. . . a single, collaborative world family tree . . .

"But I made the foolish mistake of believing that GENI's goal was to build one big world tree ..."

Yes, I thought that as well.

It's confusing.

Chuck keep in mind that to finish the requested merge, the user to whom you send the request will have to be a Pro, or at least start a trial. So one school of thought would be that you can request whatever merges you like (they'll go away from your merge center when you do) and the recipient can make the choice.

Mike Stangel Am I correct that you can complete the merge with a non-pro if the non-pro joins your family group (for public or private profiles) or collaborator (for public profiles only). The exception is the non-pro's own profile, which cannot be merged with a duplicate unless the non-pro becomes a pro. Right?

@Mike Stangel if, as you say, no one can merge with a Basic user AT ALL, then that relieves a lot of MY concerns that they will lock their profiles simply by trying to participate in GENI and accepting a merge when not knowing the full consequences.

However, I expect that will be a great concern to Pro users to learn that they can no longer merge with a profile managed by a Basic users - even when both members WANT to merge.

Mike, PS - I hope you have your resume up to date, it can't be long before GENI is bankrupt or has to sell out.

Mike Stangel said one school of thought would be that you can request whatever merges you like (they'll go away from your merge center when you do) and the recipient can make the choice."
This is my way of thinking which is why I will continue working on merges as I do.

Randy that's correct (on both counts), but the user's profile can be merged without the Pro limitation by adding his/her email address to the unclaimed duplicate. Keep in mind, too, that once a Pro is collaborating and/or in the family group, that Pro will be able to merge all of the duplicates.

Chuck a basic user who wants to merge could either start a Pro trial and then cancel it (you only get one of those, though) or else add a Pro as a collaborator (for merging public profiles) or Family Group member (for merging private profiles).

The resume comment is just unnecessary.

Mike Stangel please continue doing the good work that you ARE doing and please ignore all unnecessary comments :-)

Thanks, I appreciate that!

So it is an advantage to basic users to collaborate and join the collaboration pool?

I think the answer to than depends on whether you're comfortable letting strangers merge your public profiles however they see fit.

/than/that/

"Strangers" have been merging "my" public historic profiles for a couple of years - I include the Geni system itself.:). No one broke the tree. :):)

Mike,

What is explained in the blog is a bit vague.

Could Geni post a more comprehensive explanation please about what Geni is all about.
including account settings, collaboration, requesting and accepting merges, pro and contras of making profiles public or private, family trees, the big tree, naming conventions, inviting others, management of profiles, what the different users can or cannot do, handing over ownership if you decide to leave Geni, exporting data and the different forms you can choose, and handling of abandoned trees.
Some explanation about Curators, projects and discussions and where to go if you have problems with or ideas about Geni would also be welcome.
Also some explanation of the different screens and symbols used would be most welcome.

If you look a this and some other discussions you see that a lot is still not clear.

A lot of this information is already on Geni, but a bit difficult to find.
The help should give some general information about what you can find in the wiki , the blog, facebook and twitter.

Isn't there such a thing as site mapping software?

Anyway curators and Master Profiles are well covered and current here

http://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Curators
http://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Master_Profile

Erica,

I known, a lot of information is already there.
But for starters and even for others it can be difficult to find.

Also for people whose eyesight is not no good, the menu at the bottom of the screen is very small.They may never find the Help, Wiki or Blog.

There are quite of few people who really do not know what Wiki or Blog means. So the will go to help and when they don't find what they are looking for, changes are they will not use Geni any more.

For people who cannot read English or not read it very well it is even more difficult.

I agree, of course. Have you researched site mapping tools? I know they're out there.

Erica, since we are 17th cousins, I have probably messed with your tree. As long as I didn't mess up anything ;-)

I'm sure it managed to be a mess long before you got there!

Erica,

I know of them. I have used them for making a sitemap for Google of one of my sites. As far as I know there are most useful for a site builder and not so much for a site user.
An example of such a tool you can find here:
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

If you want to make a site map for users, you will need knowledge of the site and the subject matter, to reword entries so they are more clear for a user and to remove a number of links that should not be used by users.

Job makes a point that I have been trying to make for a long time. Geni needs to have an easy to use help site and a "getting started with Geni" help resource for all new users. Erica, your response is typical (please do not take offense), in that clearly Job probably has figured out what he's doing. He's not asking for help for himself here, so sending him to site mapping tools (frankly, I'm a pretty experienced user at this point, and I've not idea what those are) is missing the point. New users to geni are often lost with all the different aspects of the program -- which Job does a wonderful job of mentioning here. You need to have better help resources. The way it is now, many people just give up. I'm not sure why no one gets that.

When I started using Geni I found a lot of information about Geni using Google instead of using Geni. When I found the discussions I got a lot of information from other users.
I think that is a pity, because a lot of starting users won't go through that learning process and just give up on Geni.

Has it been raised on the help platform? I do find the search utility there to be useful. It just needs more FAQ, screen caps, maybe little videos - and a site map.:)

I was hoping that someone techie like Job had a utility that could crawl the sites and create the map to recommend to Geni.

Judy I'm just another user!

Erica,

The search is useful, but you need some basic understanding of how Geni functions before you can find what you are looking for.

This is very common, you may have similar problems if you are looking in the help of Word or Excel to find how you should do something.
There is a good change that using Google to find that information is a lot easier.

Erica,

You're another user with a "C" after your name (-: ... the point is, the longer you've been on Geni and the more experienced you become, you forget how difficult it is to figure out Geni's ins and outs when you're first starting. We all had the tenacity and perhaps the tech background to stick with it and figure it out (although I still find there are many features I'm unaware of -- Randy's contribution to this discussion was one of them), but I assure you, many, many new users are quickly overwhelmed. Yes, Google is a great resource, but again, why does this have to be so difficult? Why can't someone create a help platform on Geni that is interactive and easy to use? It's in everyone's best interests to make Geni easy and understandable to the novice user.

Judy

I guess because concrete suggestions need to go to Geni. Their best mode is, I think, by creating enhancement request on their help platform

http://help.geni.com/

- Login (it's extra security, same as the Geni login)
- Create a new request in community help

You can post back a link to the created request to discussions where I will certainly "me, too" it.

No. Sorry. I'm not a paid geni employee. I hate to sound uncooperative, but as I said earlier, someone from geni should be monitoring these posts. It is in Geni's best interests to create user friendly help platforms. I started venting here, because others had raised the issue. If Geni wants to hire me to create a better help vehicle, I will entertain the offer!

I have a C badge "and I approve Judy's message" :-)

(If I may add, I think C-badged Erica approves too ;-) )

(-:

Mike Stangel I'm afraid you've been summoned. Read up.