Bug Fixes - 10/22/2014

[Katydid]

These people should not be allowed to have any access if they remove their kits.

I think that is already the case - if you remove your kit, it's like you've never tested.

[LynCra]

In what circumstances would anyone be bombarded by e-mails about FF matches? Curious about this as in three years I have only ever had one such e-mail and that was for the kit I manage for my aunt. I wish I could turn on e-mail notifications for more distant matches so I would not have to twiddle about with date sorting on the match list and the rather dubious situation where the date of posting is different from the match date shown.

[Tenn4ever]

In what circumstances would anyone be bombarded by e-mails about FF matches? Curious about this as in three years I have only ever had one such e-mail and that was for the kit I manage for my aunt. I wish I could turn on e-mail notifications for more distant matches so I would not have to twiddle about with date sorting on the match list and the rather dubious situation where the date of posting is different from the match date shown.

I get '0' notifications about FF matches, close or otherwise. I've never gotten notifications about FF matches. I do get notifications about Y surname matches which I wish I wouldn't get unless it's 37 markers or higher. I'm not interested in the ones less than that so it's annoying.

[efgen]

However, this was an active change on FTDNA's part, hence the complaint. It seems from various threads that people in many cases are clicking on these settings without understanding what they have done...

These settings were added for consistency with our already existing Y-DNA and mtDNA match settings. Customers have always had the option to disable matching and emails at each match level for those tests.

I am, however, asking to have the description of the settings changed, since it's not clear that changing these to No disables both email notifications and matches.

Elise

PS. For the several who asked... YES, when someone disables matching, it goes both ways. If you can't see them, they can't see you. ALL matching at Family Tree DNA has always been done this way, for every test. One small exception -- if one of your Y-DNA matches has disabled matching, you can still see the surname (but nothing else, and they can't see you or anything about you).

[Katydid]

These settings were added for consistency with our already existing Y-DNA and mtDNA match settings. Customers have always had the option to disable matching and emails at each match level for those tests.

I would like to point out that in the case of yDNA and mtDNA matches, turning off email notifications (with the unfortunate side effect of making them private) makes some sense, as otherwise people get emails every time they receive a match. That gets really tedious if you have, say, mtDNA in haplogroup H. In the case of Family Finder, we do not receive notifications for speculative matches (thank goodness). There really wasn't a compelling need for this, and the side effect is far worse. In my respectful opinion, this change for the sake of consistency brings to mind Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous quote (something about hobgoblins )

I am, however, asking to have the description of the settings changed, since it's not clear that changing these to No disables both email notifications and matches.

Elise

Thank you. I still wish this would be returned to its former functionality, or at least the two functions separated as suggested by "dna".

[T E Peterman]

My point is that when these seemingly minute changes happen, those of us who maintain deep spreadsheets find a lot of work impacted, to the point where I have had to throw away half a year's worth of downloading matches. I would at least appreciate it, if a kit is removed, if Family Tree DNA would put a holder in its place that would remove the name & ancestry, but retain the match date & shared cm count. This would give me a clue as to which of the people I need to remove from my database. Otherwise, although the person is gone, his kit name, e-mail address & surnames are still in my database.

Consistency is what I'm looking for here.

Timothy Peterman

[Katydid]

Wait a sec....

Actually, considering the implications after looking at the new settings options, I'm not thrilled about having to choose personally between "don't show speculative matches" vs. "no email notifications". I certainly don't want to (and won't) have my speculative matches disappear from view, but I'm not looking forward to getting an email notification every time I get a new FF match. I administer 14 kits!

Do people really want to be "private" to their matches at any level? I think the vast, vast majority just don't want to be "spammed" by FTDNA. The current setting should simply be changed to toggle on and off email notifications. That should be an easy fix.

[dna]

My point is that when these seemingly minute changes happen, those of us who maintain deep spreadsheets find a lot of work impacted, to the point where I have had to throw away half a year's worth of downloading matches. I would at least appreciate it, if a kit is removed, if Family Tree DNA would put a holder in its place that would remove the name & ancestry, but retain the match date & shared cm count. This would give me a clue as to which of the people I need to remove from my database. Otherwise, although the person is gone, his kit name, e-mail address & surnames are still in my database.

Consistency is what I'm looking for here.

Timothy Peterman

I consider Timothy's proposal to be a very reasonable one and fairly easy to implement.

Thus if anybody vanishes, on the match list one would see for example:

Match Removed, Match Date, Relationship Range, Shared cM, Longest Block cM
(and the silhouette could be a question mark).

I do not think that would violate that persons rights to privacy, as there would be no
* ancestral surnames
* e-mail
* family tree
* haplogroups
* in common with
* not in common with
* profile
* sex information
* tests taken
* X-match information

Notes and Known Relationship..., I am not sure about these two.

P.S. Timothy, I think in the current situation you just need to modify your procedures a little bit. For example, start using a utility to compare CSV files, that is always compare the currently downloaded file with the previous one.