Persons who have not been online for a year (Abandoned Trees)

Bjørn I have worked quite closely with Fay. She is building her own family tree, so if she's run across a private duplicate of Rulene's, it's within her family group too, with her own decision on public / private within her rights. Now she knows that Rulene is inactive she will proceed from there.

So I was right? ;-)

Not as I see it? It's inquiring about worth pursuing a pending match is my guess.

You forget that a Pro user never have an unresolvable pending match if we are talking about public profiles only or private profiles within his/her own privacy range.

Then I would guess it's within her family group Bjørn, as I first stated, with her own right to determine public / private.

F.Y.I....Rulene on Nehemiah 1737 Sargent profile....

Yes I was inquiring on a management/co.mgmt request made on 2011 to her....

And the profile is PUBLIC...

Bjorn...you should know better than to ask.

And I now am on the profile....since I now KNOW that she is no longer on Geni...

In a round about way, you DID help...

Bjørn, you said "I always try to understand WHY people ask about other's login. Technically that is private info that should not be published, so I always try to focus on the reason for asking. Since pro users have access to all public profiles it is usually about some private profiles managed by them and prefer that focus" and "You forget that a Pro user never have an unresolvable pending match if we are talking about public profiles only or private profiles within his/her own privacy range".

Your statements imply that you cannot imagine a legitimate reason for ever asking questions for the purpose of determining the likelyhood of another user being relied upon to someday log in again to help clean up a mess that they created. Is that really how you feel?

it is a legit question when you have waited for over a year to get a response to ANY question...to determine whether a manager is still active or not....if active, then I would of course have tried to contact her personally to resolve ANY question (whether asking to be added or to ask to make public) ...but only a Curator can see 'last active' on a lot of users profiles....

I hope that clarifies the reason for my question (s).

I was tried of sending messages and being 1)ignored or 2) ignored because she was no longer active...and not getting the messages...

No, - it is the fact that there is a reason why Geni does not allow people to see other user's last login.
As many others I dislike breaking Geni's rule on that by answering questions on last login and want to find another way to help those who ask.

Thats why I ASKED...

A simple: the person is still active, or they have not been on-line for -x- time is all that is necessary....I was not asking for personal info on THEM....

It was a valid request on a discussion about whether a profile had been 'abandoned' or not....a YES or NO is really all that I was after...

Is that not the reason for the discussion in the first place...to determine WHY a user does not answer requests?

FYI, Fay -- there is some other discussion about possible ways to provide guidance for "Is it worth waiting to see if this person will respond?" without disclosing last login time AND without taking other folks time to "look it up".

We'll have to see where that other discussion leads ..... if anywhere.

So "Persons who have not been online for a year and may be abandoned" is not the place to ask if a person is still active or has abandoned their profiles?

Could have fooled me...but then I guess I got whatever answers I needed. Sorry to take up your time on silly questions....

LOL, Fay ... you're right! This discussion was not started with that purpose in mind, it seems, but is a reasonable assumption, based on the name!! The discussion Alex posted the link to above is where that has "traditionally" happened!

Thank you Dan....I was wondering why I was being drawn over the coals as to my motives or rights to even ASK such an intrusive question...it never dawned on me that I was the ONLY person talking about something pertaining to the actual discussion title....

Phew

Fay Elizabeth Dyer, for what it's worth, I HAVE received replies to messages that I sent, up to TWO YEARS later. :-) So hang in there. ;-)

Beautiful cat in that photo of yours.

I'm with you on this Fay. I want to know if the person is still active or not. I don't care about the specific last date that they were online, but it's absolutely relevant to the goal of the World Tree to know this if they have a duplicate profile and more especially if the profile is involved in a pending merge.

That's Salem..beats me how he climbs my trellis and sleeps under the roof of the arbor but he does...no mice (alive) to be found in a good part of the neighborhood because of him..

Thanks...patience is NOT one of my virtues...I thought I was being good to wait almost 1 1/2 years....I guess I can wait a bit longer...but I abhor mysteries...that's why I research so much...

U;ll try to extend the limits of my patience..thank Shmuel.

::-)

(I wear glasses..so the extra eyes)

Thank YOU, Hatte...

You said it better than I did...

Almost every request I have made to be added to or because they are duplicates involve public profiles...with public people attached...it would be nice to get them merged instead of hanging out there unresolved.

We just made an update to the report tool that will only allow you to report a user as abandoned if they have not logged in for the last 9 months. Hopefully that will alleviate the need to ask when a user last logged in.

Michelle Elena Kempner Great! but what about any pending or future merges

Michelle Elena Kempner We, Estonians have a project of such people (http://www.geni.com/projects/Abandoned-Users-H%C3%BCljatud-kasutaja...] if You did not know. We dealt with it until it was possible to add persons to it without their consent. As You understand abandoned users will never give us their consent to do anything. Now this project is on hold for the better days.

Everyone in it has been reported as abandoned and they are all not been online for 9 months. Why something is not done to such accounts right away? What's the straight use of reporting them before of after 9 months if nothing happens after 9 months? This is just stupid! This "let go" system should be automatic. 9 moths is up and thats all! I see no point for change to this feature!

Whos askings are we alleviating here by that change? If Geni has hidden time of last login from users besides curators when curator can tell user that information anyway. Why is curator needed in this case as intermediate? To take a blame if somebody has spyed on someone? What kind a system is this? It is better to have a counter that counts time till 9 months is up and everybody can see that. Then, if someone wants to spy on somebody he or she sees that counterclock and not the right moment of last login. If the user is passiv then aprox. last login is the only thing user can optain by using Geni.

I see that you worry about curators work load?

Don't worry! All of our efforts are going to make Geni understand our points of intrest - to have a most accurate tree and not to deal with users who are, what ever we do, still unresponsive.

