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

I'll not be continuing this discussion. I have left Geni, but thought I would leave my reasons so that Geni could take them on board.

"By saying Geni is now a wiki, you are agreeing that it has become a communal repostory, nothing more." ... as far as public profiles are concerned. And that has, more or less, always been the situation for public profiles.

The real "problems" arise at that boundary between private & public profiles: If two people share a 6th-Great-grandparent, and one wishes that to be "privately controlled" by them, but the other person (who is, by current definitions, not in the same family group) wishes that 6th-Great to be public ... who should "win"?

It doesn't really matter too much where one draws that public/private boundary ... there needs to be a better set of tools and policies to manage what happens when a private tree wishes to "connect with" the public tree.

Defining that "boundary behavior" is Geni.com's responsibility -- that is, there is no clear definition (that I have seen) of the expectations and requirements for what it means to connect to the public tree.

This is not the case. Before August, all my deceased profiles were public - they could be viewed by the world in general, but anyone would first need to collaborate with me to merge or alter them.

Now, if I make them publicly viewable I must also make them publicly alterable (by Pro members, without collaboration) - I am not prepared to do so - a large amount of original research has already been lost.

The pre-August feature of making them publicly viewable, but not alterable without collaboration was ideal. Most people simply wanted to view my part of the tree to see how they were related, and my research was protected. It also encouraged collaboration. Geni removed this.

I would like to (and did) collaborate with anyone sharing my ggg-grandfather (for example). That is what Geni WAS all about.

Now, an army of unrelated people, with no particular interest or relationship to the person is modifying and merging - for the sake of the Big Tree.

At last count, we had seven stupid merges, all done by unrelated people. At that point we gave up.

I am over 100 count for this. So won't be using Geni anymore. I will keep checking back so if I can do anything I will. But Geni has made it almost impossible for me to do anything. I can't afford to use pro otherwise I would have done it back . I only get disability and have bills that have to be paid so that I can live. It's to bad cause I enjoyed Geni. Even had alot of my family join in. Bye Geni. Hope you don't price yourself out of people.

Ken,

You might make a gedcom forest download and put that information on another website. That way people can still look at the data, but you are protected from stupid merges

Job.

Gedcom at this stage is close to useless as it only accesses the basic details. There is no point in another gedcom as several branches of the tree are already unrecognisable and unusable.

I have family members accessing the tree, and will leave the tree Private so at least that part remains intact for them.

Ken,

May be Geni could assist in restoring your tree.
I hope that after they correct the current gedcom export problems they will put some more data in the gedcom.

You may try to contact Bjørn P. Brox who is experimenting with the API to get data from Geni. It may be possible to get more data that way.

I can't be bothered with the tree.

As previously mentioned, while we were working out how to rectify three stupid merges, another four appeared.

"Like" this feature request: http://help.geni.com/entries/20725343-preference-to-hide-show-inacc... if you think it would be helpful.

Private User, I'm just curious: whay do you use Geni at all?

David.

As explained, I don't any more.

When Geni changed in August to make non-collaboration a feature, my reason for being with Geni evaporated - it was the collaboration that made Geni worthwhile.

The various branches that form my part of the tree are now useless, changed by people that have no particular connection.

It is apparent that Geni's new sole purpose is to show how you are connected to other people. For this, all you need is boxes showing birth and death dates. This is not genealogy - it's a sort of Linkedin.

Sorry to hear that. I guess I am coming from a somewhat longer-term perspective with Geni. I've stuck with them since the very beginning in 2007, and I've seen their policies change radically from one extreme to the other several times during that period. Growing pains, I assume. If Geni stays true to their M.O., it's probably a safe bet that the August changes will not be their last. I predict that if you check back in a couple of months, it will all be different once again. I think that's partly because Geni is still trying to find that elusive compromise business model that everyone can live with for the most part. But it's also because Geni DOES LISTEN to its users more than most other companies. I've personally made suggestions to them several years ago that were completely shot down as outrageously unacceptable at the time- only to get implemented by them a couple of years later!

My best Geni advice is to 1) Don't assume the way it works one day will be the same tomorrow, 2) Don't spend a lot of time and effort doing work that depends on the assumption that the way Geni works today will be the same tomorrow, 3) keep making suggestions for how YOU think Geni should work, and 4) be very patient.

Dave K.

Too much of our work, including a large amount of original research has already been made useless. There is no point hanging around.

Kenneth, what has made the info worthless? Was it deleted by someone? Or are you just objecting to your data being merged together with someone else's?

Unless something has malfunctioned, data within profiles never gets lost in Geni. It's always still in there somewhewre (unless somebody has manually deleted it).

Admittedly, the constant merging does require a level of constant dilligence and committment to keep it right. But that has been the case here for a very long time- certainly long before August of 2011.

