News from ECGGC: WikiTree's DNA Group Projects Project announces their work at three major conferences!

Question

Today at the East Coast Genetic Genealogy Conference, our own Mags Gaulden is announcing the official rollout of the DNA Group Projects work at WikiTree. Her presentation, "DNA Group Projects and ALL The Trimmings" (subtitled “Amping Up Your DNA Group Project with Bling”) will highlight the latest work by our DNA Groups Project to enable genetic genealogists to organize their projects and share their work. Mags will make similar presentations at WikiTree Day the upcoming three-day, completely free WikiTree 15th Anniversary Symposium and Party November 3–5 and at FamilyTree DNA's 15th International Conference on Genetic Genealogy (more news from FTDNA later).

I’m sure we will see some immediate queries on setting up new DNA group projects and studies at WikiTree. We look forward to welcoming new members in the coming days. We'll be introducing them to WikiTree and sharing the flexibility and privacy features we all enjoy. As they settle in, we'll help them to set up their first free-space project.

I look forward to helping with the flurry of activity that is sure to follow these presentations. Many thanks to Mags for leading the charge, and to the many DNA Group Projects project volunteers who will be welcoming our cousins and friends to our global family tree. Please do be in touch (you can even answer on this page!) about how you'd like to be involved. Now, let's get started!

Comments

Thanks for this news, Karen. 

When I looked at the DNA Group Projects page and saw the information about getting started, I was wondering about the availability of good-example project pages to help people see what this is all about. Poking around, I found Estes DNA Group Project, which looks to me like an excellent example for a Y-DNA project. Does the project team have other good examples to cite?

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Ooh, good question, Ellen! The Estes DNA Group Project is the very one that is highlighted in the project's information box on the project page.

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Check out the ones who carry the DNA Group Projects Category. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:DNA_Group_Projects

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As with many of our categories, not everything in that category is well-developed yet. Some are early-stage drafts. I was looking for "good examples" to emulate or aim for.

Answer 1

I still have lots of unanswered questions about this and would like a little more detailed advice than the following sentence from the DNA Group Projects Free Space Project:

"Before creating a DNA project, please review the list of Name Studies already existing on WikiTree and work with the relevant members to link these companion projects together."

First of all, this sentence should have a hyperlink to the list of Name Studies already existing.  I'm not sure where to find that list.  I noticed only a couple of days ago that when I search for a surname which already has a project, the top of the search results page has a small link to, e.g., "Cahir Project".  For surnames which do not yet have a project, it would be nice to see a message in the same place along the lines of "WikiTree does not yet have a project for this surname.  Click here to learn how to start one."

Many of us who are already profile managers of Name Studies on WikiTree are apparently being asked to work with ourselves to link two companion projects, one of which already exists and already deals with DNA.  In my case, this is at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Cahir_Name_Study

Am I expected to set up a second project for the same surname?  If the DNA project is separate from the existing Name Study, will both links appear at the top of the search results page?

Or should I just change my existing Page Name from "Cahir Name Study" to something like "Cahir Surname DNA Study"?

Is it required that I also have a standalone FTDNA project for the same surname?

Is it sufficient to add [[Category:DNA Group Projects]] to the existing WikiTree page, as I have done?

I deliberately chose a very rare surname for my first WikiTree surname project in the hope of learning lessons that could later apply to some of the much more common surnames for which I administer FTDNA projects (O'Dea, McNamara, Clancy, etc.).

Please feel free to edit the existing open Cahir Name Study page or to suggest improvements in comments here on this G2G answer.

Comments

Just need to keep in mind that there is not a one-to-one correlation between Surnames and DNA projects even for Y-DNA projects.  NPEs, adoptions (in and out), haplogroups originating before last names were standardized, etc all create complexities.  And even a given individual will have many haplogroups in his lineage and there may be DNA projects at more than one level, and those haplogroups can change as more people are tested.  Haplogroups based on a single SNP should be stable.  Those based on multiple SNPs are subject to splitting and shuffling.

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Paddy, thanks for bringing your questions! 

• I've added the missing link to the list of one-name studies to the DNA Groups Project page.
• The suggestion for a tip about creating a missing surname project is a good one. Certainly the guide would need to address spelling variants. Would you like to make that suggestion in the WikiTree Tech g2g category, or ask our One Name Studies Project leaders to do that?
• You're right that the section about project coordination needs clarification. Let's hear from Mags and others on this point. For my part, I would prefer one name project that exists in both Category: One Name Studies and Category: DNA Group Projects. So I would do just as you have done.
  We should talk about how, say, one Cahir study includes the hypothetical O'Dea cousins who took a relative's name hundreds of years ago. If we're already including them in a Cahir name study that uses DNA, it seems to me the name study already includes the relevant y-DNA project. It does sound challenging to categorize, as families are messy!
• The WikiTree DNA Groups Project should not have a requirement to participate on FamilyTreeDNA. Inter-project links between the sites will be encouraged! I know our project page uses some language familiar to FTDNA group administrators to help them settle in. Certainly the page can be clarified to ensure both long-time WikiTreers and NeWTs (those new to WikiTree) coming from FTDNA and other communities understand project creation guidelines. To be honest, we were excited by the request to present at ECGGC on 8 October, but had been targeting a 3 November kickoff. 

