Friedrich Both, SV/PROG - Theunis Botha - Appel

"1)I have removed Theunis' DVN from the Suffix field while he is positioned under Ferdinandus Appel on the GENi tree (as per suggestions at the beginning of this discussion) because a Botha DVN Suffix will cause mismerges on the Appel tree. "
Please comment

Since we do not know whether Geni supports the biological or de facto tree in case of conflict, I would personally leave Theunis Appel ( with no spouse or children links ) number Ferdinandus Appel and use a "0" in his generation indicator - provided of course that he is also shown as Theunis Botha under Friedrich Botha.

"2) A decision then needs to be made about the other Botha children. If it is common knowledge that they are not Frierdrich's children, then they should have been placed under the acknowledged biological father.
Please comment"
I would treat them exactly the same way as Theunis Botha - under their biological father as well as their de facto father. Since the the last names are the same you will have to protect the "biological" Bothas severely to prevent unwanted merges with the de facto Bothas.
As mentioned earlier it works perfectly for me on half a dozen of cases - admittedly on lower generations.
I have however one on the b level Casparus Bester and Casper Bester, SV2b1 which is very similar to Botha/Appel.

Daan, on the subject of duplicating profiles under both Biological and Adoptive Parents

My experience when I tried it, is that it creates continual daily maintenance and results in two higgeldy piggeldy half-half tree duplicates - especially in the high traffic areas of the Stam Vaders.
Justin Swanström was the one who taught me this the hard way.

I think we need a bigger consensus on this if we decide to do it, and we also need a commitment from a Curator to do the daily maintenance of cutting the descendant tree that will keep developing under one of them, because once those pop up as matches with the 'real' tree (whichever we decide is the 'real' tree - adoptive or biological) we will have whole tree mash-ups between SV lines.

(Nevertheless, if it is a viable option - my gut also wants to keep two profiles - so I'm just pointing out the pitfalls as I see them).

Sharon, I would love to see something along the lines of an official "cross-reference" profile. Perhaps it could be a kind of "ghost" that links to the real profile. With all the bright people on Geni, we ought to be able to develop something like that into a workable solution.

A genealogical chimera profile may be the answer.
As Theunis Botha is a historic reality who can readily be found in South African genealogies his absence in Geni will always lead to someone trying to add him to the tree. He must therefor be accomodated somehow in both the Botha and Appel genealogies. Daan is probably closest to having the answer.

Without tech changes in fact I see "no other" solution than Daan's.

Love the concepts of "cross reference" and "genealogical chimera."

A chimera should of course have a special visual designation. That can be done easily enough, and a project to define those cases?

Now there's an idea! If the chimeric duplicate child were coloured in a different colour and could be locked from having kids added to it. Or if any kids added to it could be automatically actually connected to the unlocked duplicate!

Ahh Peter I wish you could write that in the Curator discussion we're presently having on the issue.

Would it be good enough to use a curator note on the duplicate to direct people to Theunis' biological tree to add kids. A forwarning that kids added to this profile will be deleted -not merged in -might keep the maintenance work down too.

*Forewarning

Sharon if one profile is entirely locked it "cannot" be added to in any fashion except by a curator, who (should be able to be counted on) to read the notes & the redirecting pointer.

As to another color - just make a "genealogy chimera" icon.

This is another version of the "died young" problem - a locked profile for historical purposes.

I also like the idea of a genealogy chimera project that explains this workaround in detail for the curious in one place.

Peter's idea is really good.

[Would it be good enough to use a curator note on the duplicate to direct people to Theunis' biological tree to add kids. A forwarning that kids added to this profile will be deleted -not merged in -might keep the maintenance work down too.]

My reasoning is that anyone that would like to add relavtives to Theunis Botha (b1) who in my model lies in the de facto/"adoption" tree, would go there
.
He would be entered as Theunis Appel in the biological tree and users would not normally go there when adding Bothas.

