What a mess!

@Richard "Mayflower" Warren

I feel your pain -- the tree looks like spaghetti. I'm too new to answer about the fix, but I'm backing you up as a direct descendant and for this being an important profile.

I'm glad you asked the etiquette question. Personally, I'm putting source information in the "about me" field if I touch a public profile. I don't want any arguments. :)

Don't get too frustrated! In the past couple of months there has been a lot of good changes with the geni program specifically with the merge and collaboration options. Through these changes it has allowed merges and duplicates to be more easily identified. In the process, it often makes the lines worse before they get better. I will try to concentrate on the Warren family this weekend. I will start with Richard first. If you have any others that you are specifically looking at, let me know.

I am also putting source information in the

As for Richard Warren, "Mayflower" Passenger I am by no means a Mayflower scholar, but I have read enough to know his parentage is disputed/unknown. His wife's family is known and his children are very well known, so it should be possible to resolve all conflicts there. But what about his parents? We can't just delete all his parents from every tree on Geni.
Maybe what Geni needs is a way to mark relationships as possible or alternate family relationships, and then have an option not to display alternate relationships. Ancestry.com has a similar feature. It is not the most elegant solution, because it just hides the junk data rather than removing it, but at least it would make the tree look cleaner...

Document, document, document. Like Erica, I put tons of notes in the "about me" section. I have from time to time used the middle name field to make a point about who not to merge into. It takes much work and much patience, but you can do it.

I did it with my early Martin ancestors. I have the Virginia Martins and there were New England Martins of the same era, and both families repeated names in the same generations. That was a tangle! The only clue was one wife had a different given name.

As far as etiquette, do not delete! Merging is the preferred way to go. If you do need to make a major change, let the primary co-managers know what you did and why. Most of us are quite nice and just want a reasonably accurate tree.

Hang in there and don't be afraid to post questions or requests for help or information.

"As for Richard Warren (Mayflower Pilgrim) I am by no means a Mayflower scholar, but I have read enough to know his parentage is disputed/unknown."

Sounds similar to the problem I've been battling in the Alden/Mullins tree (John Alden and Priscilla Mullins).

John's parentage is also in dispute, but I have succeeded (mostly) in breaking ties to all claims of parentage using the relationship breaking tools geni has provided.
I still have a few listed due to problem managers... but considering the sheer number of "John Alden" profiles I've merged... the near lack of parentage links is miraculous.

"But what about his parents? We can't just delete all his parents from every tree on Geni."

You're right... you shouldn't delete *ANYTHING* without approval from the managers of those profiles, but you should be able to split the relationships.

I'll try to help in the Warren tree as best I can... but I could use help on the details.

Jason P Herbert

I think you should contact the other managers and tell them it`s clean-up time.
I have the same problems as you have, so i know what it`s like.

Richard Warren and Elizabeth Walker only had 7 children:
1. Mary Warren b: Abt 1610 in England
2. Anna Warren b: Abt 1612 in England
3. Sarah Warren b: Abt 1613 in England
4. Elizabeth Warren b: Abt 1616 in England
5. Abigail Warren b: Abt 1618 in England
6. Nathaniel Warren b: Abt 1624 in Plymouth, Plymouth, Massachusetts
7. Joseph Warren b: Abt 1626 in Plymouth, Plymouth, Massachusetts

If you're a pro, please help me to remove/merge children that are not these seven. I'm trying but it won't let me do all of them. I guess I don't have enough collaboration connections.

Well its not perfect, but I have cleaned up a ton of the bad info surrounding Richard Warren, "Mayflower" Passenger. There were a lot of bad spouses listed that are gone. However, I have not removed his parents, which are currently listed as Christopher Warren, of Ashburton and Alice Warren. The general consensus is that Richard Warren's parents are unknown. But if I remove this set of parents, someone will just readd them as almost every tree has some set of parents listed for him. Anyone have any suggestions on how to best handle this?

It will stay a mess as long as anybody can go in and add people. And as the interest in genealogy grows all over the world things will not get any better. Guess I call that LIFE and something we shouldn't tolerate but a solution is hard to come up with.

I never heard of Christopher Warren and Alice Webb ; now where did they get those names?

Good Luck to those who have time to pursue this.

I know that my daughter in law, her two daughters and her mother are Mayflower line but I don't know enough to mess with them. If a merge comes up, who should I ask for help?

I have found it surprisingly hard to find a reliable website for Mayflower genealogies. For now I would suggest checking the "about me" section for each person prior to merging. Then hopefully we can either find or create a good Pilgrim genealogy website, or find someone with access to reliable printed material that can act as the final authority.

Steven - I appreciate the hard work, THANK YOU!

