Colleen Dorothy Maunsell (Gilliver) - Geni

Do you have a question?

why isnt it so

Colleen Dorothy Maunsell

I like to be a kicker
I always long for peace
But the wheel that squeaks the loudest,
Is the one that gets the grease!
-John Billings

Well, look here. It's cousin Colleen challenging the status quo again. How do you think Geni could improve it's processes in regards to "duplicate profiles" ? This topic seems to really bug you cousin. What do you think John Albert Rigali?
Should private companies that are managed by paid workers (and volunteers) be hold to task for seemingly refusing to follow their own rules?
What about the My Heritage issue? Absolutely nothing was done to correct the distant cousin Geni user who copied all of my family date that I added to Geni, along with the antique photos, took them to My Heritage, started her own tree BUT (here's the kicker) left my maternal grandmother's line (10 siblings) ENTIRELY OUT! I was told to follow Geni's protocol - called My Heritage, waited for hours to speak to someone, only to be told that "there was nothing that could be done about it."
You really should come up with pithy titles for your convos Colleen.
How to get someone to listen? Yes, that ciuld be one. Or, Illegal borrowing on Geni? Wait, wait what about Antique photos & copyright infringement?
For you - Family strife prevents merges? Are we family if the descendants parents were not married? Finding peaceful solutions in an increasingly troubled world? I digress, ha. Okay,
last one ..............
It's your rule book - why not follow it?
By not doing so, it appears to set up a two tier system. Rules apply one way to these folks & apply another way to these other folks. Isn't the basically how the whole world is run?

*data

Colleen Dorothy Maunsell: It seems to be so from my vantage point. Mind you, Gen's ability to detect duplicate profiles depends upon users properly formatting the profiles that they create. I've noticed that many Geni users fail to do so - heck, I was guilty of that myself for the first SEVERAL YEARS of my membership. It seems to me that Geni's duplicate-detection ability is about as refined as it can get, so our only recourse to improve duplicate detection is evangelization of Geni users about proper profile formatting. Spread the word!

(No Name): Your gripes seem to differ from Colleen's gripe. To answer your question directed at me: yes, but I don't see how such holding to task can be accomplished short of a large-scale boycott. You do make good points that Geni and/or MyHeritage should attempt to adequately address. Geni originally was an independent company, then MyHeritage acquired it. My powers of observation inform me that Geni seems to enjoy a fair amount of autonomy from MyHeritage but still must endure the whims of MyHeritage's management.

John Albert Rigali

Can you recall what the main formatting issues were in your case? Pointing out your own inability to grasp "proper profile formatting" could be useful to Colleen Dorothy Maunsell.
Do you really think that speaking of unresolved "gripes" (annoying & persistent complaining) warrents a "large-scale boycott"? Such action had not occured to me. It actually sounds a bit ominous and final. Are you saying that annoying & persistent "gripes" here on Geni could lead to serious consequences? I'm confused on this one.
Here, try this. Is it "the right thing" to use another's geneological work (here on Geni) to support your own false narratives concerning particular family groups, lines of descendancy on My Heritage? I thought it was the general consensus that geanology be fact based? Two examples would be: leaving out entire lines within certain lines of descendancy and/or falsely claiming that a man who was married to only one wife his entire life, until his death - was married to a different person that he had a child with. I really dislike being annoying. Could there possible be some other way to resolve these issues (detecting duplicate profiles & supporting false narratives with another's work) without being so drastic?

John Albert Rigali you missed the whole point.... Geni say there should only be one ( 1 ) PROFILE on Geni for any individual... You cant do that while ever you allow private trees .and / or .. trees where the deceased are private .... If people want private trees they shoud go to Ancestry ...My Heritage and all the other companies where you can have just YOUR tree... the whole idea of being a paid member to Geni was so I could see all profiles that related to my ancestors and their descendants .....Ann.... thanks for having my back .. love you dearly .... and John Albert you are a cousin distant but a cousin so welcome to the family ....

I have read these rules SO many times.....
.
https://www.geni.com/projects/Working-with-the-World-Tree/12429

I like this part .....Geni's policy is that duplicates should be merged (with agreement from the managers), or else Geni will no longer be a single family tree of the world. Users desiring a private or standalone tree would probably be happier on MyHeritage.com where they will have full control over their tree.

and this

If for some reason you do not feel comfortable with a profile more than 150 years old being public, consider adding less information or do not add the profile at all (private profiles "gum up" the historical tree and require other users, who cannot view them, to create duplicates)

and this part

Note: Geni is NOT the site to maintain a standalone tree. Duplicates WILL be merged into the World Family Tree.

sure I have picked out the parts of the RULES that I like but if I am NOT wrong thats WHY Geni is a WORLD Tree ............ and that you will all be pleased to read is maybe my last word on private profiles............................... well at least for the foreseeable future

You're the best Colleen Dorothy Maunsell.
Right back 'atcha cuz.
Makes perfect sense to me.

By "proper profile formatting", I mean putting correct data in fields. In relation to the amount of time that I spend browsing Geni trees, I frequently encounter the following:

• misspelled names
• titles in Name/Given Name fields instead of Title fields
• middle names in Name/First Name fields instead of Name/Middle Name fields
• blank Name/Surname ("married surname") fields
• blank Name/Birth Surname fields
• for women: birth surnames in Name/Surname ("married surname") fields
• for women: married surnames in Name/Birth Surname fields
• for men who changed their surnames: birth surname in Name/Surname ("married surname") fields and new surnames in Name/Birth Surname fields
• suffixes in Name/Surname and Name/Birth Surname fields
• surnames in Name/Suffix fields

(There might be others that I'm forgetting to mention.) All of these cause Geni to fail to find duplicate profiles. I developed a strategy for finding duplicate profiles on Geni on my own because of this problem, but sometimes using that strategy is VERY time-consuming. I wish that all profiles were formatted properly so that I could just rely on Geni to always find the duplicates.

(No Name): what I'm saying is that persistent complaining is warranted but probably ineffective, and maybe a large-scale boycott would be effective but it's unwarranted and counterproductive for users. As for resolving issues such as supporting false narratives with another's work/data, I don't see a sure-fire resolution - when people are free to copy and present other people's data, they have the freedom to omit what they want to omit and add what they want to add. This is the primary pain point of consumer-level genealogy: duplication and propagation of bad/incomplete data. Can that be policed? I don't see how.

Colleen Dorothy Maunsell: OK, I get it now. Yes, it's counterproductive for Geni to encourage collaboration and crowdsourcing but permit private trees anyway. I've chosen to continue with Geni in the face of problems such as that because the benefits that I get from the crowdsourcing and collaborations outweigh the problems that I encounter on Geni. And thanks for the welcome!

John Albert Rigali

Shaking my head in wonderment ..........
Somersaults again & again.
Your amazing, thank-you cousin!

Colleen Dorothy Maunsell ...... check him out, yeow!

I for one am not going anywhere. I love me some Geni!