permission to merge rejected by geni

Michael, I did receive this error once as well, but given I have thousands of merge issues to attend to, I figured I would come back to it when I was less busy. Let us know if you get a straight answer on this one....thanks!

Dave.

I've seen this, too. I've asked Geni about it. They didn't tell me why it was happening, but somehow managed to "fix" the profile so that I could request a merge - or complete one.

Thank you

I've recently had a couple of requests where Geni asks me not to merge the entries, but to "approve" the merge - in those cases, I usually was collaborator with the profile owner on one of the profiles, but not the other.

I wonder if Geni is somehow allowing mergers that have been approved by someone for both sides, even though there are no collaborators with access to both profiles?

Harald, that is exactly what is happening (and it's great). The collaborator of one manager, can send the merge-request to a collaborator of the other manager. No need to involve either manager!

"In the old days", when we had two profiles and two mergers that had only had access to one profile each, we would create a duplicate and merge it, and then ask one of our "mergers" to merge with that.

I have made a suggestioen in another discussion :
(But - alas - again it is a little on the fringes of this debate )
If you request one (or more ) person(s) to perform a merge
and they dont respond in certain , given time , one should be allowed to perform that merge oneself anyway . Then you get rid of these eternal
"merge issues" and "tree matches" on your own . In most cases anyhow .
You could get rid of many bothering issues that way .
Thank you !
Johan

Michael if your situation is like Sherry's, then most likely there's a bug or corrupted data related to the merge -- if you're still having this problem please email help@geni.com with the specifics and we'll look into it.

Johan we've been very reluctant to auto-accept merges because we don't like the idea of editing a user's data (which is effectively what merging does) without their explicit permission.

To Michael S.
My idea was basically dealing with the situation were a GENI user stops using it , - totally . Then you might end up in a situation were other peoples work is made a complete mess of . And then it is impossible to do anything about it .
Johan

Johan, it's not perfect but we do have a way to deal with inactive users. If a user hasn't logged on in 9 months, we send them an email notifying them that if they don't come back, they'll lose management of the deceased profiles outside the 4th cousins / 3rd great grandparent radius. The issue of zombies aside, this should free up those profiles for others to take management and merge.

@Michael Stangel, losing management after 9 months inactivety is an awesome idea! Thank you

I'll throw another thought process out there regarding merging and managing profiles...

A few years ago I started my tree with family history compiled by my great grandmother and some of my own research to successfully join the Mayflower Society.
This endeavor was for the expressed purpose of sharing the information with my children and grand children.

Since then however, I've been besieged with never ending requests to merge profiles (mostly incorrect) and have lost 'ownership' of the very profiles I’ve added. It's gotten to the point that I can't 'search' for the family I’ve added without accessing the tree of the very people who now 'manage' the profiles which I created.
So, to any of the folks out there who suffer the malaise of OCD, who live for managing these trees, take a deep breath, and realize that not everyone has numerous hours per day to manage requests.
If Geni is rejecting "permission to merge", then thank you Geni...

You only need to reply on one merge request from a person who wants to merge with your profiles.
If you at the same time accept a collaborator request this person does not have to send you any more requests, but can help him/herself.

I get 8-10 per day, seven days a week...

I don't understand why the person who adds the profile originally is no longer a manager. Can anyone explain that?

@Marsha: maybe he/she left geni?
or they lost it as in the beginning of merging (2008/2009?), the manager that had the most information got management - today all adders are co-managers.

@R. Lee Stevens: all managers have once had an origin profile of "his/hers", but only one can be main manager as the whole idea is to have only one profile of every existing person ever..
Maybe, if you want management of a profile that is close to ýou, you can ask the manager to become main and claim that you perhaps are the more suitable manager of that specific profile. It is worth a try don't you think? Good Luck!

I hope geni can find solutions for the problem. Thank you for the good ideas.