I posted my message relating my positive experience as a project administrator at Ancestry.com not merely to be provocative in this forum of FTDNA enthusiasts, but to help coax/shame FTDNA a bit to amend new procedures that have caused several of you to complain. I fully agree with Diana that, if a project is to achieve any worthwhile objectives and not merely spin its wheels offering discounts, prospective participants must obviously share their known lineages. Personally, I've never experienced a problem in this regard, because participants have become attracted to our Y-DNA surname project as a result of viewing our independent (non-Ancestry) website or of being directly targeted for recruitment. By the time they order their test, I've invariably learned from them and from follow-up research all that's necessary. There's never been any need for leverage. Randall tell us that he has served as an administrator with both Ancestry.com and FTDNA and that his experience with the latter has been far more satisfactory. For whatever reason, I haven't encountered his problems. To each his own. Ancestry is comparatively unregimented - a characteristic that has merits as well as frustrations. I'd certainly encourage Richard to remove all members from his Ancestry group who haven't tested or provided pedigrees. Rick has asked how to access Ancestry.com's public DNA data base. I was speaking as a project administrator and contrasting it with FTDNA's data base, which doesn't provide detailed search capability - that function being delegated to its Y-Search facility, which contains a subset of persons tested. Ancestry's data base is resident at http://dna.ancestry.com/welcome.aspx. To access it, one must have an account with Ancestry, an established genetic profile (through testing or entry) and a group membership. One can then search by either profile or name - by asking for a list of matches in descending order or by searching for a specific name to compare test results. Everyone tested at Ancestry is included in its data base and one doesn't need to join different groups to see various individual results. Charles Acree

The FTDNA database doesn't simply not provide "detailed search capability," it doesn't allow access of any kind, to the public or even to project admins. It supplies results tables to projects using the FTDNA-supplied web sites, visible to anyone with an internet, without having to join anything, but no one outside of FTDNA employees can actually search or browse the database. I haven't found access at Ancestry.com all that easy. I wasn't tested there and haven't had anyone else tested there, and besides, I'm female, so I had to phony up a set Y-DNA test results to join a surname group. I wonder how many other sets of results in the Ancestry database are phony? I don't see any way to view results unless I join a group, and all the groups I've tried to join are "private." In some cases, I've asked to join and never heard back. In what way is the "entire database" accessible? I just checked a group I belong to at DNA-Ancestry.com, and when I search on the surname, I get 50 hits. When I go to the surname group, there are only 15 members. Doesn't this imply that there are 35 individuals tested, with this surname, who haven't joined the group? How would I see their results? By the way, the same thing happens in the FTDNA database: not everyone tested has joined a project, but you know they're in the database because they show up when you search for a project from the FTDNA Home Page. I know of no way to contact any of these or know their results, unless you happen to match one of them and they respond to your email. I think one failing of the Matches tab at FTDNA is that it doesn't give the Kit# of your matchee, so unless you are a full match with someone, you won't necessarily know where the differences lie, unless they respond to your email. Diana > -----Original Message----- > From: y-dna-projects-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:y-dna-projects- > bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Charles Acree > Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2010 8:42 AM > To: y-dna-projects@rootsweb.com > Subject: Re: [Y-DNA-projects] Y-DNA-PROJECTS join authorization > <snip> > > Rick has asked how to access Ancestry.com's public DNA data base. I was speaking as a > project administrator and contrasting it with FTDNA's data base, which doesn't provide > detailed search capability - that function being delegated to its Y-Search facility, which > contains a subset of persons tested. Ancestry's data base is resident at > http://dna.ancestry.com/welcome.aspx. To access it, one must have an account with > Ancestry, an established genetic profile (through testing or entry) and a group > membership. One can then search by either profile or name - by asking for a list of > matches in descending order or by searching for a specific name to compare test results. > Everyone tested at Ancestry is included in its data base and one doesn't need to join > different groups to see various individual results. > > Charles Acree >