Thoron Håkonsdatter Hvite - What about her father?

And just not to be misunderstood, I have nothing against anyone with a genuine interest in genealogy, and yes, it's fun and easy to get carried away, but on a site where we share our profiles with everybody, we have to be responsible. People who do not share this view, could be better of doing there private tree on my heritage or use some family tree builder on their own computer.

Private User
Both I and Randi Charlotte Kjærvik think that May Alta needs to cool down when it comes to all those duplicates she continue to add,
you are at least still a curator, and even you should understand that all this work are nonsense, it fills no positive function at all but instead, renders up in a lot of conflicting data, we now have, just as example among the huge amount, Helga Sigurdsdatter Sigurdsdatter (Sigurdsdotter), Munn Helga Sigurdsdotter Munn
Roar / Roas / Ro / Hroar (Hrothgar) Halvdanssøn (Hroarsson), King of Roeskilde Hrothgar Halfdansson, Scylding King of Roskilde Denmark

I can think that maybe, try to inform her about how to think here, give her some good advice, or just anything please?

I always check profiles before merging them. I go after parents, husbands/wifes, siblings, date of birth and death. At least three of this have to add up before i merge profiles, and I never merge them unless at least parents, husband/wife or children can be found in both profiles. i thought I was doing good. Merging som there is only one profile per person

To May Olsen "May Alta": Think about all the work which is done when the tree were made. We has done a lot of work on it and please don't destroy it.

Arnfred Nilsen

Remi Trygve Pedersen. What do you think. I thought mergin profiles is good as long as it is the same person. And how can that destroy Arnfred? I don't merge profiles unless I'm convinced it's the same person.

Would someone please educate May Alta as to what a source is? I've run into some of the "new" profiles she's added in the Scandinavian lines back in the years before 500 BC and the "sources" seem to be pretty much doubtful secondary sources with a lot of confusion of generations. Does May really think she has access to reliable sources that no one else in the history of genealogy has ever seen? I'm trying to get a fairly reliable picture of my own Swedish and Norwegian background and it's getting hard to find my way through the maze she's created

I give up. I do not get paid to be a psychologist, nor a teacher. I have tried and failed.

Actions like the following are disturbing!!

"May Alta added (No Name), (No Name), (No Name), (No Name), (No Name), (No Name), (No Name), Cecilie Ebbesen Glug and Oluf Glug « to the tree. Sat at 9:38 PM

May Alta added (No Name), (No Name), (No Name), Norr, Snaersson, Snaer, Jokull Frostasson, Frosti Karasson, Kari Fornjotsson, Fornjotur, Volsungsson and (No Name) « to the tree. Sat at 9:20 PM

May Alta added Olmod Isolvsson, (No Name), (No Name), Budlasdatter, (No Name), Attipsson, Attip, Budi Halfdansson, (No Name), Almveigu, (No Name) and (No Name) « to the tree. Sat at 8:11 PM"

And when you go in to each and every one of the "No Name" profiles, the first thing you meet is Geni's default plea to resolve the conflicting data.

May Alta also seems to deliberately add duplicates of historic people, and then merge in to existing profiles. Leaving a total mess wherever she moves around. And she admits in another discussion that she is "having fun"!

All her actions show on her profile, and someone needs to monitor what she does. Because she will not listen to reason.

Remi Trygve Pedersen Private User

Well, let's not give up. everyone. What May Alta seems to be doing is adding profiles she has found on other genealogy profiles out on the internet, for the sole purpose of merging them into existing profiles on the Geni World Tree. What she doesn't seem to understand is that when she does that she brings along all the small (sometimes large) mistakes and guesses that have been copied and pasted over and over on to those outside trees. It's those errors that are messing up the profiles that the have been written to the Geni World Tree based on primary sources that have existed for the past two millennia. Not based on profiles pasted together yesterday on someone else's tree. So often names may be the same or similar, but having three out of four details right leaves a lot of errors for the rest of Geni's people to deal with.

The question is how do we ring Geni's bell loud enough for them to get her to stop, if she is unable to stop herself.

Harald Tveit Alvestrand

Sorry for tagging all of you guys, but there is valid reason to be concerned. And maybe she will listen to curators.

I wish I knew this before I bought geni pro. I try to follow genis own introduction: I praksis betyr det at alle som legger inn samme person skal slå alle versjoner sammen til en profil pr person. "Everyone ho adds a person should merge versions to one profile per person."