I kind of like Jaanus' suggestion of an automatic timer....perhaps with auto notifications to the 'supposed abandoned' mangager from 6 months onward as a "Have you abandoned your account at Geni?"...or some such thing.

It surely would allow the Curators more time to work on more relative questions than being asked to continually check on 'last online' information.

I will go one step further....how about after 9 months (or 1 year) that non-responders with 'private' profiles PRE-1900 (which is 112 YEARS AGO) be automatically made 'public'...

I do NOT understand why profiles that belong to a non-participant should be afforded what amounts to 'classified information' as tho it qualified as "Top Secret" or some such status...

Perhaps this has all been hashed out before....but something needs to be done about establishing limits on the 'privacy terms'....

Jaanus Luuse Fay Elizabeth Dyer Great ideas, why don't you make them feature requests.

Fay Elizabeth Dyer in Estonia we have few major e-mail account providers that still use size limit 10 MB of inbox space (hot.ee and mail.ee). People started using their accounts about 10 years ago and nothing much has changed since then - it is still 10 MB. At that time there weren't any large international service providers that offered an email account in estonian language such as hotmail.com or gmail.com. As you know people are slaves to their habbits still use these boxes that in the todays world are abnormally small perhaps to have a FB account so nothing really important is stored there.

Most of estonians are also very keen to use a computer in our own native langage. So these small email accounts are widely spead in all of the population.

In our case if people join Geni by the request to join from an active Geni user who uses to invite the same small inbox address we have a problem in our hands. The user joines but at the time of invitees holiday mailbox becomes full. Even in the normal settings Geni sends fair amount of emails.

So when person comes back from holiday, finds out that his email account is bloked because it has exceeded the volume He does not care about regaining access to this e-mail account and thinks that something is broken or service provider has stopped providing that service and makes himself a new email. This time the big one if he / she is wise enough.

Geni e-mails are still forwarded to the old account. Any letters, even remainders won't get through so in nine months this person who has now a new, bigger email account has forgotten all about it that he /she had an account in Geni. Maybe joines again in Geni with his new address. becomes double joined etc. So I see no point of sending to much reminders on behalf of geni and to invite somebody only to tell him that before you can use Geni it would be nice if you dealt with your existing account.

I would like to see Geni team make a research on this matter f.e. how many persons who have joined Geni with hot.ee or mail.ee account have not logged on for 9 months. I think this would be a drastic number of possible users in country with the population of 1,3 milion . After all, I seriously believe that estonians have the second highest number of Geni users in proportion to the population of the country after US.

I kind of like Fay and Jaanus' suggestion. I was also thinking along those lines.
We know the protocols for renewing a paid subscription at Geni are in place. Why not apply the same process to inactive members?
Notify the managers of inactive profiles and that they will be considered abandoned if the managers do not log in and acknowledge they are still active.
This process was in use with Yahoo. If your account was inactive (no logins) for a specified time period your account would be locked down. Logins would then be blocked until the member acknowledged ownership. If the account was locked it could be reopened after you sent an email to Yahoo. I realize the situation is not exactly the same but as a paying member of Geni your activity is acknowleged by your yearly paid subscription. You don't pay you don't play and you are downgraded to a Basic Member if no activity appears as a Basic Member over a period of time you are considered abandoned.
I know it's possinble, probable I don't know. There would be all kinds of what if scenarios to address. The software would have to be tweaked and the TOS and Privacy Policies amended (easy beans...☺) to cover the changes. The basic structure is already in place and appears to be working for paid subscriptions so the wheel does not have to be reinvented
Maybe a nice Icon could be made to put on abandoned profiles. It could possibly be a nice bold character. The letter A in color comes to mind. Maybe Red??....ttfn

Jaanus:

Isn't there a message that goes back to the sender that says something like "the address is no longer active"? If so, what is your suggestion for dealing with this...posting a roster of names of "Abandoned Geni Accounts"?

Sort of like the annual escheat that is required to be published (I believe yearly) in a State's primary newspapers that advises people (alphabetically) of bank savings etc accounts that are inactive and funds need to be claimed or they go into the State's "abandoned money fund".

But where to post it...on Geni of course...so people who have set up a NEW e-mail account can view it.....NOT on facebook or other such site (too many privacy issues)....

Then people with NEW e-mails will know to contact Geni to confirm their involvement....if no response within a given period of time, they are considered 'abandoned' and the property of the State (GENI) and can be dealt with accordingly...

I do not know how Geni addresses 'requests to manage' or merge requests' on a large scale...they appear in everyone's 'requests' list....if there is a master list...perhaps that list could be cross-reference to the 'abandoned now-public list' and ALL of the people (up to the first 10) added as manager's to the 'abandoned' profiles...and a notice sent to all others to re-submit...

This step needs more thinking, I'm sure.

Sorry, I don't know about American banking system and how clients or accounts are dealt there but if Geni lets go a user account in 9 months this annual escheat will not be necessary.

I don't think this "the address is no longer active" problem is not the problem on its own but it is the reason behind so many unresponsive users. Even Geni does not get through to these so called users.

I only wanna say if Geni account has been inactive for a long period of time when that might be the problem and if Geni does not let go such accounts then it is a stuck up system.

I don't think curators will ever be able to decide over user accounts but does Geni himself deal with them is the question? They just put up the button to "report as abondoned" and still nothing happens, after a year, after two years so this makes no difference whether you report it or not.
Some kinda a responce would be nice if you reported profile as abandoned.

We dealt with it and gave his profiles to user xxxx. But they can't do that because they never take anybody down and this project is the proof http://www.geni.com/projects/Abandoned-Users-H%C3%BCljatud-kasutaja...

So maybe I'm seeking a little feedback to my "job" in Geni.