Doug,

I would have like to seen your original post, because I think it may be similar to something I'm thinking of doing, and I want to explore all consequences before I decide to go forward with my cunning plan.

Preface: I'm trying to find my dad's birth family.

I have built many research trees based on my non-maternal (and presumably paternal) matches. I was kicking the idea around of combining these trees into one and having my brother and myself take another DNA test to attach to this tree in an effort to bait some ancestor hints and DNA Circles. The only way to do this is to make it public, which could cause some aggravation, I know. I am trying to figure out how to make the caveats very clear and obvious, so anyone discovering a match to this bait tree understands that it is for research purposes, and that no information should be copied until verification can be done. I'm also trying to figure out how I would define my relationship to these trees in a manner that trees (or what would become "lines" in a single bait tree) that are in no way related would pick up hints.

The last thing I want to to do is garner ill-will amongst my matches, or the family research community, but I do think this method - which I have not yet worked out - will yield at least some very strong results and quite possibly identify a few of my dad's birth ancestors.

So I wonder if you were thinking along the same lines and if you have some ideas to refine the idea in order to cause the least amount of confusion and avoid replication of errors. One thought I had was to create another user account and name it along the lines of CAUTION:AdoptionResearch and naming the tree Adoption Research Tree - Please Contact Before Copying.

The more savvy researchers will pick up on it, but my concern is with the newbies and clickologists. I'm just really that desperate to find a break in my dad's ancestry.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.