Ragnar "Lodbrok" Sigurdsson - 31st Great Grandfather

Erica, I don't understand either. It's embarrassing to have been wrong (maybe), but I don't know any good genealogists who haven't been wrong. More than once.

I can see Shawna' complaint here, but in the cases we're talking about it would be more like what would happen to her if she disagreed with a cousin about who their great grandparents really were, and one of them wanted to accept a letter from their grandmother and the other one wanted to ignore it ;)

No, Justin, you still haven't got it, but Lloyd3 and Shawna Marie have, thank you to both of you.

Remi, there's a big difference among Shawna's complaint about mismerges, Lloyd's complaint about fictitious profiles, and the debate here about the validity of saga lines.

Can you not see that??

I am not now, nor am I ever, nor have I ever, been embarrassed about "being wrong". That is not and was not my point.

My point is that GENI SHOULD be vetting the lines.

Everything about GENI says you should "see how you are related" to some famous person (who is not a member and who did not create their own profile and who does not even use GENI).

How can GENI advertise the connections in good faith if they have not checked to see if the connections are real . . .if they in fact know that they are NOT real?

Oooo, you're related to Queen Elizabeth, sign up now and see how, invite your family and friends to join in the fun of building the big Tree.

It's false advertising, plain and simple.

Shameful.

The site preys on people who are not knowledgeable enough to know better, and makes them the object of ridicule for believing that the connections are true and sharing them with family and friends.

GENI should have a front page disclaimer that admits the BIG TREE is just a lot of hot air, broken dreams, and empty promises.

Whether a mis-merge, a fake lineage, or a saga line . . .
if it isn't marked as being fake or false then it is deceptive, and if it is a line which the pathway generator says is made up of our ancestors, then it is an outright lie . . .one that is being left in place to create the supposed connections that are advertised to the uninformed public as being real and true, to get them to pay for membership to find even more connections.

Ooooo, you're related to the President, and all of these famous people too, and the Kings and Queens and Gods as well . . .

If it were true . . .when it is true . . .then that would be something . . .but most of it is just a lot of nonsense.

And how can anyone be happy with that?

And there you finally pinpointed one of your misunderstandings, Justin. You have presumed that I have talked about validity in the saga lines, when I have been talking about validity in general.

Geni is an arm of an online genealogical software service. The closest analogy is to Ancestry.com, which is a site I use daily.

I have yet to see any such disclaimer on a software provider.

Some individual tree owners on line - whether they use a service like Ancestry or set up their own domain & page - do disclaim. Some don't. Some have transparency of their source data; some don't.

Relationship calculators of some type or another has also been around on line as long as there have been on line services. Geni's is the most powerful I've seen.

But we, the members of the site, contribute the data. And we, collectively, are responsible for vetting our piece of it.

The mission statement of Geni is "everyone is connected." Of course that's true, we are all members of the same species (I think).:)

But (and this is where I do agree with Remi) - it's up to me to figure out exactly how.

And I accept that third connections are a work in progress, always.

Can others?

Typo - no "third" in there.

I see nothing shameful about being a work in progress and in contributing to a work in progress. Something complete is not fully living, is it?

There can be no Third Connections without Close Encounters of the Third Kind :-)

The Annunaki Dragon King

Remi, go back and re-read the debate. Carefully this time. You'll see that you're talking about all the different problems you see with Geni, but I'm arguing with you only about a single point -- what to do when different people can reasonably draw different conclusions from the same body of evidence.

It isn't easy to have a discussion when those involved aren't discussing the same thing....... And, no, I haven't talked about all the different problems I see with Geni, just how people should read and trust the sources, which really isn't a problem with Geni at all, but a problem with us users.

I could say the same to you, but I won't since I don't want you to think me rude again.

Justin - I need help with the link Lloyd posted. I know there are fiction projects and fiction designations, but I am not familiar with them and how what the methodology is. I imagine in your usual thorough fashion that has been developed. Perhaps you'd be kind enough, and on a separate discussion or by inviting to project, explain it?

I think we've digressed enough on Ragnar's profile.

My thanks for the educational opportunity & I'm hoping for forgiveness in advance if I'm allowed to spend more time developing the Kentucku
18th & 19th century tree.

That would be Kentucky, USA. Lots of tall tales, few documents, and many of my un found as yet ancestors.

Lloyd, I understand how you feel but I don't see it that way. Geni could very easily have purchased any of half a dozen databases with ancient and medieval genealogies, locked them down tight, and said "This is it. You can't change it."

Why do you think they didn't do it that way? You might have your own opinion, but I think it was because any database has its problems. Not just the individual trees at Ancestry.com, but also some of the famous royal databases like Tudor Place and Stirnet. Medlands is great but still very much in its infancy. Maybe Leo van de Pas? Great stuff. He monitors the discussions at soc.genealogy.medieval and puts the good stuff in his database.

But the problem with every single one of those (and all the others) is that there is no authoritative medieval genealogy collection. Always there is an element of judgment (as I've argued extensively above). The closest thing you might find is one of the academic prosopographical databases, but genealogists would hate prosopography doesn't look at history in the same way genealogists do.

It seems clear to me (maybe not to others) that Geni intended a Wikipedia model. Their idea was that people who are knowledgable in a particular area would take the lead in shaping that area. To some extent that's what's happening. You've seen the extraordinary effort that goes into keeping The Lost Tudor Prince from re-designing the whole tree.

