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For the past two years, FtDNA customers have been encouraged to upload full trees or gedcoms to this site, including sibling details.
I think this is a mistake for the following reasons:
1) The site has load and upload issues that I suspect are a mix of slow server speeds and our own browser's individual time-out settings, leaving many of us watching apparent 'in progress' screens that are not actually still connected to the site. It is particularly hard to load a tree which is 'wide' with lots of siblings plus spouses etc. It is extra hard to then view these trees if they do load.
2) Adding sibling marriages introduces surnames which are not genetically connected. If I do an ancestor surname search of my matches, I can get quite excited when a tree has some of my own surnames. But after a long load time I then learn that these surnames only married in and are nothing to do with my DNA match with that person.
I know we need to look at siblings and their lines of descent but I think this is best kept for our own external trees and we can discuss them via email with our matches.
If the FtDNA trees were simply direct ascent/descent, everyone in them would be a potential DNA connection point and the ancestor surname search feature would become useful again.
This change would suit the way I personally use my matches' provided details. I understand that others might have a different system.
I think this is a mistake for the following reasons:
1) The site has load and upload issues that I suspect are a mix of slow server speeds and our own browser's individual time-out settings, leaving many of us watching apparent 'in progress' screens that are not actually still connected to the site. It is particularly hard to load a tree which is 'wide' with lots of siblings plus spouses etc. It is extra hard to then view these trees if they do load.
2) Adding sibling marriages introduces surnames which are not genetically connected. If I do an ancestor surname search of my matches, I can get quite excited when a tree has some of my own surnames. But after a long load time I then learn that these surnames only married in and are nothing to do with my DNA match with that person.
I know we need to look at siblings and their lines of descent but I think this is best kept for our own external trees and we can discuss them via email with our matches.
If the FtDNA trees were simply direct ascent/descent, everyone in them would be a potential DNA connection point and the ancestor surname search feature would become useful again.
This change would suit the way I personally use my matches' provided details. I understand that others might have a different system.