These clarifying questions are exactly what we need as the quiet work done by Mags and other project volunteers is announced to the wide, wide world of WikiTreers! Many thanks for your thorough and thoughtful review of the project page.

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Karen is absolutely right - your DNA group project doesn't have to be connected to a Surname Study - but it would be good to have them link with each other. You can also run the DNA portion in the Surname Study, Paddy. There is no hard and fast rule and flexibility is what rules, literally.

Make the project what you want it to be to fit your situation. Adding the DNA Group Projects Category will help others find it IF they are looking for something identified as a DNA Group Project. If you look at the existing ones you can see the range of namings.

Mags

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When I first read this post, I assumed that it was dealing solely with surname-based DNA projects.

I now realise that it is intended to cover all of

* surname-based DNA projects

* geography-based DNA projects

* SNP-based DNA projects

Perhaps there should be separate sub-categories for each of these types of DNA project.  The documentation could certainly make this clearer. Even though the help page is open, I hesitate to start rewriting!

I try to avoid the word "haplogroup" since FTDNA is still misleadingly using it in the column headers on its results pages when it means "most recent confirmed or predicted SNP"! I often need to explain that a haplogroup is just "any group of people with similar DNA".

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Karen, I have followed up on your suggestion with a new post at

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1650424

While doing so, I noticed that the tags I am following now include one_name_studies (plural) and dna_group_project (singular). Should there be a little more consistency?

Answer 2

Looking forward to attending this presentation at the Family Tree DNA conference.  I had put it on my agenda but had not realized it was related to Wikitree.  My Y-DNA goes back to the early kings of Ireland.  There are documented family trees for those early kings and significant progress has been made in correlating specific haplogroup branches to specific branches of their tree(s).  However there are large gaps in our knowledge of the individual people in the lineage between relatively current persons (last 200-300 years) and the historic trees (800-2000 years ago).  I have been contemplating how to possibly represent in Wikitree (and/or FamilySearch Family Tree) these missing links that are confirmed by DNA but can't put names to.  Hopefully this may be addressed in the presentation and/or we can work something out as part of this DNA Groups project.

Comments

Aw, man! FamilyTreeDNA's conference conflicts with our own WikiTree 15th anniversary. Who's gonna double-time it online with me all weekend? 

I love that WikiTree's symposium & party is $129–189 cheaper, given that it's completely free!

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Seems Mags is double-timing.  I'm guessing presenting live at FTDNA conference while broadcasting virtual to the Wikitree audience.  Simultaneous or separate?

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Hey Kurt - I am presenting for WikiTree on Friday and for FTDNA on Saturday. :-0 You can catch them both and tell me what I mess up between the two! LOL

Answer 3

Eric Weddington has already pointed out in a comment at
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:DNA_Group_Projects
that there are now both
* a DNA Project at
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:DNA
and
* a DNA Group Projects Project which one would expect to find at
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:DNA_Group_Projects
although that page does not yet exist, or redirect anywhere.

Furthermore there are high level categories called
* DNA Group Projects at
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:DNA_Group_Projects
and
* DNA Projects at
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:DNA_Projects

There is another category called
* DNA Project at
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:DNA_Project
which is not itself marked as a high level category, although it contains the high level DNA Group Projects category as a subcategory.

There are now some Name Study pages in all three of these categories (albeit only mine and Eric's so far in Category: DNA Group Projects).

Should a Name Study with a DNA element now be in all three categories?

I am hardly what Karen above described as a NeWT, with over 5,000 contributions, and I find this very confusing, so I fear that there will need to be some rationalisation if this is not to act as a disincentive to real NeWTs.

Answer 4

More thoughts:

The free space page should probably also include further advice along the lines of:

"Collaboration with existing related projects at FamilyTreeDNA is imperative in order to take advantage of all the new features."

I have a vision of a future in which there are two-way connections between FTDNA and WikiTree, in the same way as there have been for several years between GEDmatch and WikiTree.

When FTDNA customers link their FTDNA kits to their WikiTree profiles (as we already can do), or give FTDNA project administrators advanced access - which should allow the administrators to do likewise on their behalf, then the 50-character description of the "Paternal/Maternal Ancestor Name" on the results pages at both www.familytreedna.com and gap.familytreedna.com should be replaced with a similar description automatically generated from the WikiTree database, and hyperlinked back to the most distant known ancestor's WikiTree profile.  If so, then a breakthrough on WikiTree would automatically be reflected in all the FTDNA projects of which any patrilineal or matrilineal descendant is a member.

Perhaps this is something for FTDNA and WikiTree representatives to discuss when they meet at the conference in Houston next month.