May Alta, I understand that you mean well, but you have been previously given good advice, and you have chosen to ignore it. You need to listen.

Everyone is welcome to add profiles and info to the tree. But being a part of Geni, demands some responsibility and some caution.

You don't just start your new Geni membership by adding a huge number of profiles on people that lived 500-1000 years ago.

Start with adding the generations close to you. Make the good! Add sources, photos etc. And then you hook up on the world tree when you meet the older generations that already have been put in here a long time ago.

It's a learning curve. Remember: Asking the curators is never wrong. There are discussion threads especially targeted for getting help. Learn by watching. There's often more work to a merge than just the merge itself. You need to resolve conflicting data as well.

Speaking for myself, I never merge profiles as old as those you have been merging since you got the "itch". For those old profiles, I ask the curators that are more experienced. You will see that all of those profile have a curator. They are there for a reason. They have been Geni members for a long time. And a lot of them are experienced and/or educated in medieval history and/or genealogy.

I truly wish you the best experience in your ancestry hobby.
But it's time to pause a little, and learn a little.

Thanks for you advice @Randi Charlotte Kjærvik

May Alta - at this point, most well-documented Europeans from 1400 and before have been added. If you believe you have more info, it's your job to find the right place in the World Tree and attach new profiles there (with sources!).

You have paid for better search facilities with your Pro membership.
When you find an MP, you also have the name of a curator who can help you figure out if your information is new or not.

Whole duplicate lines of empty profiles like the ones you added up to Fornjot creates nothing but work for others. In the well-built-out part of the tree, the rule needs to be "ask first - add later".

May Alta I think you shoul again read what I wrote to you here: https://www.geni.com/discussions/156607?msg=1087853

You don't need to add profiles to Geni that is already there, that is needless work since you already have full access to those profiles. Yes, you can and should merge profiles that are of the same person, but it is not smart to add a profile to Geni just so you can merge it with one that is there. There is no point in doing that and will only make other users irritated at you because of your actions (as you are seeing now).

Other peoples internet sites with genealogical information are terrible to use as sources. They are notorius at how much wrong there are in them. I will advice to stay far away from those. Most of them don't even have information of which sources they used to find the information they have collected.

So what you should do is to add persons that don't exist on Geni at all, which usually means persons living the last 200 years. From 1800 and up till today. And allways search for the persons before adding them, with different possible spellings, you can also use Google to do that, often you will get google-hits on profiles on Geni. When you find a person that already exists on Geni, you stop your adding, and just connect your last profile (who probably is a son/daughter, wife/husband, father/mother) to the existing profile on Geni. Do not add anything more, you will after connecting them have full access to that line further back in time.

Empty profiles (no name) should really not be needed to add at all, and will only make a mess in our common tree.

If you are wondering about if you should do something, then just send one of us Norwegian curatos a Message explaining what you would like to do, and we can tell you if you should do it or not, and how to it without making a lot of work for other users on Geni. Remember, if one of us makes something different in our common historical tree (before year 1600) than what is already there, like adding a wife to a person living 1000 years ago, it will impact several thousand user's ancestral trees and can make their tree wrong. They will not like that.

May Alta , I see you have added 31 new profiles to the tree today, some going back to the 1600's. I'm happy to see that you aren't going back as far as you were earlier.

You might have noticed that several of your newly added profiles already exist on Geni, so there was no need for you to add them again. It would be good if you searched for those profiles BEFORE you add yours, and connect to them rather than adding duplicates. Duplicates only add to the work others have to do to clean up the tree, so it is unkind of you to add them when it is not necessary.

I also noticed that you haven't added sources to the new profiles. Though this is a common occurrence on Geni, it would be good training for you to look carefully at your sources and only add the profiles if you have more to back them up than the information you find on other internet genealogy sites. Now that you have upset so many people with your previous additions, you will undoubtedly be scrutinized. So be a responsible Geni Pro, take the advice you have previously been given, and make life more pleasant for all of us including you.

I've got the message and I'm now working on closer relatives using smart match.

I try to not add profiles older then 1600.

May Alta It doesn't seem to sink in with you!

I have been on Geni since september 2015, 9 months. During this time I have added ca 45 profiles. NEVER USING SMART MATCH!!!

And the merges that I have done is about 8-10. Still my Geni Tree shows almost 6000 people.

