myGroups is Live!

[dna]

This morning upon logging into GAP I was greeted by a message: myGroups is Live!

• It was not evident where the current myGroups documentation was. The Family Tree DNA Learning Center appears to have two pieces about myGroups but labelled BETA.
• I was given an option to convert my project to myGroups now (I did not did that).
• If I do not do that manually, the project will be converted automatically two months from now.

Mr. W.

P.S. I am posting the above since there is no announcement here, on Facebook or via e-mail to project administrators.

[Carol Vass]

mygroups is live

Thanks for posting this, Mike. I also don't see anything on my surname projects GAP that has anything to do with 'myGroups'. An email went out to ALL customers this morning announcing 'myGroups is live' -- it had a click here link to get started. When I clicked that link, the regular log in screen appeared. I logged in using my brother's account, not my GAP log in, and found nothing on my brother's page that said anything about 'myGroups'.

I am very unclear about what myGroups will do. Is it just targeted to FF testing?? I can't imagine how this will work. I have identified 80+ surnames that are in my ancestry. Does that mean that my brother's Y-DNA results will be shown in all of those 80+ surname project Y-DNA results if I join him to all of those 'mygroups'??????

Another item in the email to ALL participants says that Project administrators will be posting coupons on a daily basis???? While I check my surname projects quite frequently, I do NOT check them daily!!! If FTDNA want to post coupons, wouldn't it be easier to have them automatically sent to each person's 'myFTDNA' page as a message.

I really hope that someone can illuminate all of the ins and outs of this new direction.

Carol Vass
Kent, WA

[Carol Vass]

mygroups is live -- more info

I just found a message at the top of my brother's myFTDNA page that says:
The H and HV mtDNA Hg project is participating in the myGroups Beta! Click here to see your new myGroups page.

I clicked over and there 'is' a H and HV 'mygroups' page. He is in that mtDNA group. But that appears to be the only project which has a 'mygroups' feature for now.

My question is whether a participant can ONLY be in a 'mygroups' IF they are already JOINed to a project -- whether it is a Y-DNA project or an mtDNA project and/or a Y-Haplogroup project? If so, this still causes me to wonder what happens to his actual Y-DNA results for a surname project that is NOT our Y-surname? It would 'seem' he has to JOIN a surname project to be eligible for the 'mygroups' experience and if that is the case, what in the world does that surname project do with his Y-DNA results which are in no way relevant to that surname project?? [And my question is what in the world am I to do with people who have ancestors connected to the surname projects I work on, but who are NOT Y-DNA descendants of that surname?]

Thanks,

Carol Vass
Kent, WA

[dna]

Just to clarify:

• the project I administer is a Y-DNA surname project, however it is small and we devised our collaboration structure (teleconferences, e-mails) some time ago, thus no immediate need for myGroups;
• I did get the e-mail notifications, but a little bit over an hour after posting here.

Mr. W.

[Carol Vass]

mygroups is live

Well, I hope someone can answer who has larger projects. Two of the projects I volunteer on have over 300 participants each. And there are well over 100-150+ separate and distinct Y-DNA Lineages -- which have no connection whatsoever other than the same surname.

I'm just trying to figure out how this system is going to work for the administrators of Y-DNA projects who have thousands of people who are descendants of a particular surname, but their Y-DNA is NOT from that surname.

I also don't know how many volunteer project administrators can guarantee that they will post 'daily' coupons!!! Why can't those daily 'coupons' be automatically shown on each participant's 'myftdna' page?

Carol

[John McCoy]

The customer e-mail about MyGroups appears to say (way, way down towards the bottom) that DNA results are NOT being converted to a new format at this time. So, what's the point, exactly? We need someone like Martha Stewart to tell us if "it's a good thing".

[dnaforsennett]

I'm a project admin of what is at the moment a fairly small surname project. I'm also really unclear what mygroups is all about and what will be changing. It would be good to be able to see a demo "my groups" homepage to have a bit of a play with it first. I also didn't click the link to switch to mygroups right away - think I'll wait until it automatically switches me, by which time hopefully any major bugs will be ironed out.

I'm guessing this is just part of the whole new thrust of linking DNA testing to sites like Findmypast and myheritage and creating a social networking focus. From an admin point of view I'm not sure how that will work - probably just create more work weeding out or dealing with even more vague supposed family connections (eg. "I also have a John Smith in my tree, do you think we are related?") - but if it does create some useful links and connections then maybe its worth it.

[peterdrh]

Daily Posting of Coupons by Administrators ....

....will be too onerous for many of us. FTDNA should at least use weekly coupons or as someone else recommend they should make the coupons available on each members home page and not enlist us to do their selling.

[lgmayka]

myGroups overloads web site

The most obvious immediate result of myGroups is that FTDNA's web site is now overloaded and frequently gives the message below. Does FTDNA realize that if you want to run a social networking site, you need to triple the number of servers?

By the way, this is on Google Chrome. Perhaps FTDNA's web site is now only meant to be compatible with Internet Explorer; but needless to say, that's not very web-friendly.
---
Server Error in '/' Application.

The wait operation timed out

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: The wait operation timed out

[robdrew7]

What happens to existing Group website?

My project's website is located at WorldFamilies.net. There are 3 principal elements there:

1) DNA results
2) Patriarch lists
3) A forum organized by topics

What becomes of these? Do they "live on", and get pointed to by links in MyGroup? Or are they recreated/relocated into the myGroup structure? We certainly don't want to lose the forum threads nor the Patriarch lists!

Second question: the new posting feature seems to have a single thread, without a "topics" structure. Looks more like group "chat"? Is that right? If so, it will make any lengthy conversations about research or lineages difficult to use, follow, or search.

Rob Drew

[MikeP]

I got an e-mail urging me to contact my administrator and demand switching to mygroups. The reward is supposed to be all the daily coupons and discounts ... that one would not presumably get otherwise ...

[eastara]

There must be some bug as I can see most new MyGroups Activity Feeds without being a member. Thus the coupon code, which can be used only once.

[dna]

There must be some bug as I can see most new MyGroups Activity Feeds without being a member. Thus the coupon code, which can be used only once.

I could use a $100 off for Big Y coupon code

Thank you in advance Mr. W.

[Tenn4ever]

I belong to several surname projects and other projects on several of my kits. Only one has joined myGroups and I really like it. I wish the others would join. The one which has switched over has over 3000 members...the Cumberland Gap group. Roberta Estes of DNAexPlained is one of the administrators.

[Táltos]

The most obvious immediate result of myGroups is that FTDNA's web site is now overloaded and frequently gives the message below. Does FTDNA realize that if you want to run a social networking site, you need to triple the number of servers?

By the way, this is on Google Chrome. Perhaps FTDNA's web site is now only meant to be compatible with Internet Explorer; but needless to say, that's not very web-friendly.
---
Server Error in '/' Application.

The wait operation timed out

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: The wait operation timed out

At some point yesterday I could not see the STR results for one project, but I could see them in yours. Presently I can see everything in both projects. But I now get the Server Application for just trying to look at my brother's matches! I really hope they fix this soon. It is reminding me of when GEDmatch goes down.