Don't forget, friends, that Geni is a collaborative process as much as it is a genealogy tool. For those who want a tree that no one else can touch, there are better solutions. For those who want to freely share information, Geni is a great resource. I know people who run both types of programs. They put the stuff they don't want tampered with on a non-collaboration program (the LDS offers a great free program) and they use Geni for research.

I wish you could forward this to the people I have found who refuse to collaborate with me for the same reasons. Do you follow the Merges Pending discussion? most people there agree with you. We had a good discussion going on but it has died out.

I keep my "real" genealogy on my computer, and keep a separate downloaded one from LDS or other sources with my own 'real' one merged into that. That's what I uploaded to geni. I didn't realize at first that some people depended on this for their own researched trees with nothing on their own computers. It's always good to keep backups of your work! (Don't mean to say that what's here isn't REAL, but it isn't what I researched myself, particularly my direct lines.)
I love the collaboration here at geni though! Have just been having a problem since the end of May in receiving notifications through my email.

@Eldon Clark
I have been accused of "stealing" relatives by wanting to merge profiles. How narrow-minded is that! "Stealing" a third cousin that I never got to meet. How sad that the person in question didn't want to share and tell me about this cousin I didn't get to know.

Janice Weeks Hollenczer
My cousin work on the tree together. She has the stand-alone program, I do the collaborating. She does microfiche in musty courthouses and I do Google searches. We both tramp graveyards. It has brought us so close together. And, sometimes, two heads and four eyes are better!

Janice,
I would send an email to Geni about the notification issue. It might be a spam-blocking issue that THEY can fix.

Maria,

I want you to know your documentation point is in my head. I even found myself snippeting from a google book and pasting it on the "about me" page to help me figure out a medieval merge conflict. A little painful but at least the error would be from the 14th century, not mine.

I have had a few people I contacted tell me they do not want to merge data because it messes up their tree. I reply back and suggest they change their display name something that indicates not to merge with them. So far no one has taken my suggestion...

Steven,

I'm working on the Mayflower Winslows (see this discussion):

http://www.geni.com/discussions/6000000009336168198

And sending out a zillion merge requests. In them I'm including a note:

"At the request of a direct descendant, I am helping consolidate multiple profiles into one correct one (and one correct tree). Granting me collaborator rights will help this. Many thanks."

And if that shaming doesn't work, the 25 "approve this merge" emails that soon follow should do the trick. :)

Erica, I'll start using your discussion thread for the Mayflower passengers from now on.

I usually put a note in my requests too, but it doesn't really seem to help... any of those people without collaborators typically won't change their minds.

I added information to Christopher Warren, of Ashburton explaining how he is not the father of Richard Warren, "Mayflower" Passenger. So I am going to go ahead and break the connection between these two. Should I add a parent named "unknown Warren" to keep people from adding Christopher back as Richard's father, or should I just leave it blank?

I love the note in the "about me" field!

I would name the "unknown father" "Richard Warren's unknown father" to make it explicit at first glance. In that profile's "about me," I would copy & paste the point that "unknown" is not Christopher Warren. I would probably be sarcastic and add something like "it would be a genealogical breakthrough worthy of publication if you are able to name this gentleman."

I have already gotten two new collaborators on this project. Either they just like my profile photo better or the shaming works.

I don't mind if people don't collaborate: just skip over their profiles in the geni search database. It's embarrassing but I don't work for geni public relations, and I've seen some lovingly tended and pruned trees I'd hate to get ugly too.

What I can't stand is multiple copies of profiles on the main tree with no ability to merge them up. And it's not like, in this situation, we're talking quality data or original research. Someone uploads a GEDCOM, doesn't bother to clean it up, and then won't even let someone else help? Gimme a break, like we say in New York.

The authors of the best profiles are also the most willing to share and help. Which is of course the most in keeping with genealogical professionalism.

I could really use some help in this area
Capt. Thomas "The Indian Fighter" Wheeler
According to online sources the family relationships are not very clear and offer several versions of connections as well as dates, geographical locations etc.
Thanks in Advance

Ofir - I had a on of Wheeler merges that showed up this morning. I am processing them now

Thanks Lori;
it is also probably related to my attempts to resolve the merge issues over there

Do we have a discussion group started that lists managers who decline to merge? If we had one, we could add people we run across or we could ask those who tell us they won't merge to add themselves to the list. Saves us headaches, identifies those who don't play well with others.

Maria; see here
http://www.geni.com/discussions/6000000008393869938
And
http://www.geni.com/discussions/6000000007505340448

Few of them have been resolved such as Frank Hagan

I would also recommend trying and avoiding merging their profiles at all; especially since the recent viewable merging process where you can see who manage the profiles and can avoid dragging them into the ones you do have access too

@Ofir
Thank you - I knew there were discussions about the topic but wasn't sure if we had a separate thread going.

My notes say that the New England Historic Genealogical Society published in 1901 that it is doubtful that Christopher was the father of Richard.