Bug Fixes - 10/22/2014

[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.

[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.

[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]

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".

[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).

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Katydid]

Yes, I am targeting FTNDA

I know that owners have ultimate control over their samples, and, although I'd hate to see people remove themselves entirely from the database, I recognize that is their right.

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... leading to chaos for those of us who maintain databases to triangulate our matches.

I agree with you about separating email notifications from privacy settings - maybe that's the source of confusion because I don't understand why most people would have a need to turn off speculative matches. The match list is sorted by default in descending order of relationship already; you can just stop looking after the first few pages. (And surely people aren't getting bombarded by emails from speculative matches. I get a few a month, even though I have a statement under "About Me" that says "PLEASE contact me.")

What kind of email notifications are you getting regarding Family Finder? I've never gotten any for speculative matches.

Your posts are targeting Family Tree DNA, as if it were their DNA samples. These were DNA owners who had withdrawn their permissions to share the results. As simple as that. And quite possibly they had only removed permissions to share speculative matches.

They could have even asked for withdrawal of their DNA from the database altogether...

If your cousin tells you to not phone them ever again and changes her or his phone number, do you go against the phone company?

P.S. I have submitted a request for an enhancement to FTDNA, to separate e-mail notification settings from sharing/privacy settings. I can imagine some people having nothing against sharing, but seeing no other choice to stop e-mail notifications.
http://forums.familytreedna.com/showthread.php?t=36080

[Tenn4ever]

I hope anyone who chooses to remove their kit is no longer able to see ANY of their matches.

I use the DNA Segment Analyzer which uploads our Family Tree DNA. I had a strong match there on a segment and now that match isn't appearing on my Family Tree matches.

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

[dna]

@Katydid & @Timothy

Your posts are targeting Family Tree DNA, as if it were their DNA samples. These were DNA owners who had withdrawn their permissions to share the results. As simple as that. And quite possibly they had only removed permissions to share speculative matches.

They could have even asked for withdrawal of their DNA from the database altogether...

If your cousin tells you to not phone them ever again and changes her or his phone number, do you go against the phone company?

P.S. I have submitted a request for an enhancement to FTDNA, to separate e-mail notification settings from sharing/privacy settings. I can imagine some people having nothing against sharing, but seeing no other choice to stop e-mail notifications.

http://forums.familytreedna.com/showthread.php?t=36080

[T E Peterman]

I agree. Many of us download in Excel & store data. When the characteristics of that data shift, misinterpretations can occur. I want every matching event to have one, immutable, unchanging match date. I sort by match date & name & append what is new. I don't like it when cm counts are modified, even slightly. I don't like it when names are changed (maiden to married & back again); indeed I would prefer a matching key OTHER than name. The new Family Tree compels the change in kit name to match tree name. We should be able to link kits to the tree without changing the name in either the tree or the kit. A lot of female participants in FF use their married names, but in a tree, everyone knows to use the maiden name. Linking them forces one or the other to change.

And I don't like it when matches from months ago disappear & then re-appear several months later. We don't know if FF is simply making better kinship calculations based on data, or if settings are being tweaked.

When you are working with an Excel spreadsheet that contains over 5,000 names of matches, this stuff matters.

Timothy Peterman

[Katydid]

Ill-Advised Change

Angelia:
Ann:
Well, some might consider them preferences, others might consider them privacy settings But yes, those are the settings I mean. Those FF match settings were added fairly recently. Before, all matches were shown, and there were no settings to enable or disable them. Now, there are match settings for the different FF match levels, and they do indeed affect both parties, just like the Y-DNA and mtDNA match settings. The fix this week applied the new settings to the download files.

Elise

I hope FTDNA will reconsider this "fix". I keep spreadsheets (one for each kit) of downloaded chromosome browser data that I annotate and compare against one another to separate out ancestral lines. Having matches disappear out from under me is really going to confuse things if I/when I purchase FF kits for additional relatives.

[efgen]

Angelia:
Sorry about the differing responses. There was a little confusion over whether this was a deliberate change or a bug, so Customer Support responded with the information that they had at the time. I'm fairly sure it's a bug, though, and we're working on providing examples to IT so they can take a closer look at the issue.

Ann:
Well, some might consider them preferences, others might consider them privacy settings But yes, those are the settings I mean. Those FF match settings were added fairly recently. Before, all matches were shown, and there were no settings to enable or disable them. Now, there are match settings for the different FF match levels, and they do indeed affect both parties, just like the Y-DNA and mtDNA match settings. The fix this week applied the new settings to the download files.

Elise

[Ann Turner]

The following bugs were fixed this morning:
[*]Fixed the "Download All Matches to Excel" option on the Chromosome Browser to abide by the new Family Finder privacy settings.

Elise

Do I understand correctly -- this is not a privacy setting per se, but a choice about whether to see immediate/close/distant/speculative relatives?

https://my.familytreedna.com/account-settings.aspx

And both parties are affected. If a match doesn't want to view his/her speculative relatives, then I can't see him/her either. I compared my download today with a recent one, and four people are gone.