Geni Pro Just Got a Whole Lot Better

There should be no benefit of doubt, if at all possible! And Ashley, that is cool!

Private User Please dont reject the valid tree matches. Accepting them will lead to better record matches ;)

I'm also finding all kinds of new info and relatives ......

Judy I don't understand "no benefit of doubt.". My grandmother's names are "disputed" - there's a brief marriage somewhere we sort of know about, no details. So if one of us puts in what we know, or suspect, or logically postulate, don't we give "benefit of doubt?"

One thing I try to keep in mind: These "Smart Matches" are NOT like Geni merges, at all. They simply indicate that "yep, this person on MH is very likely the same person that is on Geni."

I would not even assume that the rest of the connected family is the same! It usually is at least partially the same, for sure, because that's one way to tell it is the "Same person" -- but not always. There are specific instances where a 'person match' is very well-defined (birth & death dates and locations, several siblings that match, maybe even spouse) ... but the parents are wrong. I'd still confirm the match for those children --- but reject the match (if it existed) for the incorrect parents.

In other words, confirm MH match by the person, not the family.

With an "inside Geni" Tree Match, on the other hand, the parent correctness is one of the important things to figure out and correct as part of the Geni merge activity.

Erica that's fine but a lot of them are really out there. 6o some matches to this particular person I was referring too , not really, maybe if lucky one or two.Historical profile , ya, more then likely a lot of them.That would make sence. When you are dealing with very common names you need ti take everything presented with a grain of salt and a lot documentation, This is my great great grand father I was talking about. i had someone insist he had all the answers. I kept saying i don't think so. Well, you know what he called back and said he was wrong.Well, I knew that, I said to myself.I mean he was trying to help and if he had found something substancial. that would have been a red letter day, for sure! i had another person doing a book on local history insist my great grandmother was living in another part of the state with people I had no clue who they wee. Well, not true. One I have WW1 letter from her son to his sister talking about his mother and where she was and did she get electrity yet? Plus not long after that she was living with said sister and husband and kids. My cousin Doris was one of those kids and she remembered well her grandmother, she was Doris grandmother and my great grandmother. The name was the same but not the same woman. Parker is very common. Judy

Oh, now I follow you. Oh, totally. I am chasing up the HILL families of New England. Even more fun - my John Hill married his "2nd cousin" Charity Hill. So that's two Hill lines to sort out. In Maine of the "no records.". (sob)

Wouter De Boeck The CEO of MH says they will not be turned off.

Private User If you are talking about matches in your Merge center, The merge center is broken, nothing is working right there>

Eldon, I just read Gilad's posts and I don't recall him addressing what is viewed in the tree. He was discussing newsfeeds and he discussed different methods to help address the user's concerns. He also discussed a setting to turn off matches from some trees on MyHeritage with Geni, which may address a lot of the blue dots with little value. So, I don't want Wouter De Boeck to get the impression that he's ignoring constructive feedback. He's reviewing the feedback and thinking how best to address the users concerns as aligned with the business goals.

Private User I am sure I read that in one of his posts this morning. I wish discussions were searchable but I will go back and look. We kind of got buried in discussions today

Private User With my luck his statement was in the deleted message, maybe he will be back soon.

This match thing had my aunt born out of the country and not a citizen. I contacted my cousin in Pa. and sure enough my aunt was born out of the country but came here at age 2 and she was naturalized. So match was half right, half wrong! See you do need to check out what you find in ther.. Judy

Private User ... that's a nice example about what one can learn from treating a Smart Match as a "starting point"!

Private User - Great news - you took the time to View the Match - noticed a difference, researched it further - and Benefited from the Match :)

I just added 14 Newspaper articles to a profile - found on Data Match - for Pauline Weisweiller

OK :) - this profile - Hubert Louis (Umberto Luigi) Baron de Morpurgo

Peter what a sweet profile! You "wowed" me with that one. Surely there are projects for him?

peter it wasn't meant to a rave review for the system. Yes , i accidentally found out an interesting fact about my uncle's wife, my aunt, but at the same time there was miss info. It wasn't that earth shattering news either way.Now if new info about the family before they came here from Belgium appear. Now that would be good. Why did they leave and his serve record with Leopold ! and 2nd would be nice! Dream on , I say!

Judith, it seems to me like you're looking the gift horse in the mouth. (Since I don't know how widespread that saying is, it basically means that someone gets an amazing, unexpected gift, but then is dissatisfied that the gift isn't even *more* amazing.) You say you "accidentally" found something out that you didn't know before...well, that's a uniformly great thing. Focus on the fact that you got new info rather than on the fact that you didn't get every single detail on someone's life.

Genealogy, as you know, is done in small pieces over time. It took me about a decade to find the first name of Julia Ann Town's father. I have absolutely no other details on him yet, but I'm not going to be disappointed that "all" I have is his name. That's a huge step forward for a genealogist. You know that from experience. You getting that information about your aunt works the same way. Give it some time and appreciate what little bits you get.

I get the sense that a small subset of the Geni userbase is spending more time complaining about these new matches than they are doing actual genealogy -- or, say, trying out the new matches. If the new changes are really that upsetting for people, just stop paying attention to them and work on your tree instead. Don't expend so much energy on being upset about something you can't control. Work on your tree.

