I love when family members, close, distant, and even previously unknown, join Geni and work on the family tree. They're precious few and far between. There are virtually no inlaw trees connected to me except what I've merged on my own. Family join, look around, and don't return, even to add their kids or spouses.
So I'm very excited when a xxxth cousin starts adding people or uploading documents. Except... how do I handle it when they're duplicating work that's been done? When they start adding people to the tree that already exist, so that now instead of 2 siblings they have 4. Or to a lesser extent when they start uploading documents that are already there?
I want to tell them how to look at existing information so that they don't waste their energies. But I don't want to discourage them or come across like I'm protecting "my" tree. Has anyone had luck doing this? So far I'm batting .000.
