Can someone explain

[David1209]

Hello

Can someone explain why people go to the trouble of time and expense to do a DNA test only to:

Omit their name or only list initials

Not reply to messages

Not list any names they are researching

Not even begin to post a family tree or have your listings as private

If you're not interested in genealogy and/or you want to remain anonymous then WHY did you do this DNA test?

It makes no sense!

[hansonrf]

Good Question

Hello

Can someone explain why people go to the trouble of time and expense to do a DNA test only to:

Omit their name or only list initials

Not reply to messages

Not list any names they are researching

Not even begin to post a family tree or have your listings as private

If you're not interested in genealogy and/or you want to remain anonymous then WHY did you do this DNA test?

It makes no sense!

Some folks share, some just take. Some folks, on Ancestry, for example, have no trees they are willing to share but willingly suck up everything the "sharers" float out there... Same here.

Some days I wish we could simply exclude the takers from the sharing pool. Some days I feel grateful my momma taught me better...

That's why I like GedMatch so much.

[John McCoy]

Failure of American educational system?

[jsarnacki]

Here's my 2cents answers

Omit their name or only list initials I do this with some of my family members. I am the one doing the research. They only agreed because I asked them to do it. They don't all understand the potential consequences, so I feel an obligation to keep their identities somewhat private. I do share this information with those who I feel would benefit most. For example, I share openly with my surname project. I do NOT however share with speculative matches unless there is a chance that we can find the connections.

Not reply to messages I can only assume they are busy, as I am at times, or they just don't care

Not list any names they are researching I do my best to provide ancestral names for those who are earlier generation testers, but it is a lot of work and I tend to personally skip it for the later generations when the info is available for the earlier generations. For example, I list for my grandpa, dad, mom, and husband, but I skip for my children.

Not even begin to post a family tree or have your listings as private I go back and forth on this because my tree is a collaboration of my own research and that of others. I need to find a balance of what to share and not to share, so that they will still work with me. I also don't like the idea of people copying my/their research and I have a TON of living family members whom I must also protect privacy of.

If you're not interested in genealogy and/or you want to remain anonymous then WHY did you do this DNA test? They do it for others to research (like my family members did it for ME, but aren't interested themselves) OR, they were only curious about DNA testing and may only be interested in ethnicity.

It makes no sense! I know it is frustrating, but really those who test owe nothing to those they match. I just chose to focus on those who have enough information for me to work with. I still have not sent an e-mail to any of my matches. I do respond as best as I can to their e-mails and I am active with my surname project, but that is all I can handle for now anyway! I have tons of research I am working on, without the extra hassle of trying to contact people. Also, I get extremely frustrated by those who contact me, solicit information from me, then don't reciprocate when I ask them for a few details. I find it extremely rude and disheartening, which leads me to back off what kind of information I have available, such as full names of testers, lists of surnames, and yes, I also limit my family tree to direct ancestors only.

[jsarnacki]

Some folks share, some just take. Some folks, on Ancestry, for example, have no trees they are willing to share but willingly suck up everything the "sharers" float out there... Same here.

Some days I wish we could simply exclude the takers from the sharing pool. Some days I feel grateful my momma taught me better...

That's why I like GedMatch so much.

This is very much how I feel! I am all for working together for a common cause, but I have had way more takers contact me than those willing to actually collaborate and work together!.

[rivergirl]

My two cents worth.

Not everyone test FF for the same reason, and are not always interested in finding long lost relatives/connections. My family do not have US colonial roots and are not American. We have been lucky that we have been able to get back to our country of origins for most of our family lines. We have gone back to 1700s in most cases and are only stopped by the lack of records and/or the ambiguity of records in that period.

I tested 2 men for FF after they had tested for yDNA. They match well on yDNA but we still were not sure at what generation, so we used FF to see if it helped. We were interested to see if they had any matches with other people of their surname or family connections but that wasn’t our main reason for testing.

I had several other relatives test to prove/disprove the theory that a particular ancestor was the father or stepfather of our grandmother. As he was Italian we expected to see some of that ancestry in the My Origins and matches with people with Italian ancestry. Once again we were not really looking for long lost relatives as we had this line documented back to the village in Italy in the 1600s and have a very extensive tree worldwide for this family. It turns out more likely that the actual father was of Scottish decent.

