Can I use a Space to make DNA confirmation messages tidier?

Question

Suppose I am adding DNA Confirmation messages for a 3rd cousin match. That's 6 profiles I have to add a mini wall of text to , with slight variations for each profile (since a person is not on wikitree).

As well as being a lot of work this makes the profiles look messy -- especially if there end up being several confirmation messages for one profile.  And it will be even worse for triangulations.

Is it OK instead if we use the same technique as other cases of a shared resource affecting multiple profiles, and create a Space for the match?

The space will set out all the details of the match, this can also be formatted in a more readable way and with more information than the current message recommendation.

  And  add a source to each person's profile like

* Maternal DNA relationship confirmed by [Space:DNA confirmation Surname1 Surname2]    

It seems far better to me this way than a pile of copy-pasting; and if the message has to be tweaked later then it's one edit instead of 6.

In fact, it seems like a good idea to me to name the Space after the MRCA, and it can contain details of all matches (incl triangulations) for which that person/couple is the MRCA of the match.

'''EDIT:"' As suggested in comments I have set up an experimental implementation. Feedback welcome.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Francis_McNabb_and_Catherine_Farnan_DNA_Confirmations

Comments

Hello Matt,

I do not understand “the mini wall of text.” DNA confirmations are not that long. Do you have a profile example? Each of my cousins, who have taken tests and I match, only have one DNA confirmation on each profile. My father died many years ago. So to prove my paternal grandparents, I did need to prove back to both sets of paternal great grandparents. (I also have my moms dna confirmation and my sister’s.) So I have four dna confirmations on my profile, but my cousins only have one copy and pasted version of our dna confirmation. Example (I removed my mother’s and my sister’s confirmations):

DNA

• Paternal relationship is confirmed by an AncestryDNA test match between Missy Berryann and her paternal female first cousin 1x removed, ED. Their most-recent common ancestors are her great-grandparents and her cousin's grandparents, Arthur H Brock and Carlotta W Sinclair. Predicted relationship from AncestryDNA: 1st-2nd Cousins, based on sharing 573 cM across 28 segments.
• Paternal relationship is confirmed by an AncestryDNA test match between Missy Berryann and her paternal male first cousin 1x removed, DD. Their most-recent common ancestors are her grandparents and his great grandparents, Raymond Berryann and Madeleine Brock. Predicted relationship from AncestryDNA: 2nd Cousins, based on sharing 262 cM shared across 15 DNA segments.

Or is it that you do not want to copy and paste?  I write the one confirmation and then copy and paste my cousins’ dna confirmations down their lines. I change the “maternal relationship” or “paternal relationship” accordingly and that is it. It really does not take that long and I have a lot of DNA confirmations in my tree.

My father does have “a wall” of dna confirmations on his profile because, like I said, he is deceased. To prove his parents, I have included confirmations that prove his grandparents too. So he has five dna confirmations. They are at the very bottom of the profile, so they are not interfering with the look of the profile.

Or am I not understanding your question? I am still fairly new to DNA, so I am trying to learn. Thank you!

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Yep, I would consider that a mini wall of text that is often longer than any other section of the biography.  I understand its importance and interest, but it is still just technical detail to show that you did the DNA confirmation correctly (most people don't).

I agree with Matt.  A free space page would allow you to put all the details of DNA testing for multiple people in a single place.  The DNA confirmation in the biography would be a single sentence at most.

Answer 1

Since DNA tagging is checked by scanning for that confirmation message, moving it elsewhere will likely throw errors on the Suggestions List.

Comments

Hi Rob,

My understanding is that the current DNA confirmation suggestions (213 and 313) check the bio for the words "confirmed" and either "paternal" or "maternal". Matt's suggestion is that those words would be included in the in-profile source statement that points to the associated DNA confirmation space page, so I don't believe such a scenario would trigger those suggestions.

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Rick, In that case it might just work!

I could see how this would save a lot of copy-pasta if multiple confirmations were found, and that stuff does clutter the profiles as well. Apart from being a little more obfuscated if it needs to be verified I can't see any serious issues with the idea.

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@Rick OK... I guess I'll give it a go and see if anyone objects :)

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Hi Matt,

I believe this is an interesting idea that needs further discussion. But I'm still not totally convinced of the need for this. There will still be copying/pasting of source statements for the profiles. Whether it's a one-line or three-line paragraph to copy, in my opinion, there isn't that much difference in the work effort to copy/paste. And since the guidance for the source statements includes a suggestion to add a DNA subsection to the Sources section, I don't believe that including a large number of DNA confirmations under a DNA subsection at the end of the Sources section is messy or intrusive.

