Ancestry Matches 7cM and less

Totally agree on this point especially.

 

I wonder how common that is, or if you are just lucky?

Using the methods suggested here to speed things up, then unless someone has a huge number of Common Ancestor matches, just adding a coloured dot shouldn't take more than a few minutes.

 

I already use the coloured dots to indicate which eighth of my tree (great grandparents) the DNA matches apply to when I have determined such. I am worried that 6cM and 7cM matches will disappear before I have been able to investigate more than a small percentage.

I think that you must be lucky. Two or three of mine have strange properties, like apparent fit in tree as sibling of my direct ancestor but individual not known to me or any other researchers that I know of. One of my latest notifications looks good back to my earliest ancestor in that branch (my tree) but the suggested MRCA is shown with a birth date a couple of years AFTER her daughter, presumably from the other person's tree!!

 

I think that Ancestry has been experiencing more and more technical issues because of volumes of data and of system usage. I imagine that they will try to justify the change as for the benefit of users when really this is due to their inability to cope. All of this will be hidden by the smoke and mirrors of DNA gobbledygook. Their system architecture seems to be flawed necessitating the volume reduction resulting in user data being suppressed. They do not know whether anyone is a relation to anyone else, even when apparently close. Users must be the arbiters of this, especially when we get to the distant relationships. In my case 6 to 7cM relations are my most key ones to me, it takes a long time to work on these. Names are not helpful always when determining relationships. I continue to recommend everyone to spread research outside Ancestry, this is becoming vital when they take arbitrary decisions such as this. Contrary to silly comments made on this thread Myheritage can be great, but I would never recommend its exclusive use.

 

As I mentioned previously, the reason why I know the distribution of my matches by cM strength is because in the past I have used a 3rd party tool to obtain the data. I know that some of these 3rd party tool providers have been issued 'Cease and Desist' legal notices by Ancestry in the past month which is why they are no longer available. So looks like Ancestry are certainly looking at improving performance at the moment. Cant say I have noticed any less 'Out backend services are overtaxed at the moment' since the edict went out though.

 

Not sure of the science behind finding a common ancestor are, but it certainly seems top heavy with regard to the strength of the match. For example 13% of my common ancestors are in the 6-8cM range whereas 73% of my matches are in this range. Compare this with 37% of my common ancestors in the 20+cM range which accounts for only 0.59% of my total matches.

Breakdown of matches as follows, all other tests I manage are within 2% of these figures:

cM % all matches

> 19 0.59%
19 0.19%
18 0.26%
17 0.35%
16 0.51%
15 0.76%
14 1.27%
13 1.72%
12 2.47%
11 3.61%
10 5.62%
9 9.30%
8 17.09% (of which 7.13% > 8.0, 9.96% < 8.0)
7 32.27%
6 23.99%

 

...

...etc.etc.etc

As good an example of DNA gobbledygook I have seen and certainly well beyond anything Ancestry produces.

but not quite so 'silly' as anyone suggesting MyHeritage is (or ever could be in the foreseeable future) 'great'... (and I have experience to back this up as many in the Forum will know )

 

I have made several groups - Barratt, Bowyer, Joyce, Riches, Probably Joyce, Probably not paternal, No Shared Matches and Unknown. The 97 common ancestors are in the four first-named lists. They all have notes listing to whom they are connected. I started putting names into the other four groups originally but then just did not bother; there are just too many of them.

Following Bob's comment, I think I shall just ignore the apparent DNA matches to my Riches/Moss family that MH has given me and just go with the Ancestry one, especially since I do have documented information as to that marriage. I still do not understand, however, how it can be so different.

 

Since many Common Ancestor matches are found by Ancestry extrapolating a match's own tree, then bearing in mind the number of distinctly dodgy trees at Ancestry, it is perhaps surprising how many of our Common Ancestor matches are not spurious.

However, it is perhaps worth saying, that although I have identified only a relatively small number of Common Ancestor matches as definitely spurious, there are quite a few others that I can't confirm either way.

Incidentally, I see this morning that Ancestry are now announcing the forthcoming changes in a banner on the DNA pages.

 

I have online conversations with Ancestry and conclude that they have no idea of the implications of this change, what is worse they don't care really. They had no real answers at all, at least none that were not restatements of the Ancestry standard “line”. They kept saying the results would be more accurate, but could not answer the basic fact that lots of vital matches would be lost altogether, both now and any potential future ones.
I am amazed that people are not more angry about this, and also surprised that Peter is apparently so supportive of this change.

 

That's interesting, I'm glad you were able to interpret that from the Algorithm. I have a common ancestor match who I know for sure is a 3rd cousin one removed. He comes in at 13cM across 2 segments, so using this algorithm would I be correct in thinking that even if he doesn't get the heave-ho he is in for demotion? I shall be watching to see what happens to him after the changes.