As some of my relatives were elderly and not really sure of DNA testing and being on the Internet I was not going to use their full names, so they are listed under Initial and aliases. I can’t see how that hurts anyone.....
I don’t post trees on FTDNA, and I might post a few surnames or Counties/Countries of origin if I think it might help.

After several years of this I’m not really bothered with FF much, so have turned off Speculative and Distant matches for most of the relatives kits. I have had a few people email me demanding to know why they can’t see these matches anymore. In most cases we have already provided any information we had and can’t help any further. Once again, hunting down every distant connection and relatives with FF was not our intent when testing.

I don’t understand why people get so upset if others use Initials or don’t post trees and surnames.

[wombat]

Here's my 2cents: I do NOT however share with speculative matches unless there is a chance that we can find the connections.

Why? Many people don't get ANY matches at all listed other than speculative/distant (not everyone has mostly long Colonial or UK roots) and sometimes seeing some of those can give someone important clues, ones that might not be obvious to you, like when my dad got six people who listed Finnish/Scandinavian ancestry and all matched on a tiny segment that 23 had called Finnish. If they had all blocked anything but close matches from sharing then we'd have never gotten more or less proof that his bit of Finnish ancestry is real and recentish.

Also sometimes distant are actually close and speculative are actually distant due to no calls or other weird issues so you may well be blocking even some close matches.

I also don't like the idea of people copying my/their research and I have a TON of living family members whom I must also protect privacy of.

You can set the tree to make any living members show up as blank. (Strictly speaking nobody random really cares who is related to who anyway though. If someone walked up to you on the street and said John SMith is their brother and Michael Joe is their 2nd great-grandfather, would you care? You'd just try to forget it as soon as they left. So other than in a few specific types of cases the privacy fears are probably way overblown anyway. Even celebs put their trees for millions to see on those genealogy shows. But again, you can simply set it so all recent gens are private without having to hide your entire tree.)

Also, I get extremely frustrated by those who contact me, solicit information from me, then don't reciprocate when I ask them for a few details.

Yeah, annoying. They act all enthusiastic and you send a ton of info and POOF you never hear from them again and they share nothing back, no thanks, nothing. It's a shame because then some set their tree to private and only share once people give them info but that slows the whole process down and makes it so tricky.

[jsarnacki]

Why? Many people don't get ANY matches at all listed other than speculative/distant (not everyone has mostly long Colonial or UK roots) and sometimes seeing some of those can give someone important clues, ones that might not be obvious to you
I understand. But, I have 1783 matches for my grandfather alone, not including the speculative matches. I prefer to focus on those. I have wasted a ton of time communicating with these speculative matches who want to TAKE information, but do not want to SHARE in return. For that reason alone I prefer to focus on those lines that interest me. As for my speculative matches? The only line I am REALLY interested in speculative matches for is my surname and for that I am part of the surname project. We can all go to gedmatch and compare our autosomal dna there. Anyhow, I have scaled back and no longer allow speculative matches to contact me unless they are in my surname project. As some point I will add speculative matches back, but not until I am ready to.




You can set the tree to make any living members show up as blank.
I am aware of this. But... I still prefer not to post my entire tree for the reasons mentioned. I have over 4000 people on my tree. A ton of those are living parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins (close and distant. I just find it easier to limit my tree. I prefer that to looking at a tree and seeing so many "private" people that their tree is useless anyway

[CuriousAdoptee]

Transfers from Ancestry may be part of the problem, since people aren't really testing with Family Tree, and may look at the results and aren't fully invested in actually using Family Tree.

What I've come across is that the individuals the most into DNA genealogy are only interested in their few surnames and lines and aren't interested at all in helping anyone outside of those lines. IMO, that's going to skew their research since they have no idea what else is on other sides of their relatives' family trees that they are testing, but frequently I've come across people who have tested their cousins and have absolutely no clue about their cousins' full family tree other than the line they are interested in. Nor do they want to be bothered by anyone asking about it since they don't know.

As for not having family trees, I have had several people tell me they will not give that out because they don't know me and fear identity theft. Simply listing a person as private would give someone their mother's maiden name which is a security question for many credit cards and banks. Of course, some states have public birth records (like Ohio) which give this information to anyone who searches it, so hiding your family tree does exactly what, I'm not sue.