How can we stop people from adding so many duplicates to the tree?

Bjart,
You are not alone :)

Report them in this thread:

https://www.geni.com/discussions/158450

Because of this problem it is SO IMPORTANT that every new user will instantly be invited to one of the International portals of his/her country/language and he/she can start reading there what kind of a platform they just entered...

I from my side always invite people of whom I think they can speak, read or write my mother&father-tongue = Dutch / Deutsch to the PORTAAL voor Nederlandstaligen e/o the INTERNATIONAL Dutch Portal. Hope that different users/curatores will provide enough portals e/o entries to this not so easy workfield, so everone on this big globe can co-operate & col-laborate the way he/she prefers.

Jeanette, there is currently a drive underway by Geni to make sure that every single user is introduced to the Portal of their nation, this should then raise peoples awareness of the portals' existence and encourage them too check out the portals of other nations which their ancestors may come from.

It should be OK for a new member to add up to say 5-6 generations back in time up to 140 years ago. However when adding profiles earlier than this or even historical profiles, it should be recommended or even better required technically from the geni database input scheme that at least ONE reliable source be added or that the about sector contains at least 6 lines of source information text.

https://www.geni.com/people/Håkon/6000000017250659244

Why not use the MEDIA-tab under DOCUMENTS to add reliable INTERNET-links etcetera? I personnally do not like all those internet-links under the OVERVIEW-tab, I think that place is for direct ancestors to be able to give some oral history in written form for other readers to be informed and ...
Also links to WikiPedia-pages, often made with a lot of effort of WP-managers & writers, are best to be placed under MEDIA-DOCUMENTS for in that case it is also possible to link more than ONE profile to the spot AND you can link to GENI-project-pages too.

And there is ofcourse a SPECIAL TAB named SOURCES to add more sources to the profile too...

Håkon, wouldn't that just improve the quality of the duplicates? :)

I do agree the input scheme needs improvement and have made several suggestions as to how.

That suggestion wouldn't be good at all, better to start with a good information with a set of rules and behavior on Geni, something every new user must read through and accept before they can add any other profile, maybe then we finally could be rid of the ones that start with a straight single parental line, with a minimum of 30 empty profiles that goes back a thousand years, nearly impossible to merge in afterwards due to several misplacement and other chronological errors, all just because they gathered their info from the backside of a cornflakes package.

Good evening Jeanette, Alex and Ulf: Thank you; you are all right. Of course the appropriate behaviour through training (in associaton to Freiherr von Knigge and his behaviour rules) is the best solution. Bad geni profiles (like war) can never be completely prevented by pure technical means (like weapons) but must finally be solved by appropriate training of the geni members (like cease fire agreements). However in one particular way technical means as suggested might help: If one is heavily hindered and delayed in time from generating historic profiles simply by the sourcing and documentation requirement.

Ulf, there is an explicit list of rules for Geni users to abide by im the Terms and Conditions, how many users do you think have read it?

"something every new user must read through and accept before they can add any other profile"

re: "something every new user must read through and accept before they can add any other profile"

Perhaps time- related. Before 1600?

A "warning sign" everytime you add a profile with birth before 1600 would be a great idea. Or even better: make it impossible for new users or non-curators to add profiles with birth before 1600.

https://www.geni.com/people/Ruben-Eugèn-Mentzoni/6000000043129840119 At the time they asked me to become a curator I had my own reasons to stay independant and I still prefer that position. But does that mean that I am not able to add profiles before 1600? See my profile, I am one of the TopTenList holders...

As a curator I wouldn't want to be a data entry person. :). One of the issues is not searching for the Master Profile and "hooking on" to the existing tree. And there certainly are before 1600 persons not on geni. However, we did get all royalty (etc) years ago, and the duplicate / merge method degrades the tree as well as being a time waster, if it's beyond a single pair of people.

Perhaps "another pair of eyes" to validate acceptance into the database, but I don't see why that would need to be a curator, just someone knowledgeable & experienced.

I hope it would help if a new user got a mail with some basic information about Geni like an good explanation on the tree view page with all symbols and colors explained and a set of links to good starting pages with information on Geni (it would be best if it could be language/region specific and in the primary language of the user)

There should a least be some explanation about private trees and the big tree and why one should not add duplicate profiles to that tree and why one should use naming conventions.

Important is also to explain how to avoid adding duplicates, how to get help in merging when one has made a duplicate and how to solve tree conflict, check for data conflicts and solve them (or get help for that) or get help for other problems like zombies or users that do not react to a request..

Starting on Geni to work together with people you do not know is hard when you just started using Geni and are used to "own" your tree and not to had to bother with other people or conventions before.

I think Job's idea has the most merit but Geni needs to balance instructing a new user without overwhelming them and scaring off a potential new customer.

Jeanette and Erika - yes, it might be a bad idea to only let curators edit the medieval tree. In Wikipedia they have something called "auto-confirmed" users, as a level for trusted users between new users and administrators. Those users can edit semi-protected profiles. Maybe we should implement this in Geni, and semi-protect all of the medieval tree so that only trusted users and curators can edit?

Yes, ideas like that have been suggested. Job's suggestion is less reliant on geni development, perhaps, and we have good starts to the tutorials, and in steps depending on level of depth one wants or needs.

The key is reaching new members when they are venturing forward. The international portals where to catch them?

I would very much like Geni to add a possibility to add the languages a user can read to their profile. That would make communication easier. I have some discussions in English with Dutch users before we discover we both can use Dutch.

Geni would know about new users. It would be nice if they could produce a list from time to time. Some data on the activity of that users (like what is shown on the activity tab) would then also be welcome. If a user one logged on once and then added only a few profiles there is a good change that without some help that user would leave Geni again. the help for a user like that should probably be different then for a user that uses Geni more frequently.

Would something like a pool of users who would be willing to assist new users be feasible? May be linked to a project?

A help-group as you describe would probably be best organised via the Country Portal as that would allow help to be offered in the users native language.

Obviously coaching new members is expected of Curators but there is no reason people like you and the others in this discussion should not also help them.

I am not sure about value of listing languages you can read on your profile, actually i am fairly certain you can already do that, as the new user has to have enough knowledge to go to your profile page and check to see if you speak there language, it just seems inefficient/impractical.

It is not obvious but as curators we can look at a claimed user profile and tell if that user has only ever logged in once, Geni should be able to filter that info from the database and target those individuals with an email of hints, tips and invitations. Having said that when I Invite members of my immediate family to join i get complaints about the level of "spam" that Geni sends out. This may just be my hypersensitive relatives tho? :)

Alex,

I think the default e-mail settings are a major reason new users leave Geni and potential new users (invited people) do not join Geni. Information about the mail settings should be something that is included in the welcome mail.
It would be useful if Geni looked critical at the mail content, frequency the and the settings to control them. Each mail should have some information (link) on instructions about how to change the frequency (or stop) that kind of e-mail.
If there are settings that can influence the content of those mails then those should be mentioned as well.
It would be even nicer if there was a profile page where you could see an example mail depending on your settings, so you could fine-tune the information and frequency of the mails you get from Geni (and the language if multi-language mails are available).

Job,
I completely agree. It was a long time ago but i think one of the first things i did on Geni was disable as many of the email settings as I possibly could.

There is an Unsubscribe button at the bottom of Geni emails but i think it should be more prominent and take the user straight to their Account Settings - Notifications page rather than the slightly round about way that the system seems to be currently set up.