How much power do curators have ?

Hello and good evening.

My question is, can a user can be 'forced' into collaboration against his/her will?

I'm writing because at this point I'm so enraged that I consider leaving everything in here behind.

A little explanation..
I started on geni about 2½ years ago, from scratch, and have spend litteraly hundreds of hours searching old danish churchbooks, protocols and so, and by hard work I've got like 650-700 direct ancestors.
One of the most important things for me about long gone ancestors, especially the historically known ones, is being able to prove that the line (and the given facts) is reliable, so I've made sure to have sources to everything which goes beyond churchbooks / last wills and so.

But here is the thing:
All the time I've ignored/declined collaborators, as I often found their lineage claims, and profiles unreliable /made up, but resently when i signed in, I was suddently part of this maniac run anyways.

Now I have 5000 + ancestors/blood relatives,
(many of them mythical/ancient norse heroes that CANNOT BE RELATED (OR EVEN VERIFIED) HISTORICALLY)
and people I don't even know are taking/ editing my profiles, inventing missing links, and making up fake birth / death years.

So how come ?
I have 2 family group members, my father, and his 5 cousin 5 times removed, but I know that neither of them have merged any of my profiles. Though they both have other collaborators..

So I ask, can curators, or collaborators of people i collaborate with, go in and edit in/ merge my profiles without my permission?

/ Marc Møldrup Andersen

Marc,
why are you so quick to "blame" Curators? You yourself have 2 collaborators (who have an additional 89 collaborators) and 28 invited family members. So that's quite a few people who can make changes in your tree.

No one of those persons who has ruined Marcs work -except one (who is a curator) - is anyone i know of.

Erik,
look at it this way - no-one wakes up in the morning and says "who's work on Geni am I going to ruin today?" You have 65 collaborators (at least 4 of which are curators), so you obviously have common areas of interest with many people.

You, Marc, or anybody else really, can't be part of the shared tree on Geni, but also say you can't touch these historical profiles of mine. That would be like being "half pregnant".

Hi Shmuel,
and thanks for your response.

But let me try to explain certain things..

First, this page: ( http://www.geni.com/help/privacy?simple=true ) , told me that only my collaborators, or some curator would be able to edit public profiles of mine. As I already knew my collaborators, the large merging therefore "had to" be the work of a curator.

Second, to become part of the 'big tree' was never something I asked to benefit from, but when that happened anyways, it was not like I had any chance to cut the connection again.
But I though just as long as I could add/keep my profiles for myself, It wouldn't matter in the long run.

Third, I also know, that noone in here intentionally try to ruin the work of others, but "historically incompent" / very naive persons might do so anyways without knowing it themselves.

and

fourth, I actually wouldn't mind collaborating with other people, and share management of my historical ancestors now, if just it happened under safe conditions.

Thereby said that administration of historical profiles (curator work), should be for qualified persons only. ie. historicans, who knows what they are doing, and whom are able to distinguish between fact and fiction, and not some group of self proclaimed 'experts',
who's only purpose seems to be uniting the entire world in one big tree at any costs (ei. inventing the missing links, creating fake birth/ death dates)!

I'm sure It would be possible to track down some real historicans who uses geni too, and who could clean up all this mess.

After all, if It had been a surgery, would anyone ever dare handing over the scalpel to an unqualified person?

Hello, Marc. I don't know you and don't believe that I have ever come across any profiles that you manage, so I am not entirely sure of what area of the shared Geni tree your profiles are in. I am just writing to say that, as one of the original curators (like Shmuel), I can attest that the team of curators has been selected based on their reputation as consistently careful and accurate users and collaborators on Geni, vetted by a team of their peers. I know of no curator who could be described as one of "some group of self proclaimed 'experts', who's [whose] only purpose seems to be uniting the entire world in one big tree at any costs (ei. inventing the missing links, creating fake birth/ death dates)!"

Curators may not all be scholars and historians (though some of us have advanced degrees in history and related fields), but curators are committed to ensuring the historical facticity of the Geni tree as far as can be determined, and we are committed to finding and supporting the most well-researched versions of various family trees whenever there is a controversy about relationships. We do not create fake names or dates. We see our role as collecting, collating, melding together where there is overlap, verifying, noting discrepancies, documenting, creating narrative information, and so on. Our goal is to create or designate one single master profile for each historical person.

We curators are GREATLY appreciative of researchers like yourself who have already done much of this work--finding well-researched and -documented genealogical information is such a delight as we sludge through so much poorly-researched material that has just been blindly copied from the internet.

So, all this to say that we are on YOUR side and that we want to work with you, and others like you, to collaboratively develop an entire tree that is (as much as humanly possible based upon existing historical records) verified and documented.

But please be patient and give us time. This is a huge undertaking, and while we have been able to merge hundreds of thousands of duplicate profiles in the past few months, there is much work ahead in the verification and master profile building process. Anything that you can contribute to that process we will be grateful for, and it is likely that good solid public profiles such as those you describe will become the master profiles that can serve as models for all others. So I recommend that you find a curator who works in the same area of the tree that you do, then work with him or her to designate those master profiles so they can be better protected. You might even want to become part of a project as a project collaborator, which will give you additional merging and editing privileges on profiles that are part of the project.

Thanks for sharing your concerns, and I look forward to hearing about the good work being done on your side of the Geni family tree.

Pam