Reducing Profile Conflicts

Started by Private User on Monday, April 24, 2023
Problem with this page?

Participants:

Showing all 14 posts

I have well over 1000 profile conflicts.
I would be able to reduce that number considerably if Geni would agree that the inclusion or omittance of an accent on a family name is an acceptable error, rather than a major offense. Are there others who feel (as I do) that conflicts with others and correcting simple errors of that nature is a rather time wasting activity?
Roy

With people using keyboards which are different around the world and still wanting to keep using the valuable Geni website it would seem that the best way of going forward rather than being hampered by somantics due to accents on words.

I fully agree with you Maureen, and although I feel sure there must be many others who share that opinion, I cant understand why they they have not been bold enough to come forward to say so.

Some sort of algorithm to match names in different alphabets?

If i look up Gauss i dont find Gauß and vice versa. But i should.

That's taking it one step further Peter. My initial beef however, is about simple accented names and their non accented alternatives which Geni's search engine is already programmed to acknowledge as identical.

For example, if I were to use the search engine to find Maria (which is known to exist with and without accents) the engine will also show me all those listed as an accented Mária . But if I were to write Maria on a profile, Geni would see any alternative entry recorded as an accented Mária as a conflict and require me to decide which of the two is correct. As stated, verifying something that Geni already agrees is an acceptable alternative seems to be an illogical time wasting activity.

I long ago basically stopped paying any attention to the reports of "Conflicts" Suspect others did also.
This is in response, Roy, to your comment
"although I feel sure there must be many others who share that opinion, I cant understand why they they have not been bold enough to come forward to say so."

I agree that ignoring all conflicts would certainly be a way out Lois, but among the 1000s are stilt a few that would benefit from either a minor correction or update.. For example, there is one prolific Geni submitter, who only submits years rather than complete dates. If he were to do as I do and include the full information that appears on his source, the Geni membership as a whole would benefit, and once again the number of resulting conflicts that need attention would be further reduced.

Geni alows names to be stored in multiple languages, e.g.

German: Gauß

English: Gauss

or

Spanish: Félix

English: Felix

You may want to use this feature when there are spelling variations due to accents

But that's increasing the workload Dimitri, instead of reducing it by making Geni less pedantic about a minor discrepancy like an accent. Geni's search engine can ignore them, so why cant their conflict program?

If I understand correctly, this problem doesn't arise if, for example, one profile has "Félix" in the Spanish language tab, and possibly Felix (no accent) in the English language tab, and it gets merged with another profile having Felix in the English tab. The problem arises if "Félix" is in the English language tab. I do realize that this would be more work, but my preferred clean-up would be to have both "Felix" in the Englih tab and "Félix" in the Spanish tab - adding the Spanish tab if needed.

Dimitri Vulis
What's important above all is to never create new name translations from thin air.
If Félix is known in sources also with the spelling Felix for sure use both English and Spanish tab as you said.
If not, do NOT invent new translations, put Félix with the accent in the DEFAULT tab only(also known as the english tab), and leave the Spanish tab empty.
Ignore all warnings, conflicts and objections and feel good about yourself.
You did the right thing.
This goes also for umlauts and any other bells and whistles in the latin alphabet.

Let's fight to liberate the default name fields from the oppressive warnings and conflicts.

And also let's fight for better search functionality everywhere on Geni, ie fuzzy search matching. Like how google finds stuff even when you spell things wrong.

Private User
I have recently commented that a data conflict of "KY" vs "Kentucky" is not a conflict at all and just wastes the time of all involved.
There is a team of hard working engineers behind the scenes who's #1 priority is to keep Geni running and #2 is to improve the platform. They are aware of these issues but usually the first evidence that we have that the problem is being addressed is when the fix is released, so who knows my friend perhaps the next time you log in your wish will be granted.

Let's hope so A M.
I fully appreciate the many tasks that the excellent team have to deal with, so my primary aim here was to just bring attention to another little glitch that they could attend to. Although only a small problem for most subscribers, it is still a major headache for many of the more avid contributors involved in far more comprehensive research like myself. In essence, sorting it enables every subscriber to be more attentive to issues of greater importance and therefore adds to the smoother running of Geni as a whole.

Showing all 14 posts

Create a free account or login to participate in this discussion