Do good and thorough work on your ----CLOSE(!!!!)---- family lines, AND THEN HOOK UP on the World Tree!!

You have been on Geni since the end of April; 1,5 months. In tjis short time, you have added appx 400 profiles to the Geni World Tree. I have NO idea how many merges you have done! But honestly, you seem to be totally out of control!!

Maybe you need to work on a privat tree, on web sites like myheritage.
Or maybe you need to get another hobby!!

Cuz right now you are spitting on the world tree that we all own together!!

The advice I originally had for you, boils down to two words:
Caution and responibility.

I will add one more: NEVER USE SMART MATCH!

Unless you follow the advice, your actions on Geni will not be popular. And you will CONTINUE to make a lot of people angry and upset.

I'm learning quickly. 1. I've stopped adding people from before 1600. 2. I stopped merging profiles from before 1600. I thought smart match was an instrument to find more about relatives from after 1600. If it's so that one can not use smart matches I wonder what CAN I do in here.

The most useful and important thing you can do, while you are getting familiar with Geni, is to add in your very near relatives. Your cousins, and their cousins, and all the parents and grandparents, till you can hook those lines up into the World Tree.

AND! Put in the sources, any real sources you have. Not the web trees; those aren't real sources. The censuses, the birth certificates, the death certificates. Newspaper articles.

That's what the tree needs.

Once you are used to this, you can help clean up the World Tree. Lots of Pro users do that. I did, before I became a curator. I specialized in helping clean up the Welsh medieval tree. And, more closer to our time, the East Texas pieces of the trees. I added in profiles, I added in sources, I connected people.

There is a LOT to do here. I can spend hours every day on it.

It's a matter of starting close to home, and getting used to the processes and the culture.

As a Pro, you can also be very helpful by going to the public discussions and helping to answer questions when you can.

We all work together in this.

In the Scandinavian tree I'm currently following, May Alta has given some profiles new parents. I'd like to know the correct relationships if anyone can provide this information. These are the changes I'm concerned about:

Roar / Roas / Ro / Hroar (Hrothgar) Halvdanssøn, King of Roeskilde's parents were changed to Halfdan the Tall Frodasson, King of the Danes, and Sigrid Aunsdotter, Queen of Denmark by May Alta Wed at 12:50 pm

Frodi "the Valiant / frøkne" Fridleifsson, King of Denmark's parents were changed to Fridleif III Frodasson, King of Danes and Hraerek "Hnauggvanbaug" Ingjaldsson by May Alta. Wed at 12:55 PM

Halfdan the Tall Frodasson, King of the Danes,'s parents were changed to Frodi "the Valiant / frøkne" Fridleifsson, King of Denmark and Hilda Hildericsdottir by May Alta. Wed at 12:50 PM

These profiles date in the 400's to 500's
Thank you

Abbie, she just chose the parents that were there before a parentconflict that happened with a merge. There really hasn't been any change of parents.

You can see that for yourself if you just follow the history of the changes.

Thank you. Just wanted to be sure I understood it correctly. Glad it's OK as it is.

Here is another new example of what's happen when people just act,
4 parents and a new set of line that goes beyond 500 BC, what an effort!

Hildegard von Westerburg

Then Ulf, instead of complaining, why don't you try to do something about it. You can send a message to both tha danish person that did the merger and the Dutch person that is the profileowner, and ask them about their sources for the information, and then together you can fix the problem, instead of leaving the fixing to other people.

Get in a dialogue with them, be polite about it and get a solution.

Yes, and if YOU Remi had followed me, you would already have noticed the great amount of problems that I ask curators to fix, or you had noticed the great amount of profiles that I have corrected, actually, you have not a clue of how many errors I have fixed, or do you?

Slow Down.

I just sent a Message to the managers of the Hildegard von Westerburg profile and asked them for correction. Let's see what happend before we do any action on this branch of the tree.

Smart match is a very nice tool for finding *possible* matches.
Then one has to look at the profiles very carefully to figure out if they're a match or not.

I think I accept approx 30% of the smart matches that the system suggests - if the parents, children, spouses and birth dates are all given and exactly the same, and fit with other sources, it's clearly a correct match - if one Anne Torsteinsdotter is the daughter of Torstein Hansson and the other is of Torstein Olavsson, it's not a match and the algorithm has been fooled by the Norwegian naming traditions.

I've merged thousands of matches. I've had to revert a few, but most of them have been "no problem".