warning! - please stop collaboration

@Sylvia del Carmen Bain Rojas
Hello Sylvia. As I see it only verified information should be entered for any profile. There should be no guessing, that will destroy the usefulness of using this tool. If information is not verified and entered anyway it must be noted, i.e. tick the fox for estimate for dates, additional text for names.
Wishing you best of luck with your further efforts to discover relatives
Kjell Nilsen-Nygaard

Dear Kjell,
I do agree with you, that's why I don't put any information on any profile if not confirmed. e.g. There is a doubt whether my mother's grandmother's sister was the Carmela Buzeta Marín who was a nun or the one married to a gentleman belonging to the chilean society of that time. My mother and grand mother are already dead and people still alive can´t remember it properly so there's the poor one waiting for her family to be completed and I do prefer to be stuck for a while than to set an unreliable information. But, I've unfortunally met people which I didn't know, didn't care at all and found in my tree unreal data and even people who were supposed to be my relatives and are not..
Well, it's nice we'll share our efforts in working seriously and count with eachother too.
Best regards,

Sylvia.

I disagree, material that one is almost certain is ok, should be entered with ?? to show doubt, but still give others that might poses the necessary proof, a chance to contact the profile maneger. The true value of Genie is that it makes it possible to access information that otherwise never would be accessible. This through relatives wit old letters, documents or with recollection of details about persons, things that are not a part of public records, things that would never find its way to records or books, libraries or other channels. The only question is are we serious? If so, there is no problem, we can exchange information and we can abstain from merges with profiles with ?? in their data, or we can contact the profile maneger and find out what it is all about. When someone enters a profile with little or no information, they sabotage the serios work that some of us want to do by giving uncertain and dubious profiles, that creates merge issues and undermines the quality of the rest of the profiles. This to me is foolish, amateur and stupid waste of our time resolving near empty profiles, and people that enter such material should be banned if they posess information that could have been used to eliminate or substantiate a profile. SUCH PEOPLE WASTING MY TIME MAKE ME CROSS!

@Michael. I couldn't say it any better. Applause!

Kjell,
I must disagree on principle! Genealogy is always first about people and families. As such I place as much, if not more, importance on oral tradition. This is especially true for many groups that for many centuries were considered "second class" people, who often weren't part of the "official records" system, if they were even granted the "privilege" of citizenship.

My own people, the Jews, are a classic example. For many centuries in MODERN times in Europe, they simply "didn't exist". Three of my grandmother's grandparents were "stateless". My grandmother herself, did NOT receive her Romanian citizenship, until she moved to the USA, as a WWII refugee. Even in the countries most pedantic about record keeping, such as Germany, the authorities refused to recognize Jewish weddings, because they weren't done... in church. So such women remained "unmarried", and her children registered as "out of wedlock".

But never mind that, even when you HAVE records, that doesn't mean a thing. The fundamental building block of pre-modern records, are church "Parish records". Are certain these records were never modified to prevent embarrassing certain people, whether "by request" ($$$) or due to "piety".

From a purely historical point of view, NOTHING is absolutely certain. Not even the identity of one's own parents.

I agree, many common people did not marry officially, on grounds of religion, economy or simple tradition. Ihave been told of a tradition in the polish workforce in Denmark, they simply gathered and the couple jumped over a broom stick to mark that they were a couple. My own mothers mother did not register a name of father, and i only found him through stories about him joining the army and being wounded and die in WW I. Had he not been killed and buried in a war grave i would not have been able to find him. I found my mothers family through stories about my mothers siblings, and coparing them to profiles on "Lancaster hunt" contacting a probable link and it turned out that they had birth certificates and knew the story about Joyce who was send to relatives in Denmark and lived in a mansion called PINJEHØJ. Such information cannot be found in files or records. Im still looking for my father who migrated to Canada in 1903 ?? came back after WW II as a RCAF officer to record allied wargraves of flying crews shot down over Denmark. He went back to Canada in the early fifties and had a Canadien wife and children. I found a Jane Hornung, who had posted a notice on ancestry CA, asking for information that matched, but she has not replied or been active since 2004. if anyone has information on "Eigil Hornung" please contact me.

