000+ names. I'm going to pass on that one for now, it's a risk I'll take as I doubt the reward justifies the effort.

[Alison55]

Quote--
I made contact with a possible cousin once and one of the first things he asked me was if I was famous or had a high-profile career. When I said no, he was obviously unimpressed and disappointed. It was a bit of an eye-opener for me.  END QUOTE

I would be very suspicious of such a message.  It sounds like someone after money.  I would never reply to a message like that.

[Zaphod99]

Glen, it's taken me 10 years to reach 2,000 so I draw the line at 5,000 if I'm looking at somebody else's tree.  That might be a mistake, but you've got to draw the line somewhere.  If, as it's widely believed, one in a hundred births are not as expected, or rather conceptions not as expected, there's a lot of potential for error in 5,000.

Without DNA I know I would have three mistakes in my 2,000. And that makes everything prior to that irrelevant.  If ever I get in casual conversation with somebody who says he's researched back to some obscure Saxon King, I remind him of that fact, and watch his jaw drop.

Zaph

[David Nicoll]

Hi,

    Just to say I agree with taking huge tree’s with a pinch of salt, but there may be gold in there.

    I also feel that a cutoff of 5,000 is a bit low. I may have mistakes in there, but a lot seems to be confirmed where possible with DNA matches now, and I have significantly more than 5,000 people.

This may be unusual, but I have source trees from 1860, 1935 and some 50 years of research by my parents, other relatives and myself. It’s amazing how big tree a dedicated ( is that obsessive 🙂) tree bunch of people can generate.

 It could be even bigger, but I have a general cutoff at around 1930.
   

[Steve3180]

I also feel 5000 is too low a cutoff these days, but that's probably because my tree currently sits at 15,300. Here's the case for the defense -
It was at 2000 just before I took the dna test, I've always included siblings at every level because I like to research families rather than individuals.
After the dna test I just continued this practice while building down to dna matches.
As the trees going down are multiple and expanding outwards the overall size grew rapidly and I thought about leaving out the siblings but there are two big advantages.
Firstly Ancestry's Common Ancestors often picks up links to these siblings after I have added the match I found, often through private trees or private people in public trees. That actually happened again today.
Secondly I have a confidence test for people in my tree which is if a person has dna links via three of their children I consider them proven (still not sure about that word in a genealogical context, I want to see the maths).
I would say then 20,000 for the cutoff but I do know of one lady in New Zealand whose tree is very, very good who has well over that. She started as a school project and is now in her 60's. She was one of my Ancestry messaging contacts to get back on point.

[Zaphod99]

I did say " I draw the line at 5,000 if I'm looking at somebody else's tree.  That might be a mistake, but you've got to draw the line somewhere."

If there is a 1% chance of pre-dna paternal confusion, that's 50 erroneous entries.

Zaph

[David Nicoll]

Hi,

    On that basis you might as well give up, though in my personal experience the issue is much smaller.
    On the other hand, who is our family? The ones who bring us up and give us family stories of relatives? Is this not what really shapes us, not necessarily our genetic makeup?
    I think the two trees where they exist run in parallel.