What is the success rate for the DNA confirmation process

Question

I have just watched the Wikitree Livecast about DNA confirmation and am curious to know what percentage of those who have registered as DNA Tested have actually managed to make any confirmations.

I know that I am going to be struggling to ever reach a stage where I can meet the requirements. How successful have others been?

Comments

I've made a lot of connections through DNA, but I've only been able to get a few cousins to upload their results to GEDMatch, and I've only found a few others in GEDMatch where I know how I'm related to them.  Even in GEDMatch, most people don't respond to emails. I met a fairly close cousin here last week, but he's not in GEDMatch.  It all seems futile.  I doubt that there's a way that anyone could give you an accurate percentage.

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Thanks for your input J. Crook. I am also finding that people are resistant to using gedmatch.

Since Wikitree has such good tracking of other key performance indicators I was rather hoping that statistics about DNA Testers and DNA Confirmations might be readily available.

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I have been feeling my way on this, but have been able to make about a dozen convincing triangulations about half of which I have been able to record in wikitree. I think I have another two dozen or so where I am close to successfully triangulating the matches, or just haven't had time to set up the triangulation group to pin down the details. It's obviously very challenging -- having enough matches on a segment with people who have deep enough trees, trying to compare segments across different services, being sufficiently confident that the common ancestor you have identified is the source when there has been lots of intermarrying within a branch (and hence multiple independent lines the segment could have been passed down), and then having the matches being willing to record it on wikitree. But all good fun!

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Thanks for your input Thomas. I use Genome Mate Pro to compare segments across different services, so there will be situations where I have a fully documented triangulation but not all parties are on gedmatch. My initial thoughts were that Wikitree could be missing out on well researched DNA evidence from many testers given the requirement to have all parties on gedmatch.

Answer 1

I guess in the states more people has tested than in Sweden. In Sweden 99% of all people do the tests with FTDNA

See Sälgö-1#Confirmed_DNA_connections

Comments

Magnus, surely the company they have tested with should not impact significantly on the confirmation process. However, The States also have the advantage of more people having profiles on Wikitree. For my own part of the world (NE England) I have the joint disadvantages of few profiles to connect into further up my tree and few people who have tested.

Thanks for the link. Off to take a look at it now.

Answer 2

My sister and I were both tested and have made two cousin connections.   I think there are more but most people have not put enough genealogy information to confirm the source of the match.  On the other hand I have not contacted the matches for more information.  I think it will be increasingly important in the future. Cherry

Comments

Thanks Cherry. That is the sort of thing I am wondering about. Were you able to work your two cousin connections through the confirmation process or did you meet hurdles?

Answer 3

Only one so far on Wikitree. I have a long list on GEDmatch and an even longer one on Ancestry but have not had time to learn how to do it all yet.

Comments

Thanks Susanna. Does that mean that you have found one, but not yet figured out how to do the formal confirmation?

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Someone I'm related to found the DNA link which confirmed our common ancestor. Not sure what to do beyond that or how to do it myself. It's on my list but haven't got to it yet.

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Is that one close enough to confirm just with two test people or does it meet the distance criteria to require a fully documented triangulated set of profiles to be able to formally confirm?

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There are a lot of Whites on here so it wasn't just one DNA comparison that she made. However I'm still a long way off fully understanding it all.

Answer 4

One out of two of my old yDNA matches granted me permission to add them to WikiTree and I have flagged that confirmation.  A new yDNA match  has appeared on WikiTree that I have not flagged that confirmation yet.  There are no mtDNA matches with myself, but there are a couple of confirmations of the same haplogroup I could work on.  I did find a third cousin auDNA match that doesn’t require triangulation, maybe, but find the confirmation policy unintelligible. See https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/389306/what-estimated-number-generations-mrca-third-cousin-closer I have not received an answer on what this policy means, but I do like the way Kay Wilson is reasoning through it.

Comments

Thanks James. I read the thread that you linked to about the policy. I agree it is not easy to find an interpretation of how to read the gedmatch results.

I have the additional problem that getting matches to agree to use gedmatch is difficult enough. Trying to persuade them to then allow their gedmatch number to be shown on a profile on Wikitree could have the opposite effect to what is desired with some of my matches and push them the other way into being even more protective of their online visibility.

Answer 5

Of my matches who actually have trees posted somewhere that I can access (which is a tiny percentage of my matches), I've been able to find common ancestors on about half. There's only one ancestral line that I've found 3rd cousin or closer matches/triangulated matches to where I'm comfortable marking the line as DNA confirmed, though.

Comments

Thanks Sharon. I took a look at your triangulation as I am still trying to learn how to do this. Were your triangulated people already on Wikitree or did you have to work down the lines and build profiles for them yourself?

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One of them was. I haven't added the other person, though I've added their line down to the last non-living person.

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OK. Thanks for the clarification. If that is acceptable then maybe I will eventually be able to get some DNA confirmations onto Wikitree.

Answer 6

I also agree with your comment earlier that those of us from the UK get  fewer results because the population tested in the UK is very small. Most matches come from across the pond and few of the people one contacts have trees that go far enough back to suggest the common ancestor. It's often very difficult to find out where people came from especially if the emigration took place in the 19th Century.

I have only been able to confirm through genealogy; not triangulation, 2 matches. One where my match and I share 68Cm, both still live in the UK and  share gg grandparents . They are not on wikitree and I would not wish to violate his privacy by taking this line forward to him.

 The other, that I have been able to identify is a match of 26Cm on the X chromosome. He is  the 5xg grandchild of my 6 x g grandmother (think that's right).  He is in Canada where that branch emigrated to in the early 19th C. The annoying thing is that much of that branch is on wiki-tree but stop two generations short and in addition,  the test taker joined  wiki-tree but has done nothing .Once again I feel I can't put those  missing generations  because I don't want to violate privacy

Of course it appears that even if I did put the rest of the trees in, I couldn't say that they were confirmed by DNA.

Comments

Thanks Helen. Your observations align with my initial thoughts that it is going to be very difficult for me to ever be able to meet the confirmation rules on Wikitree. Most of the AncestryDNA matches I have where I am comfortable that the genealogy is consistent with the match result are still at the level where they have private trees and are sceptical to gedmatch, so there is little hope that I am going to be able to persuade them that this is a good idea at any time in the near future. As to those I am working with on FTDNA, some of them consider gedmatch too open and are happy with the level of evidence they have on Family Finder.

Answer 7

Success rate low because people like me with limited time available just give up.  I manage 20+ DNA tests for relatives, and after entering DNA Confirmed for those where applicable (without sources all up & down) I was understandable under current rules dinged by a "source patrol" helper for over a month before getting time to go back thru all of them and take the much simpler far less time consuming path of just deleting the DNA confirmation instead of duplicating a source for each match on each side of all those 1st thru 4th cousins - a 3rd cousin means no less than 9 profiles that must get the same source.  Enter the test source once and automate its propagation up & down with all lines to the found MRCA and the success rate will dramatically improve.