DNA relatives
While familysearch.org does not support DNA testing or results, it may be useful to have a check box that indicates for a given ancestors that descendants of this ancestor have taken DNA tests. It may be useful to indicate what service they took the DNA test on (ancestry, myheritage, 23 and me, etc..)
To me the value of this is that it may invite other descendants that are researching this ancestor know that if they DNA test they can potentially further connect to others on this family line and it may enhance learning more about this ancestor and the ancestor descendant lines.
Comments
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Could be added to the collaborate section
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Could be added as a Custom Fact.
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I would also be inclined to add this as a Note / Discussion item in the Collaboration section. You could head it "DNA Testing for Relatives", add the comments you suggest, and the "Contributor link" will provide a way for others who share an interest in this ancestor / ancestral link to get in touch with you, via the internal messaging service.
Of course, there would be little point adding anything to a Living individual profile, as no other Family Tree user would have access to the ID but yourself.
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I have responded to some notes on Family Tree about DNA being available, and found I was wasting my time. For example, one note turned out to relate to a descendant in a female line, but the descendant had a YDNA test.
It is far simpler to just export a GEDCOM from here and load it onto whatever DNA test platform you want to use.
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Please, please don't add it as a custom fact. We don't want to clutter up the main profile page with people posting what are essentially personal messages.
How would you verify that the claim correct? If I posted that I'm a DNA match with John Doe b. 1850, what evidence would be required to substantiate it?
Ancestry doesn't indicate which DNA segments match between two people. A person may appear as a shared match even if there is no common DNA between the three people. ThruLines are based on user trees; if they're flawed (as they often are), the results are flawed. I worry that way too many people would base their entries on that alone.
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The main issue I see is that DNA samples come from living persons and living persons are not to be disclosed on Family Tree.
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@dontiknowyou So do Latest Changes (come from living person ... Unless groups or AI profiles) - but that's allowed (or could be) for obvious reasons.
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I'm not sure the use of a DNA check box would give us any more accuracy than we have now, and I'm not even sure what the usefulness would be. The most common DNA test is autosomal, and it can only tell you if you and DNA matches have common ancestors based on your two trees. If both trees are wrong, then it hasn't helped at all. If both trees are right, it can still become a matter of opinion for ANY other person besides that common ancestor. Also, beginning with 3rd cousin, there is a chance that actual relatives will not be a DNA match, and as you progress to 4th, 5th, etc, the chance of actual related cousins being a DNA match gets more and more remote. So if I put a DNA tag on someone who was born in the late 1600s and died in the mid 1700s that YOU also feel is an ancestor, how is that helpful if you and I are not DNA matches? and what if someone has disconnected one of the generations between me and that ancestor or YOU and that ancestor because of a perceived or actual error in connecting generations? DNA does not appear to help in any of this.
The only DNA test that can prove relation to an ancestor is the Y test. But even that info won't stop anyone from challenging the generations between the ancestor and the 2 males used in the test. FamilySearch is open edit and it will not be possible to preserve any Y lines established unless they are converted to read only.
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