Introducing the Curator Team

Welcome aboard, Randy!

Congrats Randy, all of you guys do a great job, Its also been fun seeing the connections we all have, Keep up the Great work!! Maybe one day I will figure all the computer stuff out and be able to contribute better.

Welcome Randy!

Congrats Randy! BTW, just saw that Randy Dean Stebbing is my 7th cousin twice removed.

Randy is my 9th cousin through Governor William Leete of Connecticut. He's a pleasure to work with on projects and researching genealogy and correcting profiles, so welcome Randy. His work on Original Proprietors of Hartford, Connecticut was excellent.

Welcome Randy!

Good to have you on board Randy - 13th cousin four times removed!

Hi Randy, welcome!

Randy...Congrats!!! I have admired your profile "fixing" skills...glad someone in the know did as well!!!

Randy, congrats, 11th cousin!

Welcome Randy

I have the pleasure to announce that Geni has appointed a Dutch curator. I am pleased to be that curator. Especially for persons who use the Dutch language operating on Geni can be more easy now.

I am doing genealogical research since about 1969.
Since then I've always been a helper to others in their research for their ancestors.
I had my first experience with a wiki-based global collaboration genealogy site on WeRelate.org (about 2 million profiles). WeRelate had big problems because of the many duplicates, caused by gedcom uploads. I was there one of the top 5 mergers to solve the problems.
I also had experience with a little similar site, Familypedia (about 100,000 profiles). Familypedia had not the problem of the many duplicates because they had no gedcom upload process. I learned there the wiki-techniques to present genealogies.
In the recent years I was an active administrator of the multilingual Rodovid genealogy site (about 500,000 profiles) in the Dutch and German location and a co-administrator in the English and general manager (engine) location. I stop now as administrator on Rodovid to give my attention to Geni. On Geni I started the 4th april 2009 with the gedcom upload of my pedigree, but caused by personal circumstances (severe illness of my spouse) I was inactive untill the 11th of aeptember 2011.
Geni is a big challenge because there are so many users and profiles, so we can really speak of a collaborative global genealogy.
That creates opportunities, not so much for me, but specially for Geni as a prominent leading collaboration site.
All users are for Geni equal. As curator, I am nothing more than other users, an ordinary user or a pro user. I only have easier access to data and I have many more tools, so I can help others.
As a curator I am here for all users, to make them have more fun and to give them more possibilities to work useful on and with Geni. Above that I try to help Geni to improve the site.
Geni still has much trouble caused by earlier mass upload of gedcom files with many duplicates, incorrect family relationships and wrong merges.
With all manpower Geni is working to overcome these problems by properly merging of the many duplicate profiles and correction of erroneous parents and partners. The software is constantly being improved by Geni, firstly to avoid futural false and erroneous merges, secondly to make it possible to undo wrong merges and relationships more easily. Geni is also working to improve the gedcom upload method to prevent many duplicates added in the future.

Still there is a lot of work to do and still there is to little manpower to manage the almost 100 million profiles perfectly, but Geni is continiously looking for expansion of the actual group of good curators and collaborators !

Do you have problems, suggestions or other matters, you can count on me !

Congratulations Fred

Congrats Fred!!!

Fred, I'm very happy to have you on board. You're a great addition to the team.

What a great introduction Fred! I look forward to you continuing your great support and contributions, with broader responsibilities. The Dutch are lucky :) I loved hearing your insights.

congratulations Fred :-)

Welcome Fred, glad to have you aboard.

Welcome Fred, congratulations!

Fred Bergman (dutch curator)

What a wonderful and inspiring introduction Fred.

I'm looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and getting to work with you. In fact I've been holding off on New Netherlands genealogy (now New York - and where I live) until the Dutch community was able to take itself to the next step.

I understand you've created a Portal for Netherlands users? Would you mind posting that link? I want to show it off to other countries.

@Erica Howton

http://www.geni.com/projects/Portaal-voor-Nederlandstaligen

http://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Nederlands_Portaal

http://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Nederlands_Portaal/HULP

Welcome to the family Fred.

Fred,
Already said an informal hello on one of the Dutch discussions but again, welcome to the team. And welcome to the family!

Fred Bergman (Bergsmit) is 16th cousin thrice removed. We share Dalton-Molyneux connections.

Glad to have you, Fred!!

@Private User

Hi Erica, before I could start a New Amsterdam project, George Homs, a very serious genealogic researcher, came with the idea, the facts, the links and the propasal voor the new Amsterdam (old New Yoek) project. We decided this to start and he did allready: http://www.geni.com/projects/New-Amsterdam

With him as engine it shall be a success !

I'm very excited to read about new Amsterdam. Thanks to George :)

Thanks for the pointer Fred! I started a new discussion making myself available for archive visits:

http://www.geni.com/discussions/95835

Welcome aboard Fred. :)

Ashley Odell is my 12th cousin. That makes you my closest "Curator Cousin!"

Welcome Ashley..