Louis Kessler’s Behold Blog

Happy New Year everyone.

GenSoftReviews is the website I created in 2009 to allow users to rate and review their genealogy software. The goal was for the site to be like a Tripadvisor for genealogists to allow them to see what others think of the various programs before they buy, and to allow the software developers to get feedback as to what their users like and don’t like about their programs.

Each year on January 1st since 2010, I have tabulated the programs that have achieved ratings of at least 4 out of 5. Those programs are displayed on GenSoftReviews a Users Choice Award sticker alongside their software listing.

Today I present the Users Choice Award winners for 2022:

1. Online Repository Assistant - rated 5.00 out of 5

2. webtrees - rated 4.99 out of 5

3. Familienbande - rated 4.98 out of 5

4. The Next Generation - rated 4.93 out of 5

5. The Master Genealogist - rated 4.93 out of 5

6. Personal Ancestral File (PAF) - rated 4.92 out of 5

7. Generations - rated 4.86 out of 5

8. Relatively Yours - rated 4.83 out of 5

9. Genealogie Online - rated 4.79 out of 5

10. FTAnalyzer (Family Tree Analyzer) - rated 4.74 out of 5

11. Brother’s Keeper - rated 4.72 out of 5

12. Family Book Creator - rated 4.70 out of 5

13. Ancestral Quest - rated 4.63 out of 5

14. Reunion - rated 4.63 out of 5

15. Family Historian - rated 4.59 out of 5

16. Famberry - rated 4.54 out of 5

17. Ahnenblatt - rated 4.45 out of 5

18. Oxy-gen - rated 4.44 out of 5

19. Ancestor Tree Manager - rated 4.44 out of 5

20. My Family Tree - rated 4.42 out of 5

21. Family Echo - rated 4.25 out of 5

22. MacFamilyTree - rated 4.03 out of 5

These awards are based on 231 user reviews during 2022 and 6,128 reviews from previous years.

Family Echo and MacFamilyTree both increased their rating in 2022 to be above 4.0 and this year have achieved the award.

One winner from 2021 dropped below 4.0, and six winners from 2021 did not get any reviews in 2022 so did not qualify.

The Wide Variety of Programs

How many of the above programs have you tried or even heard about? These programs help genealogists with different needs in many different ways.

There are a number of full featured programs in the list of 2022 winners that you can use to record and store your genealogical information.These include:

• Some free online programs:  Webtrees, Famberry, My Family Tree, and Family Echo.
• For Windows: Brother’s Keeper, Family Historian, and Ahnenblatt
• For Mac: Reunion
• For Windows or Mac:  Ancestral Quest
• Free for Windows, Mac or Unix: Familienbande
• and even a few no longer supported programs that people still use and love, including: The Master Genealogist (TMG), Personal Ancestral File (PAF), Generations, and Relatively Yours.

There’s programs specifically designed to create a website from your family data:

• The Next Generation (TNG)
• Genealogie Online
• Oxy-gen
• Ancestor Tree Manager

And then some programs are for special purposes:

• Online Repository Assistant, a Windows program with annual subscription.
• FTAnalyzer (Family Tree Analyzer), free for Windows or Mac
• Family Book Creator, for Windows

If those aren’t enough, check the GenSoftReviews site for other programs that may fit your needs. There are now 1,065 different programs for genealogists that are listed. Many are under-the-radar programs that are well liked but fewer than 10 people to date have reviewed them.

Also, feel free to find on GenSoftReviews  the programs you use or have tried, and be sure to add your own reviews and ratings. You will help others who might be interested in the program, and your rating will help decide the User’s Choice Award winners for 2023.

Every year on December 31, I have been summarizing my website page views, family tree counts and DNA matches and putting that on my What’s New page of my lkessler.com website so that I can see how much they’ve changed from the year before. But I’ve never before posted these stats on my blog. This year, I thought I would.

2022 was my website’s 25th year in operation.

• My websites with their page views for 2022 from Google Analytics:
  • lkessler.com: 9,268, down 24%, Max 136 on Jan 27.
  • beholdgenealogy.com: 140,688, up 40%, Max 12,397 on Sept 29.
       No new releases of Behold in 2022. Last release was Version 1.2.7 in Sep 2021.
  • doublematchtriangulator.com: 4,381, down 7%, Max 162 on May 17.
       9 new releases of DMT in 2022. Last release was Version 5.1 in Dec 2022.
  • gensoftreviews.com: 69,713, down 6%. Max 842 on Jan 6.
       Now lists 1065 programs (up 16). There were 230 more user reviews (now totaling 6,358).
• My blog: Added 20 blog articles. The total is now 1,224. My top 5 articles during 2022:
  1. Comparing Raw Data from 5 DNA Testing Companies, 2018, 2,500 page views
  2. That’s not very Smart of you, Microsoft, 2021, 1,439 page views
  3. My Whole Genome Sequencing. The VCF File, 2019, 1,355 page views
  4. Ancestry’s Timber Algorithm is Better Than You Think, 2020, 871 page views
  5. My Closest Unknown DNA Matches, 2022, 755 page views
• Behold forum: 125 topics (up 1). 507 posts (up 5).
• Twitter: Posted 127 tweets (now totalling 7,316). Following 216 (up 2). Followers 771 (up 36).
• Facebook: 467 friends (up 15).
• Stackoverflow (Q&A site for programmers): Asked 1 more question (now 129). Gave 2 more answers (now 176). Earned 113 more reputation points (now 19,771) and 16 more badges (now 373). Member for 14 years. 2.2 million people reached. 1,479 votes cast.
  • My Top Question: How Do I Choose Between the Various Ways to do Threading in Delphi? - 65 upvotes.
  • My Top Answer: Strangest Language Feature - 324 upvotes.
• Genealogy Stack Exchange (Q&A site for genealogy): Asked 1 more question (now 27). Gave 3 more answers (now 284). Earned 80 reputation points (now 16,517) and 2 more badges (now 106). Member for 10 years. 465,000 people reached. 538 votes cast.
  • My Top Question: What is the Russian town in this census listing? - 18 upvotes
  • My Top Answer: How should a trip be recorded in my family tree software? - 20 upvotes

