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AncestryDNA’s new BETA

Discussion in 'DNA Questions and Answers' started by jorghes, Feb 28, 2019.

  1. PhoebeW

    PhoebeW LostCousins Member

    Thank you for this thought provoking response. You are absolutely right - the position is not always clear cut. I’m sure many people will have clear and uncomplicated results but it might be interesting to see something more complicated. My results seem to be affected by the marriage of one set of great-grandparents (they were second cousins), my Mormon branch, and apparently by the “sameness” of Welsh ancestry.

    I used the new tools to “paint” the matches designated as fourth cousins and closer, now standing at 339.

    Firstly, the closer than fourth cousin relatives (9); then the mormon branch (27); then the other identified relatives (6); then the largest group, the peculiarities.

    At first glance: It looks as if my known Welsh matches are generally smaller and further than might be expected; this doesn’t affect most of the members of the Mormon branch.

    Beyond those 42 identified relatives in the fourth cousin or closer block I have only about fifty matches who are Welsh or have recent Welsh ancestry who look as if they should be traceable. Then there are loose groups of Americans with more distant ancestry in West Wales - some from another set of Mormon emigrants. Then some very large tight groups of Americans who seem to be “red flag” clusters.

    My Welsh third and fourth cousins tend to appear as distant cousins, and my known fifth cousins don’t generally appear as matches at all. When I took some of my known distant cousins on Ancestry, who are not Ancestry matches, over to GEDmatch I found they are matches at 10cM to 20cM+ there.

    So there are patterns emerging that I can can test.
     
  2. jorghes

    jorghes LostCousins Superstar

    Ancestry has been trying to fix the "Common Ancestors" list - mine now gets down to 11cM, but then when it attempts to load the next part, it simply copies the list from 18cM down and you get no more and becomes a continual refreshing of the same issue. But it looks like the majority of the list is there, rather than only showing the first 20 or so.

    Unfortunately I still can't access the missing ThruLine ancestor.
     
  3. Helen7

    Helen7 LostCousins Superstar

    I can still only see the first 20 matches. If I scroll down it just repeats these ad infinitum - so I get a very long list containing only 20 different people.
     
  4. Pauline

    Pauline LostCousins Megastar

    I think I'm seeing more common ancestor matches overall as there are certainly some more distant matches in my list than when I was seeing only the first 20. But it's difficult to be sure with all the refreshing and repeating, and when I finally gave up and returned to the top of the page I discovered I had 7 sisters! (I actually only have one.)
     
  5. Helen7

    Helen7 LostCousins Superstar

    In my list, the third column - where it gives tree information plus the 'common ancestor' flag - is blank for the replicates. There are only 20 matches with this information shown (grouped by distance of relationship), so I can easily see these are the first 20 matches. When I went back to the top of the page, I found I had 10 copies of the 2nd cousin topping my list.
     
  6. Pauline

    Pauline LostCousins Megastar

    OK, ignoring those with a blank 3rd column, and making sure the rest really were all different, I counted 40 in my list. So twice as many as when things first went wrong, but although I didn’t note how many common ancestors were in my list when it was working properly, I’m sure it was a lot more than 40.
     
  7. Katie Bee

    Katie Bee LostCousins Member

    I had 20 before and now I have 23.
    I had 1 x 3rd cousin and that is replicated with the duplicate blank 3rd column.
    I had 12 x 4th cousins and I still have those 12, plus replicates with blank 3rd column.
    I had 7 distant cousins, now I have 10, with various levels of replication, all with blank 3rd column.
    So that is a total of 23 now.
    When I scrolled back to the top I ended up with dozens of duplicates of my 3rd cousin!
    I clicked on the Ancestry Survey button and told them what I thought!
     
  8. jorghes

    jorghes LostCousins Superstar

    I managed to scroll to 38 unique Common Ancestor matches on my father's results before the page went postal and started repeating - when I posted previously, it only repeated the last 5-10 results, now it duplicates everything. (including my self, my siblings and my grandmother).

    It took two refreshes, once which involved removing the "Common Ancestor" filter before the page would appear normally again.

    If you attempt to scroll back down again (when it's in postal mode), it duplicates everyone beneath the original set of results once for every time you try to get to the bottom of the list. Thus, currently I have four repeats of the same four people in the same order, then my father's second cousin repeated 4 times, and then the next list repeated 4 times - and always in the same order!

    To make matters worse, if you don't refresh it right back to the beginning (i.e. the DNA dashboard page), it starts to repeat itself every time you attempt to scroll at all!

