A question about Ancestors

Hi Vicki,

The ancestor count is exactly what you would expect (a count of your parents, their parents, etc. as they've been input into Geni) with the caveat that for performance reasons we have to cap the count -- 5,000 for free users, 100,00 for Pro users. So if you see exactly 5,000, that's a basic user who has more than 5,000 ancestors in the Geni tree. If you see 100,000, that's a Pro user who has more than 100,000.

Also, note that we do not count the same person twice... so if your paternal 17th great grandmother also happens to be your maternal 18th great grandmother, she'll only be counted once.

Hope that helps!

Mike at Geni

Thanks for the explanation. I am asssuming if more ancestors are put in my number could grow because I am a pro user.

Yes, up to 100,000. FYI Pro users will sometimes see their numbers mistakenly capped at 5,000 if our weekly background job that calculates those aborts for whatever reason. If this happens we can manually recalculate your stats, or else they'll correct themselves automatically within a week.

One important information: Even if you are a Pro user viewing those lists, including sorting and filtering, is only done for the first 5000 profiles.

Example, your list of blood-relatives: http://www.geni.com/list/index?group=blood_tree

Your statistics will probably show 100.000, but when viewing that list it is capped at 5000.

Viewing a list if 5000 is way more that you bother paging you through, but you have to remember that applying filters to that list will not include more profiles, - only the first 5000 the DB engine finds will be filtered, and this is one of the weak spots in Geni.

Funny but my ancestors have increased by about two thousand in a day or so. The highest I had was some seventeen thousand, now I have over nineteen thousand. I do see of flurry of people merging profiles and correcting things so maybe that is why.

Vicki, I've had similar sudden spurts when some merging has been done. On the flip side, I've also found myself losing huge amounts of ancestors when an error has been found somewhere in the tree and a disconnection has been made.

I think you'll find that your figures fluctuate on a regular basis, but I always look at it as a good thing -- someone, somewhere, is making changes in the tree that will hopefully help my branch become more accurate.

I am now over twenty thousand ancestors. Seems like it has bumped up a few thousand in the last few weeks. It would be nice if we could see which ones were added recently. We just see the numbers change.

Recently I noticed my ancestor count has dropped to five thousand from about twenty thousand. That seems like a big drop so I am wondering if there is something that dropped me into being a free member, like maybe my membership did not get renewed or something? I will have to check on that but the website still shows me as PRO.

Read what Mike wrote just above: http://www.geni.com/discussions/111915?msg=809937

Oh good I must have missed that. I got scared and thought my account might not have been paid up!!!! Thanks.