Private User "There is no point hanging around"

My perspective, it is obvious you are hanging around or there would be no posts from you. You say you can not tell who made changes to your profiles but all you have to do is look at the revisions tab and it will show you and you can reverse the changes. You complain that people have made stupid merges, without giving details or posting links to the profiles so no one can help you. Maybe you need to make some effort to learn how Geni works and maybe things will get better for you.
I have no problem with others adding information to my profiles and welcome any additional data. If I find incorrect data, I just change it and go on about my work.

David,

This is getting rather monotonous - I'm explaining this to each curator in turn.

Geni DOES lose information. You are clearly one of those people who are obsessed with birth and death dates. Geni only looks after the info on the basic details screen.

For any person in the tree, their info is stored in the Timeline. If this is changed or deleted no-one is informed. If documents are deleted, no-one is informed.

Example: If someone blanks out the baptism date with the intention of entering a new one, Geni will delete the entire event including documents, photos, certificates - they're gone forever. The same with marriages etc.

I'm repeating myself - if you want any more info, suggest reading earlier posts in this discussion.

I have already read it all. I guess it's time to chalk this one up as a "lost cause" and move on.

Eldon.

If you knew how Geni worked, you would know that Geni only has revision material for the basic details screen.

We are still here as we're trying to copy out the info that Geni's gedcom does not - it will take a few weeks yet.

Kenneth, have you ever looked at the Conflicting Data screen (under the Actions tab) within each profile?

David.

You are assuming that the damage comes from merging. It doesn't. It has been from editing the profiles.

Why my 14th cousin once removed would want to edit my grandfather escapes me.

Eldon, David -
I have been following with interest the comments about the Timeline - and you seem to be majorly missing the point.

For folks such as Ken who put large amounts of info in the Timeline events, including the manually added events, the fact that the manually added events were not included in the Gedcom Exports, were not tracked for Revisions, could be changed without anyone being notified and no indication of who did the changes or what they were, etc. is a big minus. Moreover, they are also hurt by the fact that there is no revision data, who made changes, notifications, etc. for the auto-created events except for the facts on the Basic Screen. And then we have the horror Ken mentions just above that if the Baptism date is blanked, all data for that Event is lost.

I know I saw, but failed on brief look now to re-find, where Mike Stangel confirmed much of the above: 1) that the manually-created events were not being included in the Gedcom Exports (anyone know - has that been corrected yet or, if not, if it is expected to be soon?); 2) Profiles show no revision data (neither on Home Page Revisions nor Profile's Revision Tab) on changes made within the events except for the info from the Basic Screen (I think he said none was even kept, not just not shown).

These are honest, serious problems.

Yes, those are honest, serious problems. But none of those are problems that started with the "changes in August".

The issues with truly distant relatives being able to edit your relatively close relatives, and the limitations of GEDCOM downloads have been known by seasoned Geni users for a very, very long time.

And trust me when I say that the list of honest, serious problems is much larger than just those few items. But throwing in the towel and giving up in disgust as soon as an otherwise known shortcoming is encountered is not going to help anyone.

Perhaps a feature request could be for a non-curator manager to be able to "lock" fields in and merges of profiles within, say, a span of 2 (e.g. parents, children, and grands of each) -- public or private profile. Beyond that range (at least for ancestors), locking would be a feature requiring public profiles and curator assistance? Or Pro account?

If the problem comes from a co-manager in the family group ... that is not an issue that Geni can easily solve, unless it is a public "Master Profile".

For merges causing deletion of "non-basic" events -- that's a bug.

Yes David, those problems began in August.

Before then, changes were made within the family group only. If an error was made, the info was available, and easily corrected. Now, we don't know that the change was made, let alone who did it.

The tree is unreadable, and much info has gone, but we don't know exactly what info and what it used to be.

David,

I don't know where you're getting your information from.

Prior to August a distant relative could not edit a profile, unless formally collaborating - they were not in the family group.

The limitations of gedcom were not known to Geni. Mike investigated last month and discovered it.

If there are known problems, you're a curator, why aren't you following them up?

I am not a Geni employee. I am here for one and only one reason: to work toward the vision of building one tree of everyone who lives and who has ever lived, with no duplicates.

Kenneth, It sounds like you and I are on somewhat [or perhaps completely] different missions.

I must concede, however, that I have been a Pro (paid) member for long time. That might explain why I noticed no significant changes happening in August, as most of them didn't affect me at all. Sorry for not being cognisant of what Geni has recently done to the free users.

From my experience nothing worthwhile in life remains free forever.

The problems I have had with Geni would still exist if I became a Pro member. I wouldn't mind paying if things stayed at pre-August level. The introduction of non-collaboration caused every single one of my problems.

As the collaboration system set Geni apart from the other sites, once it was removed Geni doesn't stack up too well. Your original question was why am I using Geni? I wonder how many others are asking themselves that same question now.