Charles wrote: "Please excuse me for rubbing it in, but we simply don't have such problems with our projects (called "groups') at Ancestry.com. "As project administrator there, I exercise full approval authority. I'm able to display test results in multiple configurations that I consider helpful. And I fully control material contributed to our group's home page. It's rare when things don't run smoothly; and when they don't, we enjoy the benefit of consistently friendly, responsive and cooperative assistance. Moreover, searches for matches are far easier within Ancestry.com's public data base, and we have the benefit of a superior lab, which provides us more precise test results (including partial STR repeats when applicable) in convenient numerical order." This statement invites an objective comparison. In a "Fools rush in" moment, let me give it a try. On the plus side, Ancestry tests 6 markers in its "46" panel that are not on any of FTDNA's standard panels and the marker reporting order (DYS number) is more intuitive than that of FTDNA. On the minus side -- for at least some projects -- it allows user-submitted results and does not require results from any lab. I'm not sure how public that "public database" is. A cross-provider comparison of a pair of Y-STR results of 67 FTDNA markers with "46" Ancestry markers, yields only 31 markers to compare >98% of the time. (Only about 1.5% of men have a copy of any of 13 multi-copy markers included in the "46" count, e.g., 464e-k. FTDNA does not count these markers in its panel offerings, but does report the alleles when marker copies are found.) User-submitted results should be considered a serious problem. The "garbage in, garbage out" principle renders matching & match interpretation suspect. For example, at least one participant in a Ancestry DNA surname project has (apparently user-submitted) Y-STR results that are impossible; the user has just picked numbers at random to enter. (The entered values yield a 0.0% probability of fitting ANY haplogroup.) Failure to require actual DNA test results undermines the very purpose of a DNA project. Whether it's the number of STRs for particular loci or the presence/absence of certain SNPs, DNA results are the foundation. As a health care executive (now retired), I learned one is on shaky ground to say one laboratory is superior to another without solid evidence. All labs have tight quality-control mechanisms and regard accuracy of results as sacred; any decent lab will re-run analyses yielding suspicious results. As a side note, providers (especially including FTDNA) are now moving to implementing NIST standards for testing & reporting Y-STR; this will resolve the "rounding up or rounding down" issue & result in fractional alleles being reported. (It will also give us admins something new to gripe about. :~) However, Ancestry has changed reporting protocols over the years and these changes are not fully documented; a set of results from one year is not necessarily directly comparable to a set from another year. FTDNA has also changed protocols, but has revised its results database to reflect the changes; results may be compared directly regardless of test date. I've yet to find the "public database" at Ancestry DNA -- and I'm a participant in one of its projects. As a participant in both Ancestry & FTDNA projects, I see many more online tools to help me at FTDNA than at Ancestry. I can find matches that the project admin didn't (not necessarily members of my project) and have the FTDNA server run TMRCA probability calculations on them. FTDNA has undertaken an ambitious remake of its information technology operation. It's essentially replacing a patchwork of temporary fixes & workarounds with a 21st century system. It isn't done yet and some things aren't perfect. All-in-all, we FTDNA project admins may gripe about some things not working as well as we'd like or are used to. Perhaps, we gripe because we've become accustomed to such great support. -ralpht_/)