@ Kjell, as a multi-racial (however identified as "African American") person, I could not agree with you more. It has taken me more than a decade to finally discover my grandmother's (1878-1944) mother (1860-1941), and her grandmother (1832 - ??) in the 1880 census. Without a doubt, records ARE helpful. But for both my father's side, (African American) and my grandmother's side (bi-racial), the census takers were most inaccurate with names and even gender. It took 7 years just to find my paternal Grandmother. I received information at the age of 9 about my white great grandfather- which was CONFIRMED a mere year ago -- and that is more than 40 years ago. No one knew that information in any of the immediate families - African American or Caucasian. Collaboration is essential if you need to break "walls" down, and that can be interpreted any way you wish.

@ Kjell, as a multi-racial (however identified as "African American") person, I could not agree with you more. It has taken me more than a decade to finally discover my grandmother's (1878-1944) mother (1860-1941), and her grandmother (1832 - ??) in the 1880 census. Without a doubt, records ARE helpful. But for both my father's side, (African American) and my grandmother's side (bi-racial), the census takers were most inaccurate with names and even gender. It took 7 years just to find my paternal Grandmother. I received information at the age of 9 about my white great grandfather- which was CONFIRMED a mere year ago -- and that is more than 40 years ago. No one knew that information in any of the immediate families - African American or Caucasian. Collaboration is essential if you need to break "walls" down, and that can be interpreted any way you wish.

Sorry, my comments were to Shmuel and to the participants. oops

"some of us want to do" is accusatory and unnecessary it seems to me. i do not think any of us are playing around. i have to go on the assumption everyone is. . if one is so worried about making a mistake that they, will not or cannot enter information, the tree will go no where. believe me a few years or days down the line will not change history but it can change what we know. many of us are not going to bother with in depth details on distant profiles. that is left to closer kin.

once you get back a few hundred years information is sporadic and many time contradictory, certainly not absolute. like 3 possible sets of parents or son of which of 7 wives. none of this can be totally accurate until the proposed lines are fully investigated. at this point these issues are not easily accounted for in the tree. for myself i was over 60 years old before i found out by dna that i was not a throgmorton / throckmorton family member at all. i am a mcclendon. the tree does not allow me to have a genetic father and a familial father . i utilize as many sources as possible but i am certainly not traveling to scotland and searching hundreds of parish records when you have plenty of scots who are doing it now and in the past. the further back we go the more errors we will develop but these errors will settle out on what ever truth comes to fore. i agree with shmuel. all records oral or written should be included. always remembering that history fades into myth & legend at some point. as you say "there is the recorded and unrecorded" reality is somewhere in between. most go unrecorded.

somethings that MAKE ME CROSS! are merges that end up saying you cannot add to that family-after you just spent time trying to merge a profile.
then you have the profiles that you cannot do anything to.if i locked and made private my profiles it would be a mess. why do people do this. do these blocked profile managers think they have all the answers or what. i never know what to to with them so ignore them. geni is about sharing in a very large family.
i love being corrected and i have to assume others do as well. the truth is always welcome.

Hi all.

I have been on Geni for only 2 months, and in that time have made major inroads in getting to know Geni, connecting up trrees, adding new profiles, etc. etc.

I am very computer literate and have had the time to do this. Sometimes in life (online and offline), we just have to appreciate that most people are not like us.

If you are reading this, you are a minority. I don't believe that most people on Geni ever read let alone contribute to a discussion.

My (limited) experience to date when I have found trees of sometimes fairly close relatives, and I have messaged them and got no response, and then I ask them in person, I get responses like: "Oh, I think I remember I put something on that site but I haven't bothered with it since." "I signed up to a free trial but I thought it expired. I didn't know I still had an account", etc.

I suspect that in most cases, people on Geni are not aware of what they are doing in detail. This may help answer Jon Thogmartin's question as to why some people lock profiles.

There was a post earlier from Michael Lancaster that said:
"When someone enters a profile with little or no information, they sabotage the serios work that some of us want to do by giving uncertain and dubious profiles, that creates merge issues and undermines the quality of the rest of the profiles. This to me is foolish, amateur and stupid waste of our time resolving near empty profiles, and people that enter such material should be banned if they posess information that could have been used to eliminate or substantiate a profile. SUCH PEOPLE WASTING MY TIME MAKE ME CROSS!"

