The responses to “Those Ancestral Compilations in the AncestryDNA Circles” has been overwhelming. Wow. It’s important to remember that the connections made via DNA are different from the information in the “ancestral compilation” that appears on the circle page.
A few reminders (and these are generalizations):
- getting in circles requires a tree tied to your DNA results
- getting in a circle requires a DNA match that has a tree tied to the their results that has the same ancestral names as you
- membership in a circle does not prove a connection
- membership in a circle suggests that you and the DNA match share that connection
- it is possible that you and circle members are related through a different ancestor-not the one for whom the circle is named
- you and a circle member may have another shared ancestor–if you have double cousins
The circles at AncestryDNA are a way to potentially help genealogists determine the paper genealogical relationship with their DNA matches.
The “biographical compilation” on the “circle page” for an ancestor is compiled via highly automated process. That compilation is separate from the DNA circle analysis.https://rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com/?p=7273 That compilation as discussed in the post should be take with a huge shaker of salt.
2 Responses
I have left numerous comments about the DNA Circles biographies and how I felt they were a disservice to the hard work some of us put into our trees. To compile a biography from information on all the trees for a person is useless when much of it is wrong. I pointed out that someone new to Ancestry and new to family research would copy this incorrect information into their trees. A couple of times I received an indignant reply from someone on the Ancestry team informing me that they were sorry that my information on a particular ancestor did not match what others had. In other words, it was all my fault! I suggested that these biographies be changed so that users could edit them but that was not taken well either. I guess they like their computer-generated garbage better than what we as researchers would compose.Thanks for posting this article – at least I now know that I am not the only one who sees the faults of this “service”.
I understand the need to have “something” besides the person’s name. That said, my advice would be to simply have an “approximate” range of birth and death dates and leave the rest of it off.