What is going on?

So what you are saying is that I still constantly have to clean up peoples messes when they make changes in the project.

Ask people nicely. That has not worked so far. I doubt it will now.

So there is really not a solution. that is what I here you saying.

Justin Durand, the project remains receptive for all discussions. Difference is that Anette will make the necessary changes if needed.

Justin I can try it. I have tried it in other situations. Did not stop people!

So what you are saying is edit away. NEver mind the data that find the way to the project or get taken away from it.
Thats how you see it.
Well if thats the case . I am sorry then I guess I am not a very collaborative person I guess.

Dimitri,

Do you understand that it is meaningless to let people join a project then tell them they cannot edit the page?

When someone joins a project they become a collaborator on the project. Geni gives them the power to edit and the power to add profiles. There is no other purpose of joining.

If you tell them they cannot do that, then there is no point to joining.

Anyone can follow a project and contribute to discussions without joining.

I still would like to ask you.

Tou find it ok that people riun the project. Remove viral data.
That is there editing right.
No rule set, no standards of any kind. JUst go for it??????

I find that odd. Very odd!

And it does seem to me that you refuse to answer that question!

Anette

I can answer from my experience, I hope you find it valid, as I've started or contributed to thousands of projects on Geni, since before they were introduced as a function.

Out of those thousands, including the project with (I believe) the most "followers," there have been extremely few "edit wars" of "any" sort.

There have been some misunderstandings. They've been sorted out by communicating.

There's of course "work in progress" signs to put up; there's "contact for this page," there's all sorts of ways to work out the issues. There are revert tools, imperfect as they are; and they do work.

But hosting a Geni page on an external server is not one of them, nor is inviting collaborators to collaborate and then they can't collaborate. That's not in the Geni project tool kit.

Well edit war. I got one here on my hands with Ragnar.

And I do not believe it is reasonable to make a lot of changes on a project without taking it to a discussion. That is what I find not collaborative.!

OK it's not what I gleaned from looking at the revisions story; I saw it much the way Harald described up thread.

Of course it's upsetting, i understand that. But UN collaborating a key figure in genealogy is not the solution, it's not fair to the 95 million members who connect to him.

We can work this through, step by step. NB: I am only talking on the tech side of the story. My interest was looking forward to reading the results of this fine team.

You just make me laugh, Erica Howton! Still struggling with the (non) collaborative bit?

If you can not recognize or acknowledge the fact that we are collaborative, than you are wasting your valuable time, looking forward to reading the results of 'this fine team' lol

We simply have to agree to disagree and respect each others different visions.

Dimitri - Let's not digress into definitions of the word collaborative. Let's talk about what Geni project permissions are.

Collaborators on a project have edit rights. That's the way it is configured. So it's not about semantics, it's about permission structure in the software.

Anette is upset about edits to her hard work. Let's solve that, using the permissions structure in the software provided by the host.

Dimitri, on Geni the word collaboration has a technical meaning. I think this is an aspect you are not understanding when you look at this discussion.

Anette, it is very hard for me to tell you my thoughts if you think everything I say means "what you are saying is that I still constantly have to clean up peoples messes when they make changes in the project."

That is not what I've said and it's not even close to what I mean.

I am trying to think of a way to say it more clearly. Give me some time on that.

Anette Guldager Boye I am still trying to understand what happened in this project.
Was it damage to the profiles or was it damage to the project page?

We can't find better alternatives until we know where the problem is.

The semantic meaning of the word collaborative, is exactly the issue here, you can not seem to comprehend.
Technical stuff are just a bunch of tools, tools can be used for different purposes.

I could comb my hair with a pair of nails, that's how flexible the meaning of the technical word 'collaborative' really is. That is semantic thinking.

That's why I understand your way of thinking much better now, seen from just a technical point of view, Erica Howton

Anette, I can give you some of my thoughts. Some of them might not be helpful, and maybe some of them will not be welcome to you and Dimitri, but here's what I am thinking:

1. Yes, it's work to be a curator. Some people do odd things and then it is extra work for fix it. I sometimes get in a mode where I think I need to fix everything, but then other times I take time to ask myself if it is really a problem and if it is really my job and no one else's.

2. When I start a project, I feel like I am launching it into the world. I don't think I own it or that I can always control it. It often turns out that people add things I would never have thought of. And, even when I disagree with someone, what I value most is the different perspectives and lively discussion. So, if someone makes changes I try very hard to think about whether the change is really something wrong or whether it's just something I don't like.

3. It is always better to put your expectations in writing. If you don't want someone to edit something, make that clear and put it in a place they will see it. A few people might ignore it but my experience is that most people are respectful and law-abiding. Even if you stop only 10 percent of the edits then you've achieved something.