Michael and others: I have to say that I think most people on Geni are amateur, and may be somewhat foolish. I am. I am less foolish than most. What do you expect when you have an online free to use mass market application with zero qualification level in computer skills, and in online collaboration, let alone in genealogy, required in order to join?

Come on, we need to be tolerant of those more foolish than we are. Let's help them step up the learning curve where we can. That's what I do.

There are some malicious people around, in real life as well as online. They are the minority. Maybe the person to whom this thread was originally directed is one of those people. But most of us are not malicious. We are just a little foolish and amateur, and generally welcome a friendly hand to help us be a little less foolish and a little more professional.

Reading about the lack of records, I can't help but wonder how many Australian genealogists discard records belonging to ancestors or relatives because they don't realize that a large number of convict marriages in the early days of European settlement were actually bigamous, and because they find a record of another marriage which is not recorded in the Australian records, discount it as not being relevant to their tree.

I sympathise with you, Shmuel. The plight of Anglo-Indians (Eurasian for those not in the know....with apologies to any AI's reading this, who may have an objection to this ethnic label) is similar. For centuries, if they were born outside Calcutta, their marriages were not covered by British law, and therefore their children were not considered to be legitimate....no matter who performed the ceremony. This made entry into the covenanted service of the EIC impossible, as a child had to be legitimate to be sent to the UK to be educated - another requirement of the EIC for entry into the CS. Add to this, the discriminatory policies targetting AI's per se, and we have the basis for subjugation on a grand scale. it was systematic, instituted by those in the EIC who had a vested interest in excluding AI's from progressing in the company, so that they could install their own relatives and give them the opportunity to shake the pagoda tree.

Re: my own Jewish ancestors here in Oz: we are exceedingly fortunate in that fairly meticulous records have been kept since the First Fleet arrived in 1788...mainly because the Home and Colonial Offices wanted to keep track of the convicts, regardless of race and/or creed. Who says that crime doesn't pay?!! :)

Nice, Jon!
I put in a lot of work gathering info for my tree and what a nice tree it was until I merged it into the big tree. I had little back up and whatever research I did is out the window, but the collaboration aspect, I feel, is more important. I would hope that others who input their trees have backup, then what happens here, doesn't matter.
None of us know who our ancestors really were, maybe more so if the names were handed down by the mother.
We do need to keep it fun and not get so caught up in the so called details. They can all get ironed out after it is all merged, if it ever is. Then the cleaner uppers can go in and update and fine tune it all. All we can hope for is an approximation for now. If it isn't to your liking, getting out of the collaboration business is the best bet.
So many times I have been working on something and someone with good intentions comes along and remerges what I had just undone. I can choose to get pissy or I can see it as a game and get back to work fixing it as fast as possible so I don't end up back at the beginning.We so choose how we want to see it.
The internet could go down tomorrow and all this will be gone. What we are doing here is a playground for what is is needed in the world. A place to practice getting along.

Lynne, funny. They kept track of the convicts and wrote off those breaking connections to the "Mother land" to start over. No records for them.

It's true, Margaret. It's taken me years to get to the bottom of my family history with connections in t' Auld Dart. I am particularly distrustful of the information contained in census records. One of my "brickwalls" here....my fourth g.grandmother...is listed in the 1828 Census as being the housekeeper of one Isaac Wise. She was his mistress, and he fathered my third g.grandmother. She was also a free settler, and I am finding it impossible to get hold of any records for her to speak of....just the very basics. Sigh!!

"welcome a friendly hand to help us be a little less foolish and a little more professional." i love this.

Dear Jon:

What happened to you when trying to solve things it also happens to me and I do feel the same frustration.I don't lock anybody in my tree so you can reach and see them all. I only ask is to be serious it corresponds to somone really identified and related with the family.
About being legal or ilegal members of a given family, it doesn't make much difference as they are join by blood laces. Here in Chile, there is no legal difference between children born out or inside the married couple since two years ago. It seemed unjust 'cause the children did not ask to be brought to this world and they were discriminated in benefits they could received besides being socially marginated.
If an ancestor is a convict or a king it doesn't change the kind of person you
are. What counts it's what is in your heart and behaviour.
My desire is that we simply work friendly with eachother avoiding to harm others.
Best regards,

Sylvia

My comments about near empty profiles was not intendet for users that cant utilize the program or dont have the information. It was solely aimed at thise WHO delibratly omit information. Please read previous coments about not entering information to avoyd merges from other users.

bump!

