Many of the hits on my blog are looking for information on Gedmatch.
Here is my brief subjective review of how things are at Gedmatch--many of the wonderful utilities, including triangulation and chromosome browser are on hold--but they should be back at some time, and will be amazingly helpful to researchers of all levels and abilities.
Of the utilities currently available, I find the one-to- many matches utility to be the most helpful, especially since there are at least three companies from which people can upload their results.
I have to say, that although this is great, and allows us to see comparisons between FTDNA, 23andme, and ancestry.com, this is often just a lead to nowhere.
The frustrating aspect is that the aliases used by those tested are often very effective in hiding who has been tested. If an email has been provided it can be a clue, or it can be used to try to contact the person tested, but often this effort is futile. It is understandable that every tester wants to protect their privacy--but the result of the protection is that comparison is impossible or very difficult. As I have said before, what researchers want is information about the ancestors. Perhaps Gedmatch could provide a way for testers to give that information, as does Ftdna, which allows gedcoms, but only starting at least 100 years out from the present.
The person being tested is not, or should not be, of interest, unless living cousin connections are desired.
Main point--I'm sure Gedmatch will recover all of the utilities--just a matter of time and it will be working again. Like many dna-related websites, keeping it up and running well can be a challenge for many reasons, so if you find something working--use it--strike while the iron is hot!
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