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Deplorable loss for Y-STR research
I've been volunteering to help a research project here in the Czech Republic that for years has been providing people with at least basically researched male lines with the possibility of getting a small set of their Y-STR markers determined free of charge. For many Czechs (more than two thousand at this moment), this has been their first encounter with genetic genealogy.
The project was wise enough to set up its own public Czech Y-STR database at http://www.genebaze.cz/cgi-bin/cyd.cgi?lang=us&n=cz but Ysearch has always been an important part of the process, because it enabled comparisons with an international collection of samples and it was also a way of making our results available to the public. A few participants have even actually managed to discover new relationships by means of a match on Ysearch, and for many more this overall experience has been a gate into more advanced testing (more markers, Y-SNP, atDNA...) with the commercial companies (and we have always recommended FTDNA because of its long history and good reputation).
I regret Ysearch being shut down, not because of the software (which has indeed been broken for many years), but because of all the data and effort that hundreds of thousands of people have invested into it. Should this data really disappear for good this Thursday, it would mean another little Library of Alexandria burnt down. The recent post about Geni possibly stepping into the process gives some hope, and I still hope that at least someone is going to make a backup of all of that, keep it at home and republish some fifty years into the future, when all or most of those tested are dead and protection does not apply anymore.
It's not true that Ysearch is not needed today because FTDNA is the only company that is doing Y-STR, so everyone can use their internal database. To the contrary, as indicated on its main page, almost 12 % of Ysearch's 220.000 records come from other labs. These are NOT going to be found in FTDNA's internal database - and possibly anywhere else - after Ysearch is closed.
A big part of that endangered data are probably precious haplotypes which have already once been saved when Ancestry.com deleted their own Y-STR data and data from other databases they had acquired, including the Sorenson project, to the anger of many. If those profiles are not taken care for today (curators have died or are otherwise inactive), chances are it will not survive this Thursday.
We genealogists give immense value to any sources of information on our ancestors that have had the luck of surviving to these days to inform us about our own past. By neglecting to protect and save a part of our current research, we are willingly destroying would-be treasures for future generations of genealogists.
As for our research project, we regret loosing the possibility of uploading our results into the last public international Y-STR database out there. There must be other private/non-commercial labs and researchers who produce Y-STR results and link them to genealogy (it does not all have to be just about forensics and anonymity) and these people and their clients now find themselves abandoned, because - to a great loss for science - they are not a part of FTDNA. Independent researchers are truly losing their last place for sharing Y-STR data when Ysearch is closing.
I've been volunteering to help a research project here in the Czech Republic that for years has been providing people with at least basically researched male lines with the possibility of getting a small set of their Y-STR markers determined free of charge. For many Czechs (more than two thousand at this moment), this has been their first encounter with genetic genealogy.
The project was wise enough to set up its own public Czech Y-STR database at http://www.genebaze.cz/cgi-bin/cyd.cgi?lang=us&n=cz but Ysearch has always been an important part of the process, because it enabled comparisons with an international collection of samples and it was also a way of making our results available to the public. A few participants have even actually managed to discover new relationships by means of a match on Ysearch, and for many more this overall experience has been a gate into more advanced testing (more markers, Y-SNP, atDNA...) with the commercial companies (and we have always recommended FTDNA because of its long history and good reputation).
I regret Ysearch being shut down, not because of the software (which has indeed been broken for many years), but because of all the data and effort that hundreds of thousands of people have invested into it. Should this data really disappear for good this Thursday, it would mean another little Library of Alexandria burnt down. The recent post about Geni possibly stepping into the process gives some hope, and I still hope that at least someone is going to make a backup of all of that, keep it at home and republish some fifty years into the future, when all or most of those tested are dead and protection does not apply anymore.
It's not true that Ysearch is not needed today because FTDNA is the only company that is doing Y-STR, so everyone can use their internal database. To the contrary, as indicated on its main page, almost 12 % of Ysearch's 220.000 records come from other labs. These are NOT going to be found in FTDNA's internal database - and possibly anywhere else - after Ysearch is closed.
A big part of that endangered data are probably precious haplotypes which have already once been saved when Ancestry.com deleted their own Y-STR data and data from other databases they had acquired, including the Sorenson project, to the anger of many. If those profiles are not taken care for today (curators have died or are otherwise inactive), chances are it will not survive this Thursday.
We genealogists give immense value to any sources of information on our ancestors that have had the luck of surviving to these days to inform us about our own past. By neglecting to protect and save a part of our current research, we are willingly destroying would-be treasures for future generations of genealogists.
As for our research project, we regret loosing the possibility of uploading our results into the last public international Y-STR database out there. There must be other private/non-commercial labs and researchers who produce Y-STR results and link them to genealogy (it does not all have to be just about forensics and anonymity) and these people and their clients now find themselves abandoned, because - to a great loss for science - they are not a part of FTDNA. Independent researchers are truly losing their last place for sharing Y-STR data when Ysearch is closing.
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