Rubbish about my family on line

Hello Judith
I don't know the person who added this profile, but I'm sure he meant no harm
you can request to merge this profile with your copy of it or write to the manager and correct the data and the relevant data of your relatives.
I'm sure that after the first few weeks on Geni you'll see the benefits of the collaborative tree.
I'd be happy to help you on your way on Geni.
Yaacov

Living Gill,
the person who added these profiles is Private User. She is your "husband's first cousin's husband's second cousin once removed". She obviously has an interest in the family, or she wouldn't have bothered entering these profiles. Obviously mistakes DO happen, especially with more distant relatives.

I'm sure that if you contact her directly (go to her profile by clicking on her name, and click the 'Send Message' link), that she will be happy to Collaborate with you and you can them merge the two copies. After that, you could even request she remove herself as manager from them.

In theory, because the profiles in this other copy of your family are public, I could merge them WITH you, but direct communication and collaboration is ALWAYS a best first option.

Geni is generally a very friendly place, and there are plenty of people who'll be happy to assist, including a dedicated team of volunteer Curators, such as myself.

Shmuel-Aharon Kam,
Geni Curator

Exactly, as this website is public, there should be facility for removal.

I do not find such a link fascinating, especially seeing that my former husband has been with another partner for 16 years, has a child by her.
Also that I have 4 children, none of whom are known by the name of Pussell.

Please remove myself and my “three” children from your site.

Kaaren did NOT add those profiles. She manages what appears to be an abandoned tree. I edited out the Pussell name to Gill and added the father according to your tree Judith and moved the kids over to their dad.

Unfortunately, it's against terms of service for users to remove profiles that belong to someone else if it is accurate. This is something you have to ask Karen to do as this is also her family tree that she inherited from the person who uploaded the tree.

If you want, you may merge your profile onto the profile of that tree and possibly (not sure exactly how it works), but set your settings so only close family can view your family members.

One last one...

Because it would be against terms of service to delete these names from that tree, I've gone and changed the display to say "Living Gill" on yours and the "3" of your 4 children's names. This way it will somewhat private.

After the current Terms of Service it says,
"Recent changes to this Agreement:
March 1, 2010: We revised Section 9.1 to state that you may not remove Content from a Shared Family Tree, except to correct inaccurate or offensive data, without Geni's written permission. We made this change to be fair to other Members who may be interested in the information on the Shared Family Tree."
---- BUT - I do not see any Section 9.1 in the Agreement currently posted. So not clear this applies. It looks to me like they revised the Terms without changing the Revision Date listed.

Folks often enter info believing they are entering Private info, then realize they are wrong -- is Geni really wanting a written request to remove a date of birth or etc. unless it can be proven the info was incorrect?? And if so, what punishment are they imposing for these actions?

I am thinking above of where I entered the living relative, and then decide some info should not have been entered, or where they claim their profile and do not want that data there, or where a close relative does not want certain info about his/her children children or other close relatives shown.

I also thought at one point Terms of Service said something about needing permission for the entering of data, and about only entering correct info. I find it hard to believe that anyone on their birth certificate was named a "K" followed by a heart -- think this would be violating the terms of Service I originally saw. Definitely think it violates the spirit of creating One World Tree. And if this was not what was originally down - Was written permission obtained to change it to this?

According to Help, it is okay to remove the profiles (and/or the info).

http://help.geni.com/entries/486381-i-found-my-listing-on-your-site... -- includes

"if you have located a profile on Geni which you believe may be for you (or a relative), you may go to www.geni.com to create an account. Once you have, you will be able to contact the profile manager who added that profile to their tree and ask them to invite you, update it, or remove it on your behalf."

I read this information. However a person should have the fundamental right to remove from line any information about themselves or their family that is correct. It should not be necessary to contact a complete strange and "ask" if they would mind removing that data.

if this is not made a fundamental right then other users should be making loud complaints against this website with the intention of having it closed down.

The occasional internet browser should not, as I have, been put in position of finding their name on line, together the incorrect names of their children, and not be able to have them immediately removed.

Living Gill,
what you suggest is totally unworkable (and unreasonable). Can you in fact PROVE that you, as in this account of yours is really you, and not someone who chose to open an account with your name?? You can not. The technology does not exist...

Beyond that point, I don't know where in the world you live, but in MANY countries Birth / Marriage / Death information is a matter of PUBLIC record. In an ever-growing number of countries, this information can be found online from OFFICIAL sources. Privacy on the internet is a fiction of the past.

If information on your website was taken from official public records, then it would be accurate and complete, with correct name spellings, correct dates of birth, and with all relevants recorded..

