Easier to fill in ancestral info

[annema]

There are three different places in your FTDNA account where you need to fill in information about ancestry.

1. Contact information: country of origin for direct paternal and maternal lines
2. User Preferences: name and place for earliest known ancestor of direct paternal and maternal lines
3. My Maps: Plot Ancestral Locations: name and place for earliest known ancestor of direct paternal and maternal lines

These should be:
a) collected under one heading
b) people who have empty or inaccurate info (project admins should be able to "tag" as inaccurate/insufficient, like a male name for maternal ancestor) should be taken directly to that page and be prompted to fill in these fields on log-in
c) explained as "maternal" = mother's mother's mother (many make mistakes here), preferably with a figure

Also the "Unknown Origin" (1. above):
There should also be a "country of origin" category of "American immigrant from Europe" (plus possibly same for Africa/other continents) - for all those who don't know more than that.

I also suggest adding:
"unknown - adopted"
"unknown for family reasons"
etc
- to give people a chance to say that they have checked but really know little or nothing.

At the moment it is impossible to know whether we have a default "unknown" for somebody who does not know where to put info, or a really "unknown" ancestor.

[Elistariel]

I like this.
Granted it won't do me any good as I have no clue where my direct-maternal line is from and being female I'm useless for direct-paternal line info. The furthest back I can trace my direct-maternal line to is North Carolina, and I know good and well I'm not Native American.

[rivergirl]

[QUOTE=annema;233943].

Also the "Unknown Origin" (1. above):
There should also be a "country of origin" category of "American immigrant from Europe" (plus possibly same for Africa/other continents) - for all those who don't know more than that.

./QUOTE]

Then also add all the other countries that people migrated to. Not everyone testing is an American.

[Jim Barrett]

I think it would be nice if everyone did provide what information they know but it isn't FTDNA's place to force customers to do so. When I ordered my kit I didn't see anything saying that I HAD TO PROVIDE information on my ancestors.

[annema]

@rivergirl: Yes, maybe what we need is a category of ticking off "emigrated to {country} from unknown place" for any country. Also "emigrated to {country} from {continent}" - and then be able to add continent, which most people would know.

The problem now is that the choices are too few, so that the information people do have can not be submitted properly.

@Jim Barrett: Maybe there should be a category of "I do not wish to provide any information about my ancestry."

But the main problem here is not that people don't want to provide info, it that the system is too complex for them to do so even if they want to. It's been debated elsewhere in this forum that people waste their money on these tests if they don't provide enough information to actually track ancestry - that's a different debate, but maybe those who are only interested in the anthropological issue would be able to list just that. Then group admins would be able to categorize these accordingly.