Thanks folks. I understand all of the points being made in good faith and apologise if I have in fact done the wrong thing (or not done the right thing), albeit unintentionally, at any point.
But I do think that some people could take a deep breath and bear in mind a few things.
Firstly, this is supposed to be a hobby-based activity, not a matter of life and death. While I understand that people invest a lot of time and energy in this, as do I, and are understandably protective of their own efforts, some individuals can be quick to try to apportion blame to others. This is one thing when the accused is actually responsible for the alleged crime, and another when they are not. Care should be taken in this.
Secondly, is it fair or appropriate to be critical of a person trying to fix an issue they have found in the belief that they are making an improvement? Maybe, as a result of the action, the outcome won't be perfect, but the overall situation could still be better than it was before the action. In the journey towards a perfect World Tree there are many tiny steps to be taken along the way. If each step moves towards the goal, however slowly, it is still a step in the right direction that had to be taken regardless.
And so if I find a profile with multiple sets of parents (a conflict to be resolved) and on the balance of probability these profiles are the same, does it not make sense to merge them? I understand that this in turn can and usually does lead to other conflicts being exposed, but my point is that those conflicts were already there regardless, they weren't actually really created by the "offending" merge. The "offence" was committed when the duplicates were added in the first place, or when one profile was incorrectly merged into another. But c'est la vie.
Yes, ideally every resulting conflict should then be resolved but for various reasons this is not always immediately possible - for example, due to one of the many quirks of Geni it is possible to merge 2 profiles and then not have permission to resolve any resulting conflicts.
Thirdly, if certain people believe that they have ownership of particular parts of the tree then I dont believe that this is something officially sanctioned by Geni and certainly is not in the spirit of a shared tree. To my knowledge the only special role supported by Geni, is that of Curator. Everyone else is equal.
Clearly the number of issues to be resolved In Geni exceeds the collective capacity to identify and resolve them or else I wouldnt keep stumbling across conflicts that in some case have been present for years. So willing contributors should be encouraged, or guided, as has happened to me previously on Geni by some generous individuals, not shot down in a public forum.
If there are a number of "rules of engagement" that a group of individuals believe should be generally abided by then I think that it would be helpful to document these rules clearly, have them sanctioned by Geni and make them publicly known. I don't think that it is reasonable to expect any user to gain an implicit understanding of the expectations mandated by a small subset of users either by osmosis or by interpreting the criticisms lodged in response to well-meaning actions.
An even better solution would be to have these "rules" enshrined in the functioning of the system by way of user permissions - if no non-curator is ever supposed to edit or merge a profile relating to a certain time period, then why does the system allow it? I am prevented from editing the profile of a private user so it would be possible to do the same for a medieval profile for example? I can only assume that Geni themselves are unwilling to impose such hard restrictions on their users unless absolutely necessary.
Anyway, from now on I will post every medieval conflict that I ever find to this forum for the self-appointed chosen ones to resolve, not expecting acknowledgement or response and never questioning why the all-seeing illuminati didn't find it for themselves in the first place.