I'm not sure if anyone who has weighed in so far is doing so representing the DNA Team (I'm not a member of that team). So at this point, I'd suggest doing one as an example and then editing your original post to include links to the example profiles and associated example free space page.

Rob had mentioned that there could be potential problems with DNA confirmation-related suggestions, and while that may not currently be the case, we don't know what future suggestions Aleš, Peter, and the DNA team may already be contemplating/pursuing that might impact such a decision, or at least might impact what would still need to be included within the profile source statement that links to the free space page (for example, a future DNA confirmation suggestion might check that the word MRCA appears in the bio).

Also, as you alluded to (and I believe that Chris Whitten and/or Peter have also suggested in the past), there could be automation being contemplated/pursued by the Team/Tech folks that could eventually make it much easier to add DNA confirmation statements to the relevant profile(s).

Also for potential "DNA confirmation" free space page naming conventions, keep in mind that we could have an MRCA couple or just a single MRCA (which may need to be separate space pages if we have DNA confirmations for a single MRCA that is also part of a DNA-confirmed MRCA couple). And I'd suggest that such free space pages should be "Open" privacy to avoid some of the potential issues that Bennet/Jim discussed.

Answer 2

Interesting idea, but since a confirmation statement must be present on each of the profiles you are confirming back to the MRCA, you will need to copy and paste something on each; so a free-space page actually might result in more work for you. And if the confirmation statements are the last items in the Sources section, they will be at the bottom of the page and seldom seen.

However, if you decide to try it, I hope you will give some thought to a naming convention. Whatever you name the free-space page becomes part of the URL; so, if you create a free-space page named, say, "John Smith DNA Confirmations," no one else can create such a page for a different John Smith using the same page name and URL. At the least, you would need to incorporate the WikiTree ID for the MRCA.

Some things concern me , though, about having all the confirmation details for all the descendants of an MRCA on a free-space page:

* If the free-space page is for an MRCA, say, eight generations back (or much further for yDNA), it eventually could include DNA details for a very large number of descendants. It could be difficult to find the information for the correct testers on the page.

* The free-space page would "belong" to the creator and presumably would vanish if the creator died or canceled his account. I'm not certain how that works but you would need to have more than one profile manager to prevent that.

* If the privacy level were not set to Open, only the PMs could add information to the free-space page, creating another hoop to jump through for other descendants of the MRCA.

If you try this, please let us know where we can see an example.

Comments

Some excellent points there, I wasn't aware of free spaces being deleted if they don't have a manager . That problem would seem to exist for all the other free space profiles  I have made then.

For a naming convention, how about "DNA Confirmations for MRCA couple Smith-1234 and Jones-5678" ?  Or perhaps leading with the two IDs would be better for searchability purposes.

I'm hoping that in future WT introduces automated DNA confirmation message generation, i.e. you can input directly that two people had a match of NNN cM etc. (maybe this could even be via a sticker) and it computes the messages .  So maybe this will all become moot in future.

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I don't think it's correct that free space pages without a profile manager are necessarily deleted. For an example of such a page that still exists, see Peter Godeffroy (Ship 1857).

I suppose there could be some complicated criteria that would lead to deletion in some cases. It's an important question, even beyond the current DNA confirmation context.

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I've asked about permanency of free-space profiles in a separate G2G question.

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I don't see anything on the Free-Space help page but the Advanced Directives help page says, "If a member is unreachable for an extended period of time, or we discover that they have passed away, we need to delete the private profiles that they were managing unless there are other family members on the Trusted Lists of those profiles."

I don't know if it would be better to start the page name with the WT iDs. That might result in a search returning pages about the MRCAs but without DNA information. Perhaps "DNA Confirmation Details: Smith-1234 and Jones-5678." 

And what if the MRCA has more than one spouse and you have a triangulation through children of three of them. The spouses become irrelevant since the DNA must have come from THE MRCA, so you don't have to include them on the free-space page. But, what if someone else then wants to have a triangulation through three children of the MRCA and one of the spouses? He would need to have the spouses' names on the free-space page. And you can't add another WT ID to the page name once the page is created.

This is rapidly becoming complicated!

Yes, some automation would be good, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

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OK, I have set up a trial space now, see edit to the question.