Merger of Profiles without consulting the managers

For public profiles in the Big Tree, I do it without a second thought for obviously correct merges.
Geni's aim is a single tree with one profile representing the known, correct information about each person. Merging is a necessary part of the process in getting there.

Bad information is everywhere, but no information is usually much more common. If you put correct data into a profile, and give sources, either in "sources" or "about me", data has much higher chances of coming out "on top" after a merge.

Do resolve those data conflicts!

I agree with Harald.
However there seems to be some issue with loosing manager status of a profile on completion of merger, unknow reason, really inconvenient.

Apparently my previous post is somehow related to collaboration and collaborated profiles, where either manager will loose manager status (access) to profile when collaborating and if this collaboration ever ends you loose the whole profile, while it could be in your family tree.

Private User, please report a bug (with pointer to the profile) if you find a specific example. All managers of the previously existing profiles should still be managers of the merged one, and have access.

I did just that (#48810) and noticed some similar issues:
http://help.geni.com/entries/23266707-Family-Take-Over-
http://help.geni.com/entries/23329722-My-tree-is-being-taken-over-

Which profile is #48810 referring to? I don't know how to view that number - if it is a help request page, please provide the full link.

If you point to a specific profile, we can look at the revision log of the profile, and perhaps tell what happened. As long as you don't point to a specific profile, we can't check.

You will note that in the two pages you point to, no profiles were pointed to - in the longer one, people were removing a manager by hand; there were no "lost" managers.

Remember that a profile can have more than one manager - some, in fact, have hundreds, with the record being more than a thousand.

Joni, I worked on both those cases you linked to and I don't recall any loss of management. I think you're describing the primary manager. "Managed by Joni Atle and 3 others", for example. The profile still maintains all the managers (3 others), but one is selected as the "first" or primary which has no greater power or permission than any of the others. Contacting the manager still goes out to all the managers, so there is little gained or lost in being the "primary". People just find it off putting because they want to be listed first. We curators have actually discussed the merits of showing managers on the first page or giving any indication of a "primary". We should probably turn it into a feature request if it's not already, because some people get upset about it.

To also answer M G, the process is to merge them if they are matches of the same family. Often though, curators don't initiate merges that are outside their normal tree area. We usually are confirming merges that exist in the big tree and we try to follow that to completion. Most curators are merging hundreds or thousands of profiles a month, so to monitor for a specific user's profiles and avoid them is difficult and conflicts with the process. As Harald stated, do check the conflicts (http://www.geni.com/list/merge_issues?issue_type=completed) so if there are any, you can start the process of discussing that with the other managers or choose the best values. If you do find that a profile was incorrectly merged, let us know and we'll work to correct the tree. Our goal is certainly the most accurate and complete tree we can build. Harald also mentioned sources, which is important if there are any conflicts in data. We also have the ability to lock fields and add profile notes if needed for problematic areas.

Jeff I agree with you report 11:04

Thanks for the responses. I think it's common for names to run in families and when each generation of each line of a single family has a 'George Smith' born in the same town within a couple of years and you have seven of them the merge may seem appropriate to someone who isn't intimately familiar with the line but it's terribly incorrect to someone who knows the line. So, I completely disagree with you, Harald, that bad information is better than no information at all. Bad information can result in snarls that take ages to properly sort out. The second problem comes up in lines where close relatives (with a severe lack of gumption to go out and get themselves a non-related bride) choose to marry and the tree doesn't branch so much. Improper mergers can create chaos. Once the incorrect merge happens - it's almost impossible to sort out. I think this is a reason that this site hasn't taken off. My two cents. I'll give a shout out when I am in need of some special curator powers. Thanks again.

Curators rarely initiate such merges MG, so in your example, a close relative in most cases would have already requested the merge. The curator is usually only needed when the other manager is unresponsive to the existing merge requests or is completing the chain of a merge that has already been approved. The benefits of merging for most users far out way the occasions where a bad merge takes place. They usually get worked out, sources provided, master profiles made, ultimately making the tree better.

Hi Private User. We see the same thing a lot in the pre-Revolutionary families -- many generations with the same given name. Where possible we make Master Profiles and add sources and Curator's Notes and About Me. And often we are forced to lock the profiles for exactly the reason you stated, because it is a mess when different generations are accidentally merged.

That being said, we all make mistakes. the beauty of Geni is that people are collaborating on sourcing and research and it provides you more information more quickly than you could find on your own. But as everywhere on the Internet, you need to verify yourself. The World Tree is a work in progress and some parts are less well developed than others.

By all means, write the person who made the bad merges and politely point it out and suggest yourself as an expert in those lines. All of us make mistakes sooner or later. I certainly hope if was not me! But if it was, I would want to know.

Jeff

Absolutely not. In these instances, the merger was not requested by either manager and there was no outstanding request. I initiated this conversation due to the cavalier curator merges that have been inflicted on my line. Perhaps this would be a topic of discussion and a distribution of policy to curators. I accept mistakes in good faith after an effort to communicate. Mistakes happen. This was not a mistake it was done without any consideration or consultation with the managers of the merged profiles.

M G, agreed, bad information is bad. I did not say otherwise, I just said that missing information is more common.

In the case of a "George Smith", I would never merge based on just the name. If he has the same birthdate, the same death date, the same wife, the same mother and the same children's names, it's an obvious match.

If the birthdate, the mother and the children are missing from one of the profiles - it's much harder to tell if it's a match or not.

As usual - having a discussion in the abstract is hard. You haven't mentioned, for instance, whether the profiles in question were public or private, or whether there were outstanding merge requests on them.
Details matter.

Sincere thanks for your comments, M G.

The first thought I have here is that, if your concern is related to some specific merges, have you contacted the specific curator(s) in question yet? I think that needs to be your first step here, since only they can know why they did what they did.

