Technical difficulties?

Erica -- 1) The "Revision Tab" is not a story. It is a listing of the changes that have happened. Of all the updates, merges, etc. It is supposed to be complete, but sometimes is not. Also, it is only for the Primary Profile. The History / Facts also is only for the Primary Profile.
2) In many of the Private Profiles recently merged by a Curator there is NO RECORD whatsoever of where the Birth Location value came from - Not in Revisions, Not in the History / Facts. In the cases I am talking about, looking at History / Facts you would assume the Birth Location had never been entered. But look at Profile, and it is there. (If I trip over such in a Public Profile, I will post it. Have spent way too long looking. My guess - you could test it easily enough -- for a profile with multiple managers (thus guaranteeing it will be primary if merged with Profile with only one manager) but no birth location, create a duplicate with just you as manager and put in a Birth Location in the profile with just you as manager - merge them. Let me know what happens.)

In my view, you are putting way too long into tackling me on something I would expect a Programmer could understand, find, and fix easily. AND by having diverted attention this way, way limit the chance they will do so.

re: "... I would expect a Programmer could understand, find, and fix easily. AND by having diverted attention this way, way limit the chance they will do so."

Hi, Lois. As a programmer -- but NOT a Geni staff member or Geni programmer -- I can tell you that some things which appear to be simple to fix are not ... and the reverse is true also.

Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that the focus of the Geni programming staff is generally NOT 'diverted' by discussion topics except when there is a 'suddenly broken' piece of functionality that was previously working. Even then, however, using the Help site of Geni is more likely to get quick attention.

When it comes to "missing functionality", "features to be improved", etc. -- that's what the Geni "Help" site is for. That Help site (link found at the bottom of every Geni page) is also where specific "content-related" issues can be brought to the attention of Customer Service via the "Ticket" functionality on that Help site.

Improvements to how the Revisions/History are managed across "merges" is a functionality that is ongoing topic of discussion; however, when I put my 'programmers' hat on, I would venture that it is not a 'quick fix'.

It *is* a know issue that only one profile's "revision history" is retain in the visible-to-us Revisions listing. That is what is -- today. Geni relates this functionality to what they call "Versioning" (see help Feature request http://help.geni.com/entries/432126-Versioning) ... and it is marked as a "Planned" functionality -- albeit it has been "planned" for more than two years now.

Thank you, Dan, for putting on your programmer hat for us.

I used the term "revision story" deliberately; as end users, we are only shown a selection (a pretty good one IMO) of the events that take place. I do find using "facts / compare" gives me a better picture than "revisions / events." But in any case, I'm most concerned that the end result be as close to factual as possible - and for that I rely on attached records and / or overview cirations - not what the "noise" in the server activity can show.

Dan - I did work as a Programmer for a short while, and am totally aware that sometimes what seems like it should be an easy fix turns out not to be. However, will try one more time to explain what I was saying, since do not feel it registered. Let me know if you know any reason why Birth Location should be treated differently from Birth Surname, Middle Name, etc.

For many of the Basic Fields - including Middle Name, Display Name, Birth Surname - it works the way I consider "the right way" and for at least one other Field, "Birth Location" it does not.

If ProfileA1 and ProfileA2 are the same except that ProfileA1 has never had any data in the Middle Name, and ProfileA2 has a value in Middle Name, and the two are merged, with A1 being/becoming the Primary Profile. Then:
1) For users who are following ProfileA1 or are in A1's close family, they will normally get a message on their Home Page Activity reporting the merge of ProfileA1 and a message reporting the update of ProfileA1.
2) Under the Revision Tab for ProfileA1 there will be an entry reporting that A1's "profile was updated. middle name." with date and blue link "view" below as part of that entry. Above will be an entry saying XXX was added as Manager of A1's profile if the merge added a new manager, and above that will be an entry saying "A duplicate profile was merged into ProfileA1 by ...". All will have the same date and time.
3) From History on Overview Tab, if one clicks on Facts, there will be a line, same date and time as messages mentioned above under Revisions Tab (except, time in Military format here) with "middle name" under "Summary".
4) The merged profile will show the value in Middle Name that had been in A2 (and no Data Conflict will be generated).

If one substitutes "birth surname" or "display name" for "middle name", everything else above stays the same.

However, if one substitutes "Birth Location" - i.e.
If ProfileA1 and ProfileA2 are the same except that ProfileA1 has never had any data in the Birth Location, and ProfileA2 has a value in Birth Location, and the two are merged, with A1 being/becoming the Primary Profile. Then:
1) For users who are following ProfileA1 or are in A1's close family, they will normally get a message on their Home Page Activity reporting the merge of ProfileA1 BUT - No Message reporting the update of ProfileA1.
2) Under Revisions Tab, there will be the entry reporting the added manager (if that happened), and the entry reporting the merge BUT there will NOT be an entry for that date and time reporting an update.
3) From History on Overview Tab, if one clicks on Facts, there will be no line, with same date and time as messages mentioned above. ie No indication in History/Facts that Birth Location was entered.
4) The merged profile will show the value in Birth Location that had been in A2 (and no Data Conflict will be generated).