My Family Tree information online includes:

• My site at MyHeritage has 5 trees. My main tree: 9,125 people (up 1,270). My niece’s tree (536 people, down 2), my wife’s brother-in-law’s tree (158 people), my friend’s tree (213 people, up 36), and a tree I did in Dec 2022 to help me with the Mark Cuban WikiTree Challenge (182 people). Confirmed record matches: 12,694 (up 3,202) for 3,889 people (up 1,291).
• My trees at other sites are all research trees. I update information where necessary at:
  • Ancestry: 162 people (up 16). 693 hints (up 209).
  • Geni: I manage 19 profiles (no change). My family tree extends to 139 people (up 9).
  • FamilySearch: My contributions: 1,545 (up 4). I’ve manually attached 69 sources (up 4).
  • WikiTree: I now have 253 people on my watch list (up 22). Made 2003 contributions (up 128). I have 315 people connected within 7 degrees of me.
  • Geneanet: I have 4,006 individuals there (no change).
  • genealogyonline: Has my pedigree of 64 people (no change).

My DNA Matches at the companies I tested at and uploaded to:

• Ancestry DNA: 167,591 matches (up 11,767 or 7.6%). I know how I’m related to 25 (up 4). I have 29 ThruLines.
• 23andMe: 1,501 matches (no change. They only show the top 1500 plus people you’ve messaged with). I know how I’m related to 15 (no change).
• MyHeritage DNA: 21,628 matches (up 2,093 or 7.1%). I know how I’m related to 3 (no change). I have 2 Theories of Family Relativity.
• Family Tree DNA: 33,087 matches (up 8,437). I know how I’m related to 3 (no change). I have 1,718 mtDNA matches (up 74), 144 Y-DNA matches at 111 markers (up 4), and 114 Big Y matches (down 1).
• Living DNA: 3,451 matches (up 602 or 21.1%). I know how I’m related to 1 (just my uncle).
• GEDmatch (upload): 3,000 is the number of matches they report. I know how I’m related to 5 (up 1).
• Geni (upload): 2,303 matches (up 338 or 17.2%). I know how I’m related to 0. I have 218 mtDNA matches (up 16 or 7.9%) and 0 Y-DNA matches.
• Geneanet (upload): 1,409 matches (up 388 or 38.0%). I know how I’m related to 1 (just my uncle).
• Borland Genetics (upload): 667 matches. I know how I’m related to 3. My father, my mother and my uncle.

And a few fun statistics for 2022 from my watch:

• I took 2,355,493 steps in 2022 (down 5.0% from 2021). Average 6,453 steps a day. 1,780 km (1,112 miles).
• I took 49 bicycle rides totalling 1,643 km (1,027 miles, up 54% from 2021).
• I had 6 sessions totalling 2.4 hours on the exercise bike I purchased this Fall. (For use in the winter in Winnipeg when outdoor cycling isn’t feasible.)
• My average resting heart rate during 2022 was 62 beats per minute.
• My average amount of sleep per night during 2022 was 7 hrs 21 minutes.

A couple of months ago, Ancestry came out with a new feature called Parental Matches, that shows which parent a DNA match is connected to.

My own DNA should be a good test for this. I have 100% endogamy on all my ancestral lines, but my parents are not related according to GEDmatch’s test.

Both my parents passed away before I started DNA testing, but I did test my uncle (my father’s brother) at FTDNA and I have some first cousins who tested at Ancestry and other sites, so I can use them for additional comparisons.

Ancestry’s Parental Matches stems from the SideView technology introduced about 6 months earlier that reveals your ethnicity inheritance from each parent. The SideView ethnicity breakdown really didn’t help me very much:

Ancestry DNA’s Parental Matches

Of my 167,298 matches at Ancestry DNA, I have:

• 17,779 matches (10.6%) that are assigned Maternal.
• 16,573 matches (9.9%) that are assigned Paternal.
• Only 5 matches assigned to Both sides.
• 132,941 matches (79.5%) that are Unassigned.

