Editing and mergers of profiles for Christian IV

Started by Private on Sunday, April 25, 2010
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May I suggest that there have been far too many mergers of this profile by people who no or little knowledge of Danish history. May I further suggest that the managers of this profile clean up the mess in the associated tree and only agree to further mergers when such mergers add new and well documented information.

I believe when someone has this profile on their tree then merges, it is done automatically. Besides, I doubt you could get consensus on what or who should be on the profile even if you wanted to.

This and a lot of other profiles in this area has just been restored by Geni after they of some mysterious way got deleted without any of the managers got a message about it.

The profiles got restored partly unconnected and the first priority is to merge/connect them back into the lines they belong.

We are still waiting on info from Geni on what happened and we don't know if all the profiles are restored yet.

Information about this profile is readily available, say from Wikipedia. There is therefore to be no need for more than one manager. Links further out can be attached to those directly linked to Chr. IV. At present there are 28 managers (sic!). I surpose that it is unlikely that many of these people have more knowledge about Chr. IV than what is available in Wikipedia, and several manifestly have far less. I have without by no means my self being an expert in Chr. IV discovered several errors; a couple of days ago I discovered that Kirsten Munk, Chr. IV wife to his the left hand, had been given a grossly misleading title of Queen of Denmark and Norway .

There is really a need to emphasis that mergers should only be made when they contribute new information or provide new and verified links. In general in "About me" the source of the information for a profile should be provided. Without that, the information is next to useless, and if not accurate potential harmful by making other people wast time correcting it. Also anybody agreeing to a merge should make sure that the inconsistencies in the linked threes be resolved at the same time. Geni gives people far to much incentive to expand their tree and far to little incentive to provide documentation and to check accuracy.

The big global tree is, as far as I can understand, useless. The Geni tree for Denmark before year 1500 will likewise become useless if a concerted effort to improve the quality is not made. As a minimum DAA should be referenced when applicable. I hope for the collaboration from fellow members in this effort.

Knud Jørgen Munk

It is discouraging that an important profile as this one is messed up in a total ridiculous way by people which seem to have no sense of what they are doing, resulting in for example Christian IV being his own half brother.

I just got a mail from Dawn Packness Illingworth Mcfarlane, the main responsible for the Christian IV profile, indicating that she has stopped collaborating because her work is being disrupted by people who seem to find merit in accumulating profiles and getting connected to Jesus whatever the quality of the links. Her reaction is understandable, but defeatist.

At least for Danes and Norwegians, Christian IV is an important profile with many connections to people who has played an important role in our history . Please those who want to collaborate in cleaning up the mess indicate their willingness to participate in the work.

Please also indicate your suggestion for how to proceed. I suppose the most efficient method is to create a new profile for Christian IV, de-link the valid profiles attached to the present one and reconnect to the new one.

We also need to find ways to signal to newcomers to this part of the tree what is acceptable and what is unacceptable behaviour in order to try to prevent a similar mess to re-emerge.

Knud Jørgen Munk

Knud is "his own half brother" the exact same profile, or simply a duplicate waiting to be merged? You will OFTEN find duplicate siblings or spouses. This just means someone started the merge and stopped in the middle.

Yes, the fact that people who are inexperienced or do not follow reasonable rules of conduct initiate mergers leads to confusion of which only the tip of the iceberg is visible in the profile shown. One should not initiate the merger of two profiles without at the same time dealing with the merge issues in other profiles (not always easy and in general better done by somebody who know the tree around the initial profile well). Also one should not use Mrs and Princess as first names and then prevent editing, etc.

A solution would be if those managing the connected profiles would agree to give one person the responsibility to manage this profile and the authority to decline all mergers. 28 people, of which several have given up collaborating, being responsible for a profile with the prospect of continuous mergers unlikely to add any useful information, but very likely to create errors and confusion, is a hopeless way to maintain a reliable record of Christian IV life and his family connections. If this problem is not solved, no serious person will consider this and similar profiles a useful source of information.

May I suggest that somebody who knows the tree around Christian IV well steps forward and organise such a collaboration.

As I said in my first answer there: The Christian IV and other profiles in that area is just restored from Geni's backup after they in a mysterious way got deleted.

They got restored as unconnected profiles, which means that there is a big puzzle in making all the connections correct, so the current situation is NOT a result of bad merges and maintenance.

We discovered that these profiles was missing when we noticed that Private User started to add a lot of profiles in this line we certainly knew that we had merged dozen of times. This is not the first time profiles in this area has disappeared.

Until we have a feedback from Geni of what has happened and that all profiles are restored and a list of these the tree will be in a bad condition, so don't stress this situation.

Günther Kipp and Terje Ingolf Wølner-Hanssen is the persons who usually maintains this line and I assume they will follow up when we know some more.

This and surrounding profiles are still in a mess.

Please somebody knowledgeable about the subject matter and willing to devote the time to look after the profile bypass the mess and recreate this and the connected profiles refusing mergers with the central profile and only mergers with the connected profiles which are justified, i.e. which contribute new links and are well documented.

This and connected profiles are as things stand totally unreliable and thus useless, but for the dubious purpose of providing bogus royal family connections.

