Genealogy Chat

Hello,
I have been a Genes member for some years but am still puzzled as to the best way of dealing with all the Hot Matches the Genes site provides.

Are there any tips about how to deal with the ever-increasing list of matches?

I find it impossible to keep my list up to date although I try to discard those with whom there is obviously no connection. I cannot however, keep up with all the new ones which are added to the list and currently I have more than 15 pages of matches.

To make the list more manageable, I have considereid discarding correct matches to parts of my tree which I'm not currently researching. This, however seems against the spirit of sharing genealogical information and I do not wish to cut off a match which may be of use to someone else.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thank you,

Sally

I don't think you need worry about discarding hot matches. The equivalent match for the other person will be generated independantly and as far as I know there is no check to see if there is a discard in force for that match.

The matching is done by taking a random 50 people from a tree and attempting to match with all other trees.

If your tree is fairly mature then there is little point communicating with someone with only one match unless it might solve a particular brick wall.

Since GR started matching places of birth as well as names and dates, I have had very few Hot Matches.

When I used to have lots, I started by deleting all the ones which were obviously wrong (about 90%) and then most of the ones from previous contacts. That usually left about 5 or 6, a manageable number to write to.

Thank you for replying to my query; you've passed on some very helpful information:

KenSE: I'm glad to hear that the other side of a discarded hot match is unaffected if I discard them. And you're right, one match only is probably not worth pursuing...I've a few 'brick walls' so those are the ones I can follow.

Andysmum: It is a great help to know that Genes are now matching places of birth as well as names. I now understand the system better, thank you. I do delete the matches which are obviously wrong - and now I won't worry about deleting the dozens and dozens which are correct but have only one match and that from 200+ years ago!

Thank you both.

The easiest way is to block them entirely

If anyone thinks they are linked to you, they can contact you directly

Including places of birth is the reason the number of matches is far fewer than it used to be.

For example, I have a lot of relatives born in the village of Bradwell, Derbyshire. This is how I have entered it in my tree, but I have contacts with the place entered as Hope (where they were baptised), Bakewell (where they were registered), some without the Derbyshire and some with just Derbyshire, several including ? and a couple with just England.

None of these come up as Hot Matches, so I now use Search Trees to find possible new contacts.