It would not miss out children born of the same 2 individuals.
It would record divorces equally as it records marriages.
And it would also record formal name changes.

None of this appears to be the case in the data loaded on this site.
As such the data should be removed.

Judith - I have a large family tree both for me and for my husband's family. I ran into this type of situation where people were adding trees with wrong information about MY family. I even added some information about their families that was incomplete or wrong.

The way we worked through it was by collaborating and by me emailing them by clicking on Message on their profile and saying (1) Hi, I'm a relative, can we collaborate and (2) I need to correct some of the information about my family that is on the tree.

I always accepted collaboration requests or adding people to the family group and allowed them to edit their own family information, such as deleting information that was correct but that they did not want to share. Or they might ask me to delete something and I would comply.

I know it is frustrating and annoying. I went through this again recently because I have a famous family member and someone added a tree for them which had PUBLIC profiles for living family members, which irked me, but I emailed them and they instantly made those private.

Really, communicating with the person and sharing the tree is usually the best approach.

K♥ - Thank you for doing what you could to adjust the existing profiles to protect the privacy of Living Gill's family.

Judith, welcome to Geni!

Beyond the suggestions and efforts made by a few others here, you'll need to Geni for help from the Customer Service staff.

As to your point about name changes being tied to events, sourced, etc. I know that can say that the program is constantly evolving and improving. The management and development team are involved and really do listen to the users.

In addition to opening a help ticket, you'll find links for suggesting features, and a knowledge base to assist you as you learn to navigate your way around the program.

I think that you'll find the community of users on Geni to be friendly and quite helpful. Again, welcome!

Judith,
I understand deeply your words about privacy and correct data. Geni, like other "user based" websites (Wikipedia for example) holds the data that the users entered. whether you like it or not, anyone can enter the data as he knows or thinks is correct. Geni is not a worldwide official database.
anyone can write a book or publish a story on his website that includes "facts" about people without any need for actual proof of those facts.
I don't say it's OK, it is the reality of our world. The reason it makes you angry is because it went public. there are many family tree web sites that are not collaborative and not public, anyone that uses them can "build" his tree like he believes it was, even if it's totally wrong.
try to think how you can make the data better instead of fighting, soon you will see the advantages of Geni.
Yaacov

Looking at all the 'C' behind the names of people participating, it seems we have soon more 'Generals' than 'Soldiers' in Geni. This, of course, is the tendency world wide where armies are reduced but the hirarchy continues. In GENI however, it points in the direction that less and less 'mortals' (those without a 'C') are participating because of an ever increasing and frustrating trend to "privacy" and which drives people to abandon GENI and move to other system like 'My Heritage' which are far more liberal. Americans will understand:The 'Tea Party' has taken over GENI!

There are over 6 millions users in Geni...

Living Gill,
I mentioned "official source" only to say that this information IS publicly available, so your objection to publishing it is like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted... As in most cases people get their information from FAMILY. As such mistakes creep in.

Georges Max Teitler,
that is a silly (and petty) comment. What you call "Soldiers users" are less likely to participate in this type of discussion, because they have less ability to assist. So unless they have something negative to add, then they will probably remain silent.

Georges, I'm not sure which definition of "liberal" you are using with regard to "My Heritage". My in-laws have a huge tree there. Let us say that it's a site for "control freaks", and uses the "Closed Club" model, i.e. no tree merging (can only invite relatives you ALREADY know of), and only the Tree Manager can invite people. The result is, that after the initial activity, you have an entirely static tree, so no-one really uses the site, except to get birthday reminder emails.

Even then, people are just as likely to publish wrong information...

Judith,
have you even tried to communicate with this other tree's manager? I did OFFER TO HELP you merge your own tree with the other one, and thus gain control of it. I can still do so...

Hi Shmuel-Aharon,

I have communicated with Judith about the problems with the entries I "manage". I did not enter the names as you would know and personally would not extend my tree that far. I have asked her to contact Bryan Curran who did enter the names on the family tree.

I think it could be a good idea to give her control of that part of the tree as this has obviously distressed her greatly.

Thank you for your timely responses,
Kaaren.

I have just added more ancestors to my tree and Geni;.com has divided the children calling them half siblings. It is what Geni,com do all the time they mess about with the information that we give them

There is an easy fix to that.
For each child, on Profile View, click Edit Profile.
Then click Relationships
Then choose the correct Parents (Drop Down Menu)
Then click save.

To avoid it in future, I need more info.
Had you added the children as siblings before adding the parent as an ancestor to one of them, or?
Were you adding from Tree View or from "Add Family" in Profile view?