The process of adding new profiles is cumbersome

The major issue I have is this: I added a number of my ancestors/relatives who lived in mid-late 1800s. In order to add them I had to make the profiles public - OK, no problem with that. However, this has caused all the comments which were a kind of journal of findings, entered in their profiles, to be gone. Hence, I had to make the profiles private. They are still added to project but with very limited data.

Making public should not have any affect on comments.

I would start by adding one person with each surname to the project. The rest can follow later.

What I have done for some towns is list one person per surname so it is easy to at least find an entry point for each family.

See the following examples.
http://www.geni.com/projects/Jewish-Families-of-Krak%C3%B3w-Poland/...
http://www.geni.com/projects/Jewish-Families-from-Prague/7995

PS. The more people you get to collaborate, the faster and better it all is.

Randy -- comments i.e. entries made under MEMORIES are hidden once profile is public. To check it, need to make the change and then log out. When sign in, they are no more.

Private User Can you point me to a specific example? I am not sure what you mean by "Memories."

On any profile there is a header "Immediate family". It is followed for members by a "Guestbook" and for deceased by "Memories". That is the place,besides "About" to make entries. Since when I am researching I may not start with any complete information, "memories" is used to keep it up to date. Family members can also comment, etc. When the profile becomes public all this gets hidden.

Private User Why do you think you need to make profiles public?
What I would like to know is what happens to a profile after being added to the project?

Apparently you need to move "Memories" to the "About Me" field before making the profile public so it can be added to the project. Nothing happens to the profile when it is made part of the project, but the project will show up on the profile page.

The "memories" are like a discussion with various contributors at various dates. How to move them? I have plenty of such examples starting in 2007...
Perhaps others have used a different way to communicate/collaborate but in my family this was the preferred way.

Sorin -- have you tried to add a private profile? I thought cant be done.

In some projects I add just one person per family and then use that as an entry point to the tree when I am working. See this example. http://www.geni.com/projects/Jewish-Families-from-Kolod%C4%9Bje-nad...

Private User
Yes, added private ones. Hope they remain private.

Randy Schoenberg
Please try and ask Geni to add a feature of multiple add. Otherwise, it's too time consuming.

If it is too much, just add one for each surname from the town. That way at least you have an entry point from the project. Pam Karp and her group have added 25,000 profiles to the Krakow project, so it can be done.

I have several Y-DNA “close cousins” which are able to maintain paternal trees going to at least beginning of 1700s and even earlier. Alas, with Romanian records mid 1800s is the best case. Research in Romania (and I mean the Old Kingdom) is challenging and different than, say, former Austrian lands like Bohemia/Moravia or Galicia/Bukovina or Transylvania. First there are no CENSUS records providing data for families. Second, civil records started only in 1865 but many / most Jews are recorded without SURNAMES, simply as X sin Y as per Jewish custom. This was the case before 1900 and in many cases even after. Third, when surnames were used / acquired was not unusual for brothers to have different ones. The Romanian clerks were not used with the German sounding names and entry errors are common. Connecting relatives and defining a tree becomes a complicated task of gathering information from ALL civil records and analyzing all the relevant data (professions, address, etc) to determine with certainty relationships. Both me and Sorin have done a lot of this type of work for Botosani and many neighboring towns and data has been preserved. I did add some of the surnames for trees I do maintain for my family -- I am not familiar with Krakow but I assume there were sources easier available than what we did for Botosani.

Private User

Another issue is many of the "Romanian" Jews were new-comers, getting into Romania in the 1st half of the 19th century. Many of them did their best to cover their traces.
Romania has never required Jews to acquire surnames. The process started latter, and was slower, certainly in Botosani. I guess that some of those who got into Romania with surnames, have re-adopted them, otherwise I cannot find any explanation to your family name Goldschlager.
BUT, most of Botosani Jews survived WWII. So we cannot trace our lineages into the deep past, but we're here. I think better than many places that have better registration.