As far as the broader question of merging goes, Geni has charged us with helping to build one world tree, which is why they've given us greater merging capabilities than other users. Users can elect to have private trees -- a right in which I strongly believe -- but once users start making public profiles, they're basically giving implied consent to be merged. There really is no way to "opt out" of being merged other than to build private profiles, and even that only goes so far, especially as you go further back in time and more of your close relatives join.

Perhaps part of this is user education, something we've talked a lot about as curators -- how can we make the goal of the "big tree" clearer to users so that they know what the possible outcomes of their tree-building are? I think that also needs to be part of this discussion.

Ashley, I'm not sure public or private has anything to do with an isolated tree. That's an aspect of privacy/visibility. As far as I'm aware, there are only a few ways to make your tree accessible to merging. 1.) Invite a relative into your tree 2) Accept a merge yourself 3) Allow someone to join your family group and they accept a merge on a private/public profile 4) Allow someone to collaborate and they merge a public profile

I"m not sure if 1 requires they do 2,3,4 or not.

So, I believe you can make your profiles public, so long as you don't invite anyone, don't merge, don't collaborate with anyone that will merge your profiles, and don't invite anyone into your family group that will merge your profiles.

As for us curators, we can't merge an isolated tree. The tree must be first become part of the World Family Tree before we can merge it any further, unless we are invited by that person as 3 or 4.

Harald and Jeff,

I was refering to the support ticket number.

The example profile in question is Magnus Ulf Valdemar Westerlund which for me shows a single manager Stina Ann-Christine Åkerberg, while the activity page clearly shows me and my fiance (Pia) have created the profile (her stepfather).

There is an outstanding merge request I can see on your tree as follows

http://www.geni.com/merge/compare/6000000011894216778?from%5Fflash=...

If you don't agree with the request put by Leif I Holmström that Francs Jane Onan (managed by David Embrey is the same profile as Fances Jane Wallace (O'Nan) then just click the 'No they're different' box at the bottom.

I can see no other glaring mistakes in your tree but that would be for you to pin point if you want any areas fixing then any of the curators, but especially those you see close to your area, would be more than happy to help put it right. I think, as others have already said the first thing to do is contact the curator in question... we are all just fellow Geni users.

Private User , the profile in question is a claimed profile. He last logged in last week. There should not be any managers for that profile. But he probably did not set his new password so the profile is not yet fully claimed.

Joni Atle, looks like the profile was claimed at some point, and then perhaps the person closed their account. When you close your account, the option is given to the person to turn over management to someone specific or the closest claimed relative. In this case, "Stina Ann-Christine Åkerberg" is closer than you, so it would have chose her. However, the profile looks to be in your family group, so you should have full access to it.

I no longer have the ability to challenge the Frances Jane Wallace O'Nan profile. It was merged without any communication to me by Bjorn P Brox, my 21st cousin, once removed about 5 hours ago. A person who never contacted me, has zero knowledge of this line and who was not contacted to merge the profile. This is the perfect example of what has happened to me again and again.

The result: I've changed the profile to private.

I think the curators should talk about how their actions are inhibiting regular users from contributing information on a public basis. Isn't that what this whole site is trying to encourage?

Terry, the Patton line of my tree - due to curator mergers - is an absolute chaos of errors that someone without intimate knowledge of the line wouldn't recognize. That is exactly my point. A little communication goes a long way to furthering the purpose of the site and creating a true sense of community not a very hostile us/them culture that will result in people leaving the site.

I again think that you really need to contact the curator(s) in particular. If a curator, or any user, is unknowingly approving incorrect merges, you need to alert them before more merges are done. The longer you wait, the harder it will be to change anything.

My experience has been that users are generally very excited about merges being done for them in their lines, but I again appreciate your dissenting viewpoint on the matter. It's good for us to hear all sides.

Sorry about that merge, - I read it as a request to get it merged and it looked as a correct merge for me.

Wow - can I ask one more question along this line. I opened Geni today to discover that Find-a-Grave data has been uploaded as "profiles". Are curators going to be ignoring these or will you be merging them without communication? I ask because, while there can be some good clues and information on that site, it's certainly not always correct and there is lots of bad information masquerading as 'records' there - which have now become bad "profiles" here.

they have not been uploaded as profiles, they get tagged as sources, so if they get attached to a profile it does not changed the data of that profile

Ashley,

Communication with users would go a long way. I would recommended a note that go out to all users that address the following:

Goal of the site - global tree
How many generation back can you keep private
When you agree to merge by default - making a profile public
What a curator can do for you!
How to request curator help.
How to handle, respectfully, a disagreement with a curator.

- When there is a dispute, I would suggest a link in the profile to the discussion of the disputed information and allow the end user to make their own judgment regardless of what is in the final profile. Keeping record of the discussion allows end users to review that for themselves and their own research and keeps things transparent.

Quite frankly, I kinda feel like I've been stumbling around the site trying to determine Geni specific protocols and procedures. It has not been an intuitive experience at all and I think users make assumptions about what the site is due to a severe lack of information.

M G, have you found http://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Main_Page yet? There are pages there that answer all of those questions. I agree that we could make the wiki more visible, and I know that the staff have looked into ways to do this. We have also discussed ways to make the goal of the big tree clearer to users at the moment of registration.

Sending out e-mails to every single Geni user is both expensive and resource-consuming. I don't think that is going to happen, at least not now.

If you click on the "Discussions" tab on any profile, you can find all public discussions where the profile has been discussed. This of course does not include any private messages that have happened related to the profile, but I think most users opt for this method anyway. If someone wants to discuss a profile with you, or if you want to initiate a discussion, you can always take it to the public discussion board instead of direct messaging in order to help improve transparency of discussion.