    EDIT:
    I kept trying to scroll because a new DNA result with a Common Ancestor had popped up, and I was trying to click on that result.
    Now that I have, it looks like they have updated the comparison screen you get. And it looks so much better - I will attempt to get a screenshot and show everyone!
     
  9. canadianbeth

    canadianbeth LostCousins Star

    I have eight repeats of my first cousin once removed. Then I have eight repeats of 3rd cousins, all in the same order. Nineteen fourth cousins, again repeated. Same with the distant cousins. However, there are a few new names amongst what was there previously; when I clicked on one it gave the person's pedigree chart instead of just the name of our common ancestor. The actual common ancestor was on the left side.
     
  10. jorghes

    jorghes LostCousins Superstar

    Here is the new interface for the comparison of matches - I have to say I like it much better than the older comparison. (the screenshots are taken on my iPad - on my laptop, you can see the next generation up for Melissa's tree, although I don't need it) - in case anyone is wondering, Graeme is my father.

    We're related through the poorly named "Condelia May" (really Cordelia May), but Melissa doesn't have her any further up, so I don't need to click the Common Ancestor section to know that. I have down to John (Melissa's father) on my tree already. Richard and Deborah are Cordelia May's grandparents.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  11. Helen7

    Helen7 LostCousins Superstar

    I agree the new comparison page looks much better. Hopefully the common ancestors list problem will be fixed soon.
     
  12. Pauline

    Pauline LostCousins Megastar

    All sorts of odd things seem to be going on at Ancestry at present. Last night I noticed for the first time that there isn't a link to the old (pre-beta) style match details from the new beta match comparison page as shown above.

    One of the issue with that for me is that I can't work out how to toggle matches between Viewed and Not Viewed (the blue circle indicator) in the new beta version. Sometimes I only have chance for a quick peek at a match and then want to mark it is as Not Viewed so I can easily find it again for a proper look later.

    Then I discovered that the facility in people's profiles to show if they are a DNA match or not has gone, and has been replaced by an advert for Ancestry DNA. I used this feature a lot, and last night it wasn't in the new beta profiles either.

    Then, as of this morning, I can't get the beta profile option to work at all - I just get a notification that the page isn't working and have to hit the back button.
     
  13. Helen7

    Helen7 LostCousins Superstar

    That's a good point. The previous screen offered a convenient viewed/not viewed toggle. I can't see any equivalent on the new screen, and the only way of seeing the old comparison screen now seems to be to disable the new beta.

    I haven't found this problem. When I click on a person's profile, it tells me the estimated relationship and how many cM we share across how many segments. If they aren't a match it tells me that too. However, I now find any link to a person's profile doesn't work using Firefox, I have to use Chrome to see it. With Firefox, I get a 'secure connection failed' error message. Is that what you are seeing? If so, have you tried another browser? Chrome works fine for me (still get the repetitive 'common ancestors' list problem though!)
     
  14. Pauline

    Pauline LostCousins Megastar

    Yes, I've tried a different browser and a different device. And checking again, I find I now can't access anyone's profile at all, whether going from a DNA match or via Messages or from anywhere else. I can't even see my own profile via the link under my username at the top right of each page.

    I suspect that this may be because I turned on the beta version and now I can't reach a profile page to turn it off again!

    Oh, and just for good measure, I can't get the Ancestry lab page to load properly this morning so I can't turn the DNA beta stuff or or off either!
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  15. Helen7

    Helen7 LostCousins Superstar

    Same for me in Firefox ('Something went wrong, please refresh the page' which of course doesn't work), but no problem using Chrome - Ancestry lab and all the profile links work, whereas none of them do in Firefox (from trees, messages etc). Have you tried Chrome?
     
  16. peter

    peter Administrator Staff Member

    I had to clear out my cookies again yesterday - then it worked.
     
  17. Pauline

    Pauline LostCousins Megastar

    I tried that earlier with no effect but having discovered that beta profiles had started working OK again in Safari, I've just cleared out all my Chrome cookies and cache yet again, and it now works there too! Thanks Peter!

    What's more the Ancestry lab page is now loading properly again.

    And I can see that the DNA match feature is there in the new beta profile pages, though still absent from the old style profile page.
     
  18. Helen7

    Helen7 LostCousins Superstar

    Thanks! I've just cleared my cookies from Firefox and it's done the trick, all working again.
     
  19. peter

    peter Administrator Staff Member

    Can anyone tell me what a triangle (or heart) means when they appear after the name of someone in a tree? I've only noticed them recently.
     
  20. jorghes

    jorghes LostCousins Superstar

    Sounds interesting. Any screenshots?
     

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