Pro Tools & New format DNA Match Lists

Ooh, looks like I signed up just in time... though it will only be for the first month. No doubt it will be £7.99 from next month, if I decide to stay with it.

 

Which seems to me like a complete rip-off! It's frustrating enough that we've had to wait so long for Ancestry to provide what other sites have been providing for ages, and to have to pay extra for it, without now having to put up with a price hike. Like Helen we got in at the cheaper price but no doubt the higher price will kick in next month if we decide to stick with it.

 

Yes, they tempted us in for a few days at the lower price, then raised the price by 60% within a week. Ancestry do like their introductory offers, and it must be a 'slow' season at present. Last week, my husband was offered a 3-month Worldwide Membership for only £1. Of course, we took up this offer, and I've been busy collecting the overseas records that are behind a paywall on my account. Must remember to cancel before the 3 months is up, otherwise it gets expensive.

 

I got that $1. offer as well, and since I had paused my membership for a month, took advantage.

 

For me it is $12.99 Canadian, which is a bit better than the current exchange rate of 7.99 U.K.

 

I guess it depends partly on how you define a great discovery! I haven’t yet broken down any brick walls, but I have now worked out who quite a number of matches are from seeing who among my known matches they are most closely related to, where previous attempts to discover their identity hasn’t really got anywhere. While simply knowing who matches are doesn’t necessarily help much of itself, it is helping me get to grips with some of my ‘unknown’ clusters, some of which I can now see confirm areas of my tree where previously matches seemed absent or rather thin on the ground. And being able to see more distant shared matches has also helped confirm where some closer unknown matches fit in. Given time, who knows, maybe some of these new discoveries will help towards breaking down a long-standing brick wall.

 

There is a thread here on the New format DNA match lists which discusses this, starting from around #28 and mostly focussing on the DNA aspects. The general agreement seems to be the new tools are useful albeit a bit pricey.

I've also used the tree checker since it was there, but wouldn't pay for the tools just for the tree features. It did highlight a few people where I hadn't entered any sources, but that was mostly because I only knew the name and no facts. It also picked me up for not adding any sources to myself!

 

For my matches, I am seeing longest matching segment and, for all matches <90 cM, I'm also seeing unweighted DNA as higher than the weighted figure. (I think I'm right in assuming the TIMBER algorithm isn't used for matches >90 cM?)

I agree about your cousins seeing different shared matches, but I wouldn't interpret any of those in your list as indicating B is more closely related to A, as I know the amount of shared DNA is very variable once you get beyond 3rd cousins.

 

Sorry, my mistake - I was misinterpreting what you said. I now realise you were referring to the description of the shared matches, not the initial match. I too get similar results to you, i.e. the shared match (on the right of the screen) has unweighted the same as weighted and the longest segment just cM with no figure. Apologies.

 

My impression is that there are various bugs which need sorting. One thing I keep coming across is that searching and sorting matches doesn’t always work first time, and the page needs to be reloaded before the correct results show. I think this was happening with the new format before I got the Pro tools, but anyway it’s still happening sometimes.

 

I’ve had that sort of thing happen with Ancestry, but this isn’t quite the same. Say I was trying to sort my matches by date, the page loads fine and looks normal, but the matches are not properly sorted by date. Only after reloading are the matches properly sorted.

 

Strange, but at no point as yet have the new colours etc that this link is talking about appeared on my matches? I still have the original colours and circles.
On the other hand, this morning, first I can't get into any of trees, and now my account !!

 

There seems to be some major world wide issue affecting many systems this morning. It’s not just Ancestry!

 

Not fully, but trees and the DNA pages have been back for a while, though I haven’t checked if all features of these are working. Various dataset search pages were back around midday, but the data itself still isn’t available yet.