Thanks to Ann for sharing this link. I don’t follow all the changes in Ancestry DNA, but if I did test at Ancestry I would find this attempt to reduce the number of distantly related matches to be a little disturbing, and agree with many of the comments made on the Ancestry site. I understand that Timber is an attempt to eliminate some of the “false positives” which are distant relatives erroneously estimated to be more closely related. The cost of this is, of course, the creation of an unknown additional number of “false negatives” … close relatives erroneously estimated to be too distantly related to report to the user. I would rather be able to see more of the false positives and judge them with a critical eye myself. I had an additional reaction which I posted there as a comment and wanted to pass along here too… "Population bias in Timber? ... even if Timber was valid and useful for the population represented by most of the Ancestry DNA participants .. it would not be for participants with a different ethnic history, or otherwise descended from a different population group (think recent immigrants from a country without a long history of immigration to the US). Matching segments common in the dominant population group and representing very distant ancestors, could easily be of genealogical significance in a different population. This ethnic or population bias due to the use of Timber suggests Ancestry DNA should be avoided by those who are not members of the dominant population. “ David Hamill > On Jan 7, 2016, at 11:58 AM, genealogy-dna-request@rootsweb.com wrote: > >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: genealogy-dna-bounces@rootsweb.com >>> [mailto:genealogy-dna-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Ann Turner via >>> Sent: Wednesday, January 6, 2016 8:05 PM >>> To: DNA Genealogy Mailing List <GENEALOGY-DNA@rootsweb.com> >>> Subject: [DNA] segments and cM at AncestryDNA >>> >>> This blog post explains some of the questions we've raised about the number >>> of shared cM and segments at AncestryDNA and how they compare to numbers >>> seen at GEDmatch, 23andMe, and FTDNA. >>> >>> >>> http://blogs.ancestry.com/techroots/behind-the-new-ancestrydna-feature-amoun >>> t-of-shared-dna/ >>> >>> Ann Turner