Merging with abandoned tree of a close relative.

Ok....

So I still don't understand what I need to do in order to merge with a close relative who has abandoned Geni for more than 1 year.

Example A: Armilla

This woman is my first cousin, thrice removed, and her grandchild entered her in, as well as about a dozen or two dozen of our shared relatives. I'm related to him, as well as all the people he and I both entered in.

1.) He hasn't been online since mid 2008
2.) I've messaged him
3.) Sent Family Group invite
4.) Sent Collaboration invite
5.) Reported him inactive
6.) Manually "Suggested Merges" one person at a time until I believe I've matched everyone we have in both trees.

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If for example he never comes back to Geni, what recourse do I have? I can never complete these merges? There are at least 50 managers on Geni that I have not been able to get in contact with because their are AWOL, (and 30 who I am collaborating with!) but so I'm asking:

What do I have to do to complete these merges?

Steve

Here's another good example - Joseph

Two dozen profiles I'm trying to merge with managed by: Blake WISCHER

And Blake hasn't been since mid-2009. And here's an example where I've been in contact with a number of Blake's closer relatives, and he's entered so many profiles that they can't even merge with his copy of their parents and such.

Stephen - I think the official answer is to report the managers as having abandoned trees. You might also be interested in my comments at http://help.geni.com/entries/507614-reporting-of-profiles

Stephen,
you have two primary courses of action, both requiring some sleuthing work. It helps of course that you should be familiar with the structure / names in this tree.
(using Blake Joseph WISCHER as an example):

1) Blake added 307 profiles that are PUBLIC.
If any of these are ancestors or otherwise directly related to people in your tree, then a Curator such as myself can merge the two. This would create an initial connection between the trees and might give you access to some of private profiles closest to them. If you recognize some of his profiles, but do NOT have them in your tree, just add them to give us a place to start merging from.

You can see the list of his public profiles in the following way.
a) From the Overview tab of his profile look at the Immediate Family, and click the view-all link.
b) In the advanced controls, change the Group to *Added By*, and the 'any privacy status' to *Public*. Press the Update list at the bottom.

2) Blake has 9 people in his Family-Group that are Geni users.
They too should be able to complete merges with his private profiles for you. Hopefully at least one of them is still active. If you locate their profile, you can send them a message explaining your request.

You can see the list of the Geni users in his Family-Group in the following way.
a) From the Overview tab of his profile look at the Immediate Family, and click the view-all link.
b) In the advanced controls, change the Group to *Family Group*, and the 'any claimed status' to *Claimed*. Press the Update list at the bottom.
c) We now see the list of the 9: Blake's parents, and some 2nd-3rd cousins.

Now comes the hard part: Because these are private profiles, there is no link to them, and the first-name is an initial only. BUT the relationship is shown, as is their gender (by the icon).

You now to "crawl" the tree, looking for these profiles. Ignore the parents (they also haven't been online since 2009). In order to find a cousin, you have to find which grandparent they share with Blake, 2nd cousins ==> which great-grandparent.

d) Open his list of ancestors (just like the previous lists, with Group: Ancestors). This last-names in this list should help you determine which branch these claimed profiles re on. As 6 of the 9 claimed profiles are named Forsyth / Forsythe, they are most likely descended from great grandfather "E. Forsyth".
e) Now that you know which ancestor to look for, you need to find the specific profile. You can do this by looking at the profiles of the parents, grandparents, etc, and doing a regular search for the specific name.
f) Having found them, you "turn around" and search through each descendant, looking at their list of descendants that are claimed profiles, ignoring those that don't have any. Yes, this CAN be a bit tedious.

Two possible short-cuts!
1) Looking at the list of claimed profiles, if you see some uncommon names, you might want to do a search for them (don't forget to filter only Users). There are 239 Forsyth profiles and only 133!! Forsythes. So it IS very much worthwhile going through this short list, looking for "M." and "K." (possibly married to each other). If you filter only male the Forsythes, you're down to 47. Finding the 2 M. is very easy... as are the 6 possible K.

2) If while working you come across a manager of profiles who's name matches a claimed profile, there's a very good chance this is one of them.

Two of these Forsyth / Forsythe have been online within the last WEEK! Go For It!

Sorry for the delay, merging has been completed.

Blake, no problem! Glad you came back. I wasn't trying to single you out, but I had to list an example as there are 60 more users like you that I'm trying to merge with.

It seems everyone I mention in a thread here comes back within a week. Perhaps I'll try that in the other thread. Maybe that sends a special kind of email that doesn't get filtered like all the rest of Geni emails (I assume everyone uses a Geni email filter)

Shmuel, That is an absolutely excellent description worthy of being in the Geni Wiki. Yes, most of your tactics I have found on my own, and with the help of another extremely experienced Geni user.

Yes, Shmuel, two of the forsyths you mention have been online this week, becuase I found them and contacted them exactly like you explained here. :) I had figured that part out on my own.

Steve