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Ancestry DNA Matches

It looks good so far.

Unfortunately it won't recognise relationships past 5th cousin, determining them as "Distant relationship", so I don't know if it goes far enough.

Otherwise, I like the change in labelling.
 
I think a small benefit is that you can at least label matches as "mother's side" or "father's side" even if you don't know the exact relationship, which might help with identifying some of the unknown links?
 
jorghes said:
I think a small benefit is that you can at least label matches as "mother's side" or "father's side" even if you don't know the exact relationship, which might help with identifying some of the unknown links?
Click to expand...
I agree, but you can already do that by assigning matches to groups, and I have a broad group for mother's side and a similar one for father's side, and the coloured dots stand out and are immediately recognisable.
 
Susan48 said:
I agree, but you can already do that by assigning matches to groups, and I have a broad group for mother's side and a similar one for father's side, and the coloured dots stand out and are immediately recognisable.
Click to expand...
I tend to use red/yellow colours for mother's side and blue/green for father's side.
 
Yes I discovered this yesterday thinking …'not another Ancestry innovation'? Knowing others of recent times have not always been well received. I decided to explore the first one on my list who just happens to be my daughter.

Answering 'yes' and then selecting 'Both sides' brought up the statement that she was my Daughter; which caused me to smile. I selected the next two in turn, both on my Mother's side, and chose the relationship. (I more or less knew what they were but checked them out anyway). Once confirmed a white on green "View Match" shows.

Is it a useful innovation? Not quite sure. I know of relationships anyway if colour coded into groups. Those that did not qualify to be group I have my notes to go on even if quite often...'nothing found'. I would go through the sequence of choosing a 'side' and checking out a relationship anyway but other than that my jury is out on whether this assists me in so doing. I will await, as Helen requests, to hear what others think.
 
Susan48 said:
.... and the coloured dots stand out and are immediately recognisable.
Click to expand...
Only if you use a few distinctive colours. If Ancestry had used independent semicircles in the "dots", then red/yellow/green/blue/black gives 25 easily distinguishable "dots" - one more than the 24 indistinct colours they currently use.
 
Helen7 said:
Looking at my DNA Match list on Ancestry this morning, I noticed a new 'feature'. On the right hand side of every person listed, it asks 'Do you recognize them?' and if I click 'Yes' I can say if the match is on my mother's or father's side and give the actual relationship to me (if known) e.g. 2nd cousin 1x removed. Then clicking 'Confirm' replaces Ancestry's guess of 3rd-4th cousin (or whatever) with your known relationship and will also say 'Mother's (or Father's) side' beneath the cM numbers.
Click to expand...

I don't notice anything different from last month. Will someone please display a screen print to let me know what to expect when I am finally admitted?
Currently, I store similar information as a note and that gets displayed under the entry, cousin relationship at left and which of 8 groups (2G GPs) assigned at right. Even if precise group is not known, this can often be guessed at from assigned group of shared matches.
 
PhilGee said:
Only if you use a few distinctive colours. If Ancestry had used independent semicircles in the "dots", then red/yellow/green/blue/black gives 25 easily distinguishable "dots" - one more than the 24 indistinct colours they currently use.
Click to expand...

Yes the dot colours can be very similar but if the pointer is hovered over them then the assigned name is shown.
 
jorghes said:
I think a small benefit is that you can at least label matches as "mother's side" or "father's side" even if you don't know the exact relationship, which might help with identifying some of the unknown links?
Click to expand...
I mostly agree but I can think of quite a few unknown matches in my list where it's unclear which side the match is related to me on, as there are shared matches with documented cousins on both sides. (This is despite there being no evidence either on paper or in my DNA that my parents were related, and almost certainly the ambiguity is due to 'relatives in common', which I raised in another thread.)

These ambiguous matches are already colour coded to show the two possible areas (or in one case 3) of my tree where we might be related, and I think it might confuse things if I were to mark them as possibly related to me on both sides.

It can be risky anyway to assume too much about how an unknown match might be related to you from just one or two shared matches.
 
Pauline said:
It can be risky anyway to assume too much about how an unknown match might be related to you from just one or two shared matches.
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Agreed - I have some still to be diagnosed matches where there are shared matches with cousins on opposite sides of my tree.
 
Bob Spiers said:
Is it a useful innovation? Not quite sure. I know of relationships anyway if colour coded into groups.
Click to expand...
I agree, it couldn't replace the colour coding into groups (which I use for the 8 pairs of 2xGGs, plus some other sub-groups). But with the new system I can see at a glance if I've worked out exactly how a match is related to me: if so it will have the green 'view match' button and if not the 'Do you recognize them' buttons are shown.
 
Helen7 said:
with the new system I can see at a glance if I've worked out exactly how a match is related to me
Click to expand...
I put this information in the first line of the Notes - just as I would at LostCousins. For me the presence of a coloured dot also indicates a match that has been resolved.
 
peter said:
For me the presence of a coloured dot also indicates a match that has been resolved.
Click to expand...
I put a coloured dot when I've identified the relevant branch, not that I've necessarily identified the exact relationship. My notes may not give a definitive relationship either.

Clearly everyone will have a different way of working, and what works for one person won't necessarily work for another.
 
Why doesn't this new feature not use the information from the connection button which was already there? I have over 200 people whom I have already identified and linked to my tree but now Ancestry is suggesting we do it all over again.
 
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