I am somewhat surprised that more of my mother’s side is assigned than my father’s, since I have more known relatives on my father’s side in both my family tree and among my DNA matches.

I have in the past used the Leeds Method on my Ancestry matches with reasonably good success. That allowed me to assign is most cases one grandparent and in a few cases more than one grandparent to my closest matches at Ancestry. I assigned each match one or more colored dots representing the grandparent(s):

Where FF = my Father’s Father’s side, FM = my Father’s Mother’s side, etc.

Most of the Leeds assignments are on my Father’s side. 

• 173 on Father’s sides, made up of 127 on Father’s Father, 22 on Father’s Mother, and 24 on Father’s Mother’s Father
• 23 on Mother’s sides, made up of 2 on Mother’s Father, 16 on Mother’s Mother and 5 on Mother’s side but grandparent unknown.

The 25 starred matches are the people that I know how I am connected to and that I have in my family tree.

So the question is, how well does Ancestry’s Parental assignments match both my known relationships and my Leeds assignments.

For my known relationships, it did pretty good:

It assigned 24 of my known relatives correctly and the other was not wrong, but was just not determined.

My assumption would be that Ancestry must be using my Ancestry family tree itself to make the assignments. Otherwise it would not be able to determine what side any of my relatives are on. The one unassigned match might have been left that way because being a 4th cousin, he is my most distant known DNA match, and maybe Ancestry does not use the tree for cousins that distant.

How well do the assignments match the Leeds method?

Of my DNA matches where Ancestry assigned a parent, it agreed with the Leeds Method in 57 out of 82 cases (70%).  So Ancestry and Leeds disagree about 30% of the time. Unfortunately, we cannot in this case tell which one is incorrect.

Comparing Shared Matches

At Ancestry, I have DNA matches with two 1st cousins on my mother’s side, with one 1C1R on my mother’s side and one 1C1R on my father’s side. My shared matches with each of them should be expected to mostly match only people on the same side as they are.

If I look at the first 50 shared matches with each of them, this is what I see. (My 1C1R on my mother’s side only has 37 shared matches)

For shared matches, 48 out of 65 cases (74%) match the side the cousin is on. That’s not bad, but is a bit less accuracy than I would have hoped for since my parents are not related.

Side Assignment at Family Tree DNA

Family Tree DNA has had Paternal and Maternal matches assigned to each side for a long time. Like Ancestry, since I don’t have parents tested, it assigns sides based on comparison with testers that who I’ve placed in my family tree there.

I really only have two close relatives in my tree at FTDNA, my uncle (father’s brother) and the same “1C1R on M side” as at Ancestry.

With the two of them in my tree and a couple more distant relatives, FTDNA assigns my 35,169 matches as follows:

• 1,564 matches (4.4%) that are assigned Maternal.
• 10,732 matches (30.5%) that are assigned Paternal.
• 421 matches (1.2%) that are assigned to Both sides.
• 22,452 matches (63.9%) that are Unassigned.

Compare this to Ancestry’s assignments. There are so many more Paternal assignments at FTDNA than maternal, but Ancestry’s assignments are about 50:50. I don’t know why this is.

If I look at my first 50 matches in-common-with my uncle, 29 are assigned Paternal and only 2 are assigned maternal. That’s 94% correct.

With my 1C1R, 6 are assigned Maternal, but 15 are assigned Paternal. That’s only 29% correct. Again, I don’t know why.

It might be a bit of a Paternal bias at FTDNA. I don’t know if this is real (because of more people on my Paternal side testing there) or if it is a by-product of the way their algorithms work with my matches.

Also, I don’t know why I have 6009 matches in common with my 1C1R at FTDNA but only 37 in common at Ancestry.

Conclusion

Parent assignments on your DNA matches is a nice feature to have, especially when you haven’t had your parents tested.

Family Tree DNA has had this for a while using information from the family tree you put together on their site. Ancestry has now just added this.

The assignments appear to be fairly good and seem to be correct more often than not. They are useful, but should be thought of as a reasonable hint, rather than an accurate determination.

There are more advanced techniques that the companies could use to make this feature more accurate and more useful. Incorporating automated Leeds assignments, clustering techniques, or comparing segment matches would improve the results.

23andMe assigns parent information only if you have parents tested. MyHeritage DNA, Living DNA and GEDmatch do not yet assign parent sides to your matches.

Parental assignment is a good feature. The companies should all include it, and be working to make it more accurate and useful.

Followup:  Jan 4, 2023:  Family History Fanatics (Andy Lee) just posted a YouTube video worth watching: How ACCURATE is Ancestry’s Parent1/Parent2 DNA Match Separator? Andy found 90% of his DNA matches had a parent assigned compared to only about 20% for me. He also had very few matches with “Both” parents assigned.

That got me to go back and look at my matches again, and I was surprised to see that only a week later, my numbers changed to:

• 18,823 Maternal (up 1044)
• 17,038 Paternal (up 465)
• 963 Both sides (up 958)
• 130,795 Unassigned (down 2146)
• 167,619 Total (up 321)

So a couple thousand more assignments were made in the last week, and my very low number of Both Side (5) was substantially increased to 963.