4. If you put your expectations in writing and someone ignores you, it is easier to take action. You ask them in an email why they ignored you. And, you can remove them from the project or even report them for vandalism, It's hard to do any of that if someone did something they have system permission to do and the only problem is that you didn't like it and didn't tell them.

5. Many times there is no simple solution to a problem. So, the best thing to do is work on things that will help reduce the problem.

Dimitri, I think you still do not see.

You want to argue about what collaboration should mean rather than talking about what it does mean on Geni.

You want to say, yes we have project members called collaborators on Geni, but we want them not to be Geni-style collaborators; we want them to be the kind of collaborators who just talk.

There is more than one way to skin a Geni. But let's move on. And this is not an order LOL

I think the only way to solve this piece of the problem is, as you say, agree to disagree. We can create another project for Ragnar that is collaborative in the way Geni understands that term, and we can also have this managed project of yours and Anette's. I don't see any conflict with that.

Erica Howton yesterday you said
"for profile overviews you can lock them as a curator, the same as any other field. Then in a merge extraneous text is automatically discarded instead of appended. If a member wishes to contribute additions to the field, they can submit through contact manager, discussion, or uploaded document."

That does not seem to be the situation from my observation of Ragnar's profile, his About is locked and he is also locked [im not sure quite how] so that only Curators can merge him. Despite these two facts it is obvious if you scroll down the profile that as a result of merges there has definitely been extraneous text added from other profiles.

I do not know if this is part of the issue that Anette mentions where she has asked others no to make changes and then "changes" have in deed been made.

Anette Guldager Boye, i do not know your level of computer expertise but the simplest method to protect your work i think would be to have a file on your PC where you keep a copy of the Project. Every time you change the project you update the copy on your PC. Then if someone changes the project you can change it back simply by editing the Project, deleting everything in it and copying over the saved copy form your PC.

Regarding the general question of "collaboration", however you wish to define it, i originally asked what the point of this project is and despite being ignored i think my question rather than an attack actually is at the heart of this conflict.

If this Project's purpose is to present Geni users with the facts of Ragnar as determined by Anette and no one else then how is that a Project?

Anette already has a platform to present the facts, it is Ragnar's profile which only other Curators could possibly meddle with (a problem which should be easy enough to control). Geni users can discuss and contribute ideas as much as they want by starting (or responding) to Discussions started from Ragnar's profile. So what benefit is this particular Project providing, especially if we move to a model where no one edits the project except the "project manager"?

My suggestion / thought had been something like the Charlemagne family project. A place to outline the family relationships, handy reference.

Of course that's just a thought.

Alex - if the about field was locked, then additional text should have been discarded in the merge. I have very few overview locked profiles, and none recently; but all worked as billed, last I looked.

However if a profile is fully locked, instead of locked field by field, a curator merges, then indeed extraneous text will come in from the merge unless it is manually cleaned up.

Which is one of the reasons I don't "fully" lock. I would have had to clean up John Alden of the Mayflower 500 times.

Alex, I would normally pay very little attention to a discussion like this one but your first post captured my attention because you said information had been removed from the project page.

A quick look at the revision history shows that to be true. On October 15th Dimitri removed information that was there after an edit by Remi Trygve Pedersen. If I am reading the revisions correctly Remi's edit on the same day was to remove information from a user who believes Ragnar was a real person. The information Dimitri removed seems to have been an outline of the family, as developed largely by the discussions you've led on this subject.

So, this is a matter of concern.

The new page is now just an advertisement for a project maintained off the Geni site.

Anette is concerned about the problem of vandalism, but I see only two edits, 15 minutes apart by the same user, that could be characterized as vandalism. And both of them could have been reverted in under 30 seconds. Not exactly a maintenance nightmare.

Dimitri is concerned about being perceived as collaborative, while continuing to develop the project as a "managed" project.

But what I don't see is much concern for the problem you raised. We need a project for Ragnar that resides on Geni and allows users to participate in creating and presenting data.

Erica, a quick check of the profile shows that Anette has it fully locked, just as you describe. So of course new merges append info to the About Me. She would have had to field lock in order to keep the About Me stable.

Thanks for the explanation regarding locked fields, makes perfect sense now. Just a pity that the Curators who do take the time to facilitate requested merges on locked profiles dont then bother to tidy up the results.

Regarding the "edit war".

Justin you need to look at the Revisions History not just for the change Remi made but for the changes that Pippa had made also.

If you look at the two sets of revisions that Pippa (sorry it might be Peppa) they are basically grammar and typo changes to improve readability. What Remi deleted, which you describe as a claim from Pippa that Ragnar really existed, is actually text that Anette actually put on the page the very day the Project started.

So there is no "edit war" on this project. Anette was trying to say that somewhere under all the exaggerations there really was a Ragnar (she makes this point often), Remi perhaps mis-interpreted this statement to mean that every detail of the sagas is fact, which no one really seems to believe that i have heard.