Are Wikitree DNA connections pretty reliable for establishing a connection?

[NicVog]

Hi everyone, doing some genealogy work for my great-aunt, and she has a line of descent from a Medearis family from Virginia. One of her ancestors through that family, a Rachel Davis, there is some evidence she was a daughter of Edward Davis and Mary Reade of King and Queen County Virginia, and that her mother was a cousin of Augustine Washington.

Looking on Wikitree, it showed some DNA matches for Rachel Davis Medaris, and then for her potential mother, Mary Reade. There was one user, who showed as a DNA match for Mary Reade (her tree indicates she descended from Mary's sister), and so did several other people who descend from Rachel Davis.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Reade-218

I'm not much of an expert at all when it comes to DNA, and I don't know how Wikitree judges DNA connections, but the users in question it said had used Ancestry's DNA test. Does this seem a good indication/evidence for Rachel's parentage? I wondered how wikitree sifts through matches and decides who is a likely match for an ancestor, and if it's a good piece of evidence to use.

[Craclyn]

Wikitree shows routes of propagation of DNA through the tree. You would need to check back to the testing sites to see whether there is actually any shared DNA.

[NicVog]

Ah, I'm sorry, I'm not exactly sure what that means. I'm sorry, I'm still quite new to looking at DNA genealogy research.

[Craclyn]

The people who are showing as DNA Connections on the Reade profile are people who have taken a DNA test who are paper trail descendants of Mary. It is not actually telling you that they have identified DNA which comes from her, just that it is theoretically possible. You can look at each of their profiles to see if any of them has added a proof argument documenting an actual DNA connection to Mary. You can also look at their DNA profiles on the kit they have linked to Wikitree and see if that may be matching you if you have taken a test at the same site as they did.

Since DNA results are not uploaded to Wikitree it relies on the comparisons being done elsewhere and documented by the user on the relevant Wikitree profiles to confirm a match. You can read more about it here: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:DNA_Features