Oops. I did not reply to all in my conversation with Pam.

Kevin and other yDNA Project Managers, If you did not attend the FTDNA yDNA Conference in March, you are probably not aware of the new tools being developed by FTDNA for managing the Group Administrator Pages. When I started my project, I made the decision to use the project pages provided by FTDNA, others made the decision to put their project information on other servers. With the new dashboard tools, I think most of what any project manager would need would be available through FTDNA. It is also easier because the test results are automatically added to the page, and all the administrator has to do is put them in the right group. Once placed in the correct group, FTTNA's sort algorithm puts them in order by test results. In this way those individuals with the most similar test results appear together I really feel that a group administrator has some responsibility to bring order to the information collected. This can be done without violating the privacy of any of the project members. It can also be done without pedigrees. I require ALL my project participants to provide a brief line of descent pedigree. I also require a test of either 37 or preferably 67 markers. Unfortunately, the 12 and 25 marker tests do not provide enough information for genealogical matching. They only provide haplogroup information. It is not practical for a project manager or a project participant to research these low level matches, as the common ancestor could be 40,000 years ago. I let my project subscribers know this up front. In a couple of cases new subscribers did not meet my requirements, while they are still in the project, I do not include them in an identified group and I do not waste time analyzing their test results. My project members know it is not worth their time to pursue these matches. They also have not provided pedigrees to me, so I figure they are cheating the other project members. I also do not encourage the publication of pedigrees on the website, because at one time there was a possibility of a competing company mining information from the FTDNA website. I do, however, put related individuals together privately, IF THEY WISH. My projects are very small, as the surnames are extremely rare. I realize that in large projects bringing structure to the information, without violation a project members privacy is more difficult. I also feel that without some type of organization the information is almost useless. These comments should not be taken as criticism as to the way other admins manage the information in their projects. This is just my approach, and I realize other admins have different approaches. Marleen Van Horne