What you might not see is the effort by some of the curators and many other users into merging the duplicates, cleaning up the names, documenting the profiles, etc. I've spent some 10-20 a week for a couple of years doing that, and I don't even make the board as a top performer!

Erica, I don't think the link Lloyd posted is really worth a separate discussion. Maybe just a few brief comments.

This is part of the Dragon Lord cult, that (some) humans are descended from the Anunnaki, a group of Sumerian (etc.) gods.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anunnaki

This little cluster is not attached to the Big Tree. As curator for the Biblical tree Shmuel has a place for them in their several different variations. They'll be assimilated and quarantined.

Justin,
I understand you perfectly and I agree with you.
Even so I still think that a more thorough labeling is in order.
And precisely because the actual lines are the most important.
B^]
And hey, I've logged in at least a few thousand hours for GENI . . .
but at least I'm not paying them to let me work on their tree.

Lloyd, in my perfect world users would avoid endless discussions like the one about Ragnar Lodbrok. It's impossible to "win" that argument based on surviving sources, but if one person wants to argue then someone has to present the other side ;)

We'd all spend our time more wisely to look for weak links that can be easily documented, have a brief discussion, then disconnect them.

It's easy enough to know that western Europeans don't have any real lines past the 7th century (or so), but just cutting the connections in arbitrary places makes much more work. It's hard to get people to do the real work of finding out where the line came from and *why* it is fake or false.

Lloyd - it's not Geni's tree; this is not a proprietary database (arguable for another discussion). It's not Lexis / Nexus in other words, charging $250/monthly for the privilege of looking up "the facts."

In fact it's in the entertainment / hobby category: not an academic category; not a journalism category, etc.

One cousin, when I first invited to the tree, got it immediately:

"Facebook meets Wikipedia. Cool! Let the edit wars begin!"

I believe in a people's family tree of everyone, from that people & by the people. And I see that validating every day. It's a great ride.

I understand your point precisely, Erica. And in that understanding I can agree with your sentiment.

Well . . .I know my paternal tree needs some more trimming, so I guess I should get back to thinking about what to cut next.

It's funny, Lloyd. "Your" tree is too full and needs pruning. Mine is too skimpy and needs to be discovered and entered. Oh the joys of generations of obscurity ... :):)

That's actually a lead in to where I disagree with Remi, and I think I know why Remi and I find ourselves differently on some bits.

I'm much "younger" in genealogy than many of you. I had no GEDCOM, no vetted ancestry to (most) of my first arrivers to America. So nothing much was handed to me when I started my tree on Geni.

In the process of entering even the tiny bits and hints I gleaned, I discovered - all kinds of family members who "had" done genealogy. But if I hadn't entered "what I know", and even "what I think I know", the cousins etc who had their knowledge (but not mine) wouldn't have joined our info together.

In a more data oriented fashion I see this every day in the merge environment, the "wikification" process. For instance I was working with a document from a great secondary source, but it only covered so much info. Other profiles from other sources filled in the pieces and suddenly - and rather quickly - a factual, vetted and complete Geni profile.

It might be a chore to merge but it can also be quite beautiful, to see it emerging.

To Lloyd3: I give a d... in King or Queen or famous People this and that. In the beginning of my Family Research I did truble myself about whether I were related to such persons. But after a while I found out this is not the way in genealogy. It took all the time from my Family researches.

Nowadays a take a look at realations to Queen or kings but wery seldom. Most of the time I got left for this genealogy-hobby I do Research for my nearest Family. And it is this stuff I add to the ancestrytree on Geni.

It is another thing I like to tell: My experience With reconstructing disappered Church records. Where I comes from old Church books are either burned or lost. When I og further backwards in time to try to find relatives I often has to reconstruct or make my own churchbook. This I Call real genealogy where nobody did this before me. When I do such hobby I Comfort and this has to be so difficult as possible.

He is my 28th great grandfather. Nice to see you all!

Private User your line back to Ragnar as it is shown on Geni now has these problems:

Eline Lauritsdatter Stabel There is no evidence of she being a daughter Laurits Hanestad, so that link needs more research.

N.N. Mogensdatter Ree The same with this person, there are no evidence that the wife of Laurits Hanestad was a daughter of Mogens from Store Ree.

Borghild Amundsdatter Stumpe This person may be wrong since there are few evidence of who the wife(s) of Berdor Kolbeinsson Bolt was.

That was just a few a found at the moment.

Thanks Remi! Appriciate you knowledge!

Great work Remi ;) Im sure there is some problems with my own connection (among many): http://www.geni.com/path/David+Widerberg+Howden+is+related+to+Ragna...

Just to mention: The Bolt family on Geni is a mess, tried some time back to use Sollieds articles about the family, but there was to much work back then, maby I will look into it some time later..

The first problem I can identify, David, is this woman: Kristine Torsteinsdotter

The problems are her parents which there is no evidence of they being Torstin den rike and Kristine Andersdater Vatne. There is also a problem with her birthplace as Bjørke if her parents are wrong on Geni. This needs more research.

Further back in time this person looks suspicious: NN Hallkjelsdatter and she should probably be looked more into regarding both her parentage and her husbands.

I agree Remi, Im probably going too look through the debates and sources I find, but it seems like there are a lot of uncertainty around who Torstein den rike was, he could be a mix of different people. I removed the surname "Benkestokk" from him and "Smør" from his daughter as I doubt this is correct for these profiles.. I will also look at this Hallkjelsdatter.. Thanks for pointing out two of the problems..