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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2011-12 > 1323732322


From: "Alister John Marsh" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Family Tree - 'The Entire Database'... MacY Project.
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:25:22 +1300
References: <502677707.852359.1323387282112.JavaMail.root@sz0002a.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net><E2C3C8F4C6EA4F0BA283ECDE822E2FFB@JohnPC><2A32DBFC317C44E4955C6D19D3D88CE3@elizabethod>
In-Reply-To: <2A32DBFC317C44E4955C6D19D3D88CE3@elizabethod>


Elizabeth,

Thanks for sorting this puzzle out.

As FTDNA don't propose updating Y-Search to include all markers,
particularly the 68 to 111 marker set, and apparently are not proposing an
"Entire Database" project as an alternative, then perhaps we could start
through FTDNA a "Y haplogroup" project, open to any male lines descended on
the direct male line from Y-DNA Adam.

What would be the advantages of this?

1) People could join one project... THE "Y haplogroup Project" (a sort of
"MacAdam/ O'Adam/ FitzAdam/ Adamson/ MacY, etc project) and get matches from
all around the World. If a person is in the Ireland, France, or British
Isles, or R1b and subclades project, they might find significant matches
from those gene pools, but they might be missing matches from Fiji of
Iceland or Egypt or Australia or where ever their kinsmen have wandered off
to. A core project like THE "Y haplogroup" project would bring everyone
into a single pool for matching, and do the job which we should really be
able to do at Y-Search if it included all markers. Instead of people
joining 5 or 10 or 20 separate projects, If they simply joined the core "Y
Haplogroup Project", it might have the affect of finding matches they were
missing by joining 20 different projects. The problem is that perhaps 95%
of the people who DNA test don't know their way around the systems as well
as the old timers, and probably don't even know where to find the R1b and
subclades project in the project index, let alone know the significance of
it. If we just had a simple guideline that everyone would benefit from
being in the core Y Haplogroup project, the inexperienced new people would
in one step get into a database that might help them. Even if a new person
can't find matches themselves, more experienced persons would be able to
identify them as a match, and find them, and contact them.

2) It could be set up to split members of the project into haplogroups and
subclades, so could enable manual searching within a particular subclade.
As subclades become more recent, these give more manageable numbers for
manual searches. It would also group together those "not" tested to a lower
level subclade, and enable us to manually search for key family markers in
the unsorted group of left overs.

3) It would enable searching by SNPs to find who is positive and who is
negative for any of the newer SNPs being explored. At the moment, many
useful results might be hidden in very minor surname projects which not many
people visit.

4) I am not entirely sure how large projects can be set up, but there might
be a way to separately sort the database by surname of earliest ancestor,
which would also be a helpful feature.

5) If we could in time encourage a large percentage of persons to join the
"Y Haplogroup" or MacY project, they could search for matches within that
project from their personal FTDNA web page. This is not perfect, as the
search criteria allowed by FTDNA limit searches to for example 10 mutations
on 111 markers, and that excludes matches in families where a large multi
step mutation or a deletion has occurred. But something is better than
nothing. By being in a mammoth "Y haplogroup" project, any matches found in
a search through their FTDNA home page would include contact email addresses
of matches for them to be able to find the person.

6) Periodically I manually search some of the larger surname and geographic
projects for matches, because often lots of good matches are hidden there
without being accessible in other places. This is a very tedious business.
A single project including almost everyone would make these searches much
easier.

7) Perhaps in time, parts of the information (such as 111 marker haplotypes
related to earliest ancestor and kit number) could be bulk extracted and put
into a privately organized database with complex and highly useful search
functions. A condition of joining the project might be that persons allow
for data to be transferred to a searchable MacY database.

8) Whilst I would not advocate more than 3 or 4 project administrators, for
security reasons, there could be scope for persons doing legitimate research
for population studies etc to be given "temporary project administrator
status", say for a period of no more than a week, so that they could have
access to search and sort features which are only accessible to project
administrators. I am thinking of people like Ken for example, who is
serving us well with his population studies, and if he had access as a
temporary administrator, he could search an individual participant's data
for things like advanced markers tested which are not accessible on any
other database. I think that if the project had say 4 Project
Administrators, they should be respected and trusted persons on this list
who could be trusted to not compromise any privacy or security issues, and
if an administrator retired, a replacement could be in some way elected by
list members on this list. I would envisage that if there were 4 project
administrators, they should require a majority of 3 before letting
researches have temporary access for research etc. Perhaps instead of
letting researches have direct access as a temporary project administrator,
one of the administrators could do searches for specific information, and
only release limited information to researchers which excluded private
details if appropriate. Perhaps ISOGG could somehow oversee this project to
keep a watch on security, privacy, etc.

A "Y Haplogroup" project would not be perfect, and not be as user friendly
as an updated Y-Search could be, and not be automatically searchable under
specific family markers etc, but it would in it's clumsy way enable some
things to be done which will not be able to be done until Y-Search is
upgraded.

Is this just my latest crazy idea, or would there be any support for a
mammoth "Y-Haplogroup" MacY project, or perhaps as an alternative a
geographical "Whole World Y-DNA Project" which only accepts members born on
earth. Then there is the question, would FTDNA allow a project of this type
to be formed? Can one be set up without FTDNA approval?

Just wondering. Any comments?

John.

-----Original Message-----
From: Elizabeth O'Donoghue/Ross
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 8:13 AM
To:
Subject: [DNA] Family Tree - 'The Entire Database'

I can't find the thread about this term that I think Ken asked about, which
was showing up on the member's personal pages. I don't recall if anyone had
a satisfactory answer as to what it meant. If they have, pardon the
duplication.

It wasn't until just now that I looked at a participant's personal page for
Y-DNA - MATCHES and saw where it was on the page. If you click the icon
+Page Help near the top, it explains it:

"Show Matches For - This is the database comparison for viewing
matches: the entire
database or a single project in which you participate.''

This is the same it always was - perhaps just different terminology. A
participant can set his preferences to limit seeing only matches in his
project, or in the entire database. That option used to be on the user
preferences page in the old version. Another case of putting it somewhere
else this time around.

I hope this helps.

Elizabeth


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