Is there any point in Ancestry tree descendancy research?

[Althea7]

For the purposes of feeding your Ancestry Thru Lines with data, is there any point in doing a lot of descendancy research, filling in trees from distant ancestors' siblings?  Or would the Ancestry computer be doing that anyway by using other people's trees?

[Craclyn]

Yes. The more you add the more hooks the system has to calculate common ancestors and ThruLines.

[Althea7]

Yes. The more you add the more hooks the system has to calculate common ancestors and ThruLines.

I wondered if that was the case, or if the Ancestry computer can make the links anyway from the data in its system?

[Craclyn]

It cannot pull links out of thin air. If nobody has the people in the chain in their tree then it will not make the connection, so the more you put in the better the results will be.

[squawki11]

I agree that tree info is crucial and the more extensive the better. From my limited experience DNA matches/cousins tend to be found along unexplored branches. However, it does not require an extensive tree to be uploaded to Ancestry. That uploaded tree may have relatively few people, perhaps less than 100. It just has to be sufficient to trigger common ancestors and thru lines. Your big tree can be kept off line. It helps if matches remember to link their tree to their DNA results. Otherwise they won't see common ancestors. The match's tree can also be small (linked); it must have at least one identifiable person, preferably with dates and places. Public and/or unlinked trees with only private people are practically unusable.
Please note the above on!y refers to Ancestry. It does help if there are other trees for cross reference and extensive records, all of which are Ancestry features.
Apologies to all grandmothers....

[hurworth]

The tree I attach to DNA is pretty much a public pedigree tree.  I don't like to have descendants of ancestors siblings in a public tree, because they may not like that.  I'm not one of those that switches someone to deceased in a public tree the minute they've died.  I often wait a decade or two.

Unfortunately I am related to people who do that, and I find it very irritating and insensitive.

I have private and searchable trees for various branches of the family.  Ancestry uses them in  Thrulines.

[DavidG02]

I wondered if that was the case, or if the Ancestry computer can make the links anyway from the data in its system?

And this is where you need to be diligent or critical of the information given

because Ancestry can only give good faith information based on its customers trees and not its records