Knud Jørgen Munk

This and surrounding profiles are still in a mess, thus totally unreliable and useless, but for the dubious purpose of providing bogus royal family connections. Several stand-alone databases (e.g. http://finnholbek.dk/genealogy/) contain far more reliable and detailed information, which without too much effort could be copied into Geni to replace the existing mess.

There are 32 managers on this profile. Please one or two of these, who are knowledgeable about the subject matter, create a new profile for Chr IV and connect those existing profiles, where the link to Chr IV is well documented, to that profile. Please provide documentation in these profiles in "About me" (from wikipidia, http://finnholbek.dk/genealogy or other sources) . Then delete all links from the old Chr IV profile to the profiles which have been connected to the new profile. Finally, make both the new and the old Chr IV "Private" to prevent that it again become the subject of unjustified mergers. It will thus only be possible indirectly to link a profiles to Chr IV. Somebody with a family link to Chr IV should only create a new profile where it adds a new link (which is likely to be many profiles away from Chr IV) and make sure to complete all resulting merge issues.

Unfortunately the branch around Chr IV is just one of many examples of the result of indiscriminate and incomplete mergers in the Danish- Norwegian branch of the Big Tree. Please, therefore as a general rule of good conduct:

ONLY CREATE A PROFILE AND UNDERTAKE A MERGER IF BY DOING SO YOU CREATE A NEW, WELL DOCUMENTED LINK

By following this simple rule you will make your contribution to prevent the spreading of the mess you see here and in more and more Danish-Norwegian branches of the Big Tree.

Knud Jørgen Munk

Just ignore Knud, - all he do is just complaining and demanding.

I definitely don't support deleting a multi-manager profile which restrict peoples access to an area.

I explained very well above why this area was is a mess and I still wonder who did it, but have some suspects. We are still waiting for a report from Geni, but we all understood from your previous message that you had some interest in helping us, but nothing is done so far even if you have edit access to add documentation yourself.

Bjørn - not very nice - but I think the omly way

Knud you need to understand this is no Phd. and non of us have the hole truth - nor you - we have different documentation, and must believe on what people say!! I think we all do our best and I have no more reight than you - as Bjørn says - you are so d... clever, why don't you clean up the mess your self!!!

When it comes to Wikipedia most people forget that information there are written by amateurs like you and me - including censorship of might be the full truth.

I just had an internal discussion around Oscar II where someone wanted to remove some kids that was not listed on Wikipedia and other "official" sources. When I started digging, - just using Google I found out that he had a lot of illegal kids and it was wrong of us to remove them, and we have the same fact with Christian IV which was more famous than Oscar II as a womanizer we should not use official sources to censorship connections.

In order to put Bjørn Brox comments above in perspective, I would like to share with you the message I have coped below, which I received from a fellow Geni member a couple of month ago. Please in this context in particular pay attention to the last sentence.

I have spent a lot of time trying to explain to Bjørn Brox why merging, when it does not contribute new links, is the root cause of the mess on Geni. I have unfortunately just recently after much patient effort and exchange of numerous ( in my case carefully worded) messages reached the conclusion that he is beyond pedagogical reach, and I have told him so.

However, if anybody is interested in an open-minded, constructive discussion of how we avoid the increasing mess, I will - time allowing - engage in such a discussion with much energy. As indicated, I have some preliminary ideas of how to deal with the problem, but to develop and apply a code of conduct, which will prevent the rot in the Danish-Norwegian branch of the Big Tree, will require a joint effort by a number of people. Developing such a code of conduct need to take into account both the interest of those people who see Geni as a potential source of reliable family information about links between Danish-Norwegian families during the last few hundred years, and those who consider Geni like a computer game like Civilisation where the objective is to maximise the number of profiles controlled. It also requires bringing together people with different skills and experiences, not only computer skills. Finally, there is a need clearly to distinguish between what are in the users' interest and what is in the interest of Geni as a profit driven organisation ( in contrast to Wikipedia).

Al the best to everybody

Knud Munk

Message from fellow Geni user:

"Hello Knud

I saw your comment on managers of profiles and the global tree on geni and I believe you are correct, I myself have seen many mistakes on the tree and unfortunately I agreed to collaborate when it first started on here only to find that my own tree was being changed and mistakes being added. Because of this I no longer collabrate with anyone on geni but I cannot remove my tree from the rest now without losing alot of my work.

If I knew it was going to be like this I would not have even put my tree on here, it looks like it is one big competition to see who has most profiles and is related to famous people I am not intrested in being related to Jesus I think it is ridiculous. I now try to work away on my tree but have been pressurized into merges by others which is why I choose to go it alone now.

You might want to think carefully before you make same mistake I did. Your views may not be too welcome with some of the others."

Knud, in your previous message you made it quite clear: Finally, make both the new and the old Chr IV "Private"

Thank you for clarifying what your opinion about sharing and collaboration is.

The main problem in the Danish lines is that someone have sabotaged and blocked these lines for cleanup by making common ancestors and historical profiles as "Private".

The result is that only the managers and their family are able to view the profiles and these parts of the forest. Others just see a black inaccessible name with an initial and the last name, and viewing the tree is forbidden, even if this is your direct ancestors.

Such actions is by most users considered as sabotage, and we should report all such cases.

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