Erica thanks, just added Hubert Louis (Umberto Luigi) Baron de Morpurgo to - Famous Olympians project -
http://www.geni.com/projects/Famous-Olympians/11994

Private User So far I think the new matches are pretty cool. Yes, for now, much of it is replication of records I already have, but linking the census data right to the profile - AWESOME!, death/birth records right on the profile - AWESOME!, finding photos of distant family members on MH trees - AWESOME!

MH seems to have international records to some degree or another and if they really upgrade their records as they claim they will be doing this really has a great deal of potential.

The only downside compared to Ancestry in the long run (as of this moment) is that you don't quite have the same portability with your tree should you wish to take it and all its records elsewhere - I'm sure that's partially the point, but perhaps later updates will support more efforts toward backing up our trees to harddrives/software, etc.

So far aside from having to pay an extra fee, I see no downside.

The one thing I do wonder is if I am hurting myself in the long run by rejecting some of the MH tree matches. Actually, i am rejecting all of them that don't add anything be it info or a picture to my profiles.

It seems odd to me to reject a tree match.... the person managing the match may have more information that they just haven't put on the profiles yet.If you reject you don't get to collaborate. If you accept you then can collaborate or not as you wish and you can unconfirm later if there's a problem.... best of both worlds.

Just to add a minor point - collaborating with an MH tree owner is not the same as collaborating with a Geni member. I don't actually know how it works. :).

So for now I'm confirming tree matches on the separate platforms. If I'm unsure I just don't "create data source." To me this is the same as reviewing my tree against an ancestry.com tree - reference it.

Private User please see my post at the top of the page. Yes, you will be hurting yourself (and others connected to the profiles) in the long run by rejecting the valid MH tree matches. You can accept the match but chose to not add it as a source to the Geni profile. If it doesnt add new info, accept the match but dont add it as a source.

Thanks Kris Hewitt 🧬 How do you know that? I have already rejected HUNDREDS of them :/

Erica Howton and Terry Jackson (Switzer) At least at this point, it's not really collaboration. It's ultimately just using the tree on MH as a "source" for your own - please correct me if I'm wrong. I would imagine at some point it will go both ways though and they will be able to use the Geni World tree as a source for their private trees - my own personal opinion, not anything that has been stated by Geni/MH per se.

Also, why would I want to confirm a match with a tree/profile on MH that has either incorrect or incomplete data? That doesn't make sense to me just for the sake of having a match.

because the profiles surrounding it might tell you something new.

It seems to put a source reference to a MH tree when you match it even if you tell it not to - I just tested it.

Ashley, it wasn't that amazing. really. if I had wanted to know more about my Aunt I could have called my cousin up at any given point or just face-booked her, which is what i did. I still think this is not the best thing. Example my Great grand Father ,George W. Parker had 26 hits ,all list unknown son. sorry I know who they all were. In fact I have pictures of the 6 surviving children and have met all but one of them. I live in the same town he did. i have access to Town Hall records plus family records. If there was another Parker I'd know about it ,.because being connected with the North Saugus Parker's is evidently something special., The fact that they were part Native American is also big in town. All I have to say is I am Phil Parker's niece and the stories I get about him fly all over the place. We are just well known.No money but well known. We are one of the older families plus connected with other older families. We were caretakers on Breakheart and owned the Saugus iron Works twice, once as a Paine and once as a Taylor , which is how it eventurally ended up in Parker hands for a few years. We sold land to the Town to build the Town Hall. My uncle was in Town Meeting two diferent times, he was Conservation Officer, and elected to Housing Authority. We have cousins who were very active in town and I was in Town Meeting for 10 years and being connected to Phil Parker and part Indian got me there. i kept me there but the Towny status got me there. The Mansfield and Hawks were also early. Adam Hawks was the first settler, no relation. So i think i know the Parker history. My point in all this is not all these matches are correct or even helpful. people are merging without facts , in some cases. I am not saying all this to blow my own horn, although it does look like it doesn't it. I just am making a very long soap box comment on these matches can be helpful but they can also be disastrous! Judy

Ashley, acturally over the years , a lot of my tree I have just by shear dumb luck and a lot of hard work and hours of leafing through book after book, record after record, checking every single person in the tree out to find connections. Over 20 years . Almost nothing is earth shattering to me at this point. There's a couple of big loose ends but I am not holding my breath over it. By the way none of the matches have hit those branches. That would be amazing! I might get up and do a little dance over that! And a big Woo Hoo!!!! Judy

Private User When you are on the page to confirm the match, when u hover over the checkmark to confirm it asks "Create a Source?", and you can pick Yes or No. Here is a profile of mine for example where I have confirmed 3 matches, but since they didnt add anything I didnt already know, I chose "No" to adding the match as a source.

Grace Bond

The way it was explained to me is that if you confirm a match with a profile, even one with some incorrect data, but clearly the same person, and that profile has records attached (now or later) then those records are more likely to be suggested as records.

By rejecting a match, you are saying they are NOT the same person. Even if they have data that is incorrect for example, I may have wanted to contact them, and would not now see them as a potential match, since you have rejected them. I wouldn't worry about the ones you have already rejected tho as in most cases there will be other matching profiles from the same trees, just something to keep in mind for the future.