My experience in the similar case of the Besters (Casparus Bester and Casper Bester) linked above, is that it is a no /low maintenance situation.
I do agree however that one should add such a curator note

Daan - in my experience curator notes are not enough. It would need to be a locked profile with a redirecting link in both the curator note & the overview.

I speak from thousands of "died young" infants acquiring children otherwise.

Daan, I suppose there has to be a broader Geni World Tree decision to guide us here, and i will go with the majority vote; but my concern is that the effect of that will be to prevent the use of the tree to trace DNA descendants on Geni.

The chimera would not be a duplicate profile. It would be a profile with all the elements included in it. Ie a single profile with for example the babtised name, adopted name and factual name all in their own headings and linked to each of these families. Difficult typing on tablet, will try and explain more later when at pc.

Peter, your explanation is very clear. I think you have exactly the right idea.

I assume that the decision has been made to remove the numbers from the suffix field and add the revised number and previous number to a curator note as well as the aka field?

Philippus Botha
Jacobus Botha
Margaretha Botha

I am setting up a FerdinandusAppel descendent project - as you suggested some time earlier, June. http://www.geni.com/projects/Bothas-who-are-DNA-descendants-of-Ferd...
You should have received a collaboration request. As all these children are now visually on the Appel line - but showing contradictory DVnumbers in the Suffix, I have removed the suffixes & locked the profiles from this line until we have a decision about what to do with the suffixes.

If they were to get merged into duplicates under the 'adoptive' Botha line - we could very quickly have a Botha/Appel smerge of the two whole family lines.

If you go to those profiles - you'll see I've clearly documented the DV numbers in every place possible on the profiles themselves.

I would have waited before making the changes. I could also have added my preferred approach of duplicate profiles in this area but have refrained until we come to a final decision.

No changes were made besides removing the suffix while the profiles were in a contradictory position.
Given the spotlight on the Appel Botha tree right now, it is quite likely that someone would try and fix that contradiction. I'm sure the last thing you want is a Botha Appel tree smerge!

Having discussed the question of where to locate illegitimate children on the historical tree (ie we're not discussing modern adoption situations - which we all agree is up to the family)
the Curators have come up with some useful comments:

In the absence of the GENi tree being able to show two sets of parents (which everyone agrees would be the first prize) if we have to choose between showing a descent line under the biological father or not:

=I know several people who have been devastated to learn that the line they've spent a lifetime documenting is not their line. I understand their feelings, and I sympathize, but in the end I can't see being reasonably upset by changes in distant ancestry.=

=Theunis was the illegitimate son of his biological father. Why consider anything else? It's a common enough situation. Why parse it into a kind of adoption that needs to be represented in some unique way?=

Much support was evinced for Peter's idea of a chimera profile by way of solving the problem of a line being built under Daan's duplicate profile on the tree (and a number of Curators offered to try out programming variations on this - but GENi has not taken them up on it )

=At this stage of the discussion, without formal adoption support, I'm inclining to Daan's solution about creating duplicates with a curator cross-reference note and locking one of them. I might even try that for myself, for my mother's (adopted) sister, and perhaps for a few others.=

=I have also used the approach of 'duplicate profile as a partner' (setting the gender of the 'adopted' profile to unknown, so it shows as green, setting it off from the biological profile) and I also find that it works reasonably well.=

But it seemed to turn out that these solutions were only being seen to be viable for modern adoption situations, and the historical tree as well as illegitimacy without legal adoption were not thought to be the place to apply them.

Jan, if I'm understanding you correctly - then you are outlining exactly the reasoning the study did use.

Ah, sry I see... for reference, here is what should be quoted (the newspaper link is not working anymore)....

Greeff, Jaco M., and J. Christoff Erasmus. "Appel Botha Cornelitz: The abc of a three hundred year old divorce case." Forensic Science International: Genetics 7, no. 5 (2013): 550-554.

Thanks