If you have comments in this discussion that s not within the topic or not relevant - please delete your post
it is very hard for new readers to catch up on the topic as it is too much to read

thank you
(and maybe you should check your connections with the trubblemaker in question, I found several of my collaborators in his famíly group/friendslist/collaboration)

I've also have been affected by these not welcomed merges that have made a mess in my profiles and family tree seeing that some of my Profiles appear to be themselves, their brother, father, husband or wife or son as well or having 22 parents.
I've tried to stop this by simply not making more merges.

Regards,

Sylvia.

That's why people should work with each other to verify if the 2 people are definitely the same people.
If people do not want to expand their trees on Geni, or any other online site, why then put it on there in the first place? Yes, Sylvia, if someone has looked at your tree, and see on there that you and they have a mutual relative, they should at least have the respect to first contact you to verify if the profiles are the same, and then you and the other person can decide whether to merge profiles. Other people should not ge going onto your tree and doing merges with out your permission.
But yes, you should keep making merges that you can absolutely verify. That is the best way that we can 'grow' our respective family trees.

Just my two cents
Roy

I used to undo merges with Grand Imperial Poobah, but they always get merged back together again by someone else. His are annoying because he has on his profile that he will NOT merge and that it was a mistake that he did to begin with.

Roy, It sounds great in practice, but what do you do when people do not respond? I have issues with a husband and wife. He has not been on since January I think and she hasn't been on since December. Blocking my merges with my close relatives (1st five generations). If you merge with someone and the info is not correct, change it. One of my pet peeves although it is mostly cosmetic, is putting titles and nicknames in the name fields. Another is maiden names for men.

NOT COLLABORATING IS NOT THE ANSWER. the answer is to be a little more careful. everyday i run in to locked profiles or privacy settings that prevent merging or adding to the tree. if you are on the tree you should not expect privacy. the tree is so much bigger than all of us could ever expect to know but we are all connected to this tree so in a sense it is our tree. my 20th ggfather is a grandfather to millions of other people. keep collaborating and keep merging & eliminating duplicates & moving obvious duplicates, it will all work out. when others cannot add to a tree or complete a merge it destroys their efforts by creating incredible frustration. on the quarles portion of the tree we have at least 3 different opinions of what the line should be. even when we know additional generations they cannot be added w/o sending a note & wait for a reply in order to simply extend the tree. the line has settings set so no one can do anything without creating a duplicate line and just go around the locked line. this privacy thing has to stop. this is not facebook. when i get on the tree i want to get real work done. accomplish something. and for what its worth i believe others also just want to accomplish something. this work is all for our grandchildren anyway.
keep going forward. mistakes can always be corrected. in fact i have a big list of mistakes.

eldon,
if geni would create a place for these titles / marriages & notes on the first info box we would have a convenient place to add these titles & notes. most do not want to go to each profile to add this information. it really slows you down.
i would like to see that original dialog box redesigned. i would also in line with this redesign like to see birth names only for tree view. married names are meaningless w/o additional information. can you imagine a "mrs john savage"
there are dozens of people named john savage in one line, let alone others.
i think we should not use the title mrs. it does not carry specific information that helps you follow down the line. in fact it hinders the line.

I agree except I believe titles can go in the suffix line The whole entry page should be known so you dint have to click on links. I also think it is hilarious that if you are not careful, you can have people born or dying in say the fifteen hundreds in the United Kingdom. You better know what places were named in those days and how to get around Genie's insistence in using modern location names

I also think generic words like "living" and "unknown" should be flagged and not saved until the subscriber gives more information. I have notes with my Ancestry.com tree. But I don't understand why it wasn't transferred to Geni. Geni certainly transferred my pictures, at least I'm pretty sure that's how Geni got these pictures. Correct me if I'm wrong.

About 150 years of my family went missing for the 15 years I was sleuthing because Ancestry did not recognize certain county names in the Tidewater area of Virginia until recently, when they modified the search to adjacent counties. Go figger. Add to the fact that Virginia shires morphed into several different county names within a 200 year period.