Hopefully this illustrates both the connection between History/Facts and the listings under the Revision Tab, as well as why I had not thought this was about "missing functionality", "features to be improved" or any major addition in Functionality of Revisions, etc.

Thank you, Lois, for the very clear exposition of the issue -- that is clear, and detailed enough to verify! It was not clear to me (before) that this was the issue you were attempting to bring to Geni's attention.

Mike Stangel - What Lois describes above seems to be a missing piece (field) in the history log. I have also added this as a Bug Report: (http://help.geni.com/entries/23550048-Birth-location-field-not-bein... )

Not a problem, just an observation:

I enter documents from my harddrive mainly...I have them set up as John Smith-1864 birth record; John Smith-1884 marriage record; John Smith-1940 death certif; etc.

I do NOT enter anything directly to time-line BUT these items do appear in the time-line area in chronological order; as do birth of children; etc.

Did not know if anyone else had commented on this situation....(I get the info in both sources AND in time-line; but only physically enter them to the sources....

Fay: Events that are tied to "known" profile data fields: birth, death, burial, baptism (when using the profile edit view to add the baptism date+location), all marriage relationships (with or without date) and all children births (even if before or after the person's birth or death! -- or without a date) ...

... all of these events automatically show up on the timeline.

One only has to create timeline events (from the timeline view) that are NOT one of those "already known" events.

One thing I have done, on occasion, is to add the 'surviving spouse' to the 'death event' of the earlier-deceased spouse (using the timeline view). That makes that earlier-deceased spouse's death show up in the surviving spouse's timeline ... if, for example, one wants to see how old that person was when their spouse died.

Handy hint Dan...Thanks!

I am having trouble merging:
Jan Moes is one of my profiles.
Unknown Profile is the matching profile created by a cousin, it is Private and in an Isolated tree.
When i use the Merge option on my profile and enter the ID of the private profile in the search box and press Search More it comes back with no results.

What am i doing wrong?
Surely the issue is not that it is Private?
Interesting that despite having matching DOBs and estimated deaths only 8 years apart and matching names and spouse names there is no auto-match? Obviously i can't make the merge as his profile is private but surely i should be able to request it?

Alex Moes I was able to request it with the Merge Profiles tool. Of course It would not complete but I did request it.

Thanks Eldon, i wonder what the issue was then.

I can't start a new discussion, i can reply to existing discussions (obviously) but starting a new thread just gives me a blank screen of death.
Veeeeery frustrating :|

Correction, i can start a new discussion from the Public Discussions Board but not from the International Dutch Portal Discussions Board.

Alex: Just wondering: are you a collaborator or just 'following'? If not a collaborator, that might make a difference.

Not sure Dan, but i was able to bring up the window where you type the new discussion, it was only when i hit the submit button that i got the white wal of death. I'd typed the whole thing out 3 times before i wised cut and copied the text!

Definitely am a collaborator, i have project options to "add collaborators" or "leave the project".

I'm looking at 'white' pages a lot at the moment. A new phenomenon?
Of course it goes together with the browser logo spinning

"waiting for assets0.geni.com"

waiting waiting waiting

"waiting for assets3.geni.com"

Definitely a performance issue with the asset'n'.geni.com subsystem. Mike Stangel

Often times-out, leaving the screen without its normal formatting; seems to happen on all sort of pages, not just any one type of page.

Interesting aspect of this performance issue: seems to be far worse with Chrome than with Firefox (on Windows).

... but only temporarily ... Firefox is now also showing much "waiting for assets'n'.geni.com": Especially on viewing profiles and Tree View.

They must be working on the new changes and such as things are a bit slow atm.

Thanks for the reports, we've moved our assets to another location while we work on the underlying problem. Dan I suspect Chrome is being more aggressive about its caching policy (comparing ETags, for example)

Thanks so much, Mike!

Thanks for the update Mike. Page loading seems back to normal now.
Maybe we could get a report on the Merge Center when you get time :-)

500 internal server error constantly

rvk, I'm getting it intermittently. They're working on it. Something that helps is to wait a few before trying to refresh the page in question, rather than continually reloading it (which just adds to server demand).

What I have found, with the "500 internal server error" usually works is go back a page, not refresh. Really.

I'm curious about the new linkage to documents, matches, etc. that has appeared on our screens. On Iowa Itasca Greener it shows there is one document available (for a price, of course). On their side does it show the SEVEN documents I found for free? I don't mind sharing, just wondering.
Thanks,
Jessie German