Geni consistency & plausibility checker

Dan is correct on "McGowan (huntington)". Version 4.1.9 will not fix that one. That's a improper field assignment issue.

Thanks for all your hard work Jeff. You have made finding and fixing mistakes so much easier.

Jeff,

There seems to be a problem with checking dates. I use the format dd-mm-yyyy
and get a warning for profile 6000000059255200387: Birth date of Johannes Petrus Bol is after his death date. The dates are birth:20/6/1822 and death: 3/7/1822

This could be a mix up of day and month. If so I suppose that if possible you should get the date preference (MM/DD/YYYY, DD/MM/YYYY or YYYY/MM/DD). If not see if you get a month above 12 and if so swith to the other format [would not be full proof, but will help some]) Or better: see if the API can get you one standard format, so you won't have to figure it out yourself.

I get a another similar error: Jannetje Pieterse Bol (6000000059114175091) born after the death of her mother Marijtje Cornelisdr Heinsbroek (6000000017885817294)
born date: 24/9/1786 death date: 20/10/1786
(both problems with version 4.1.9).

Mary Ann (Thurston) Eaton [Free Settler "Providence" 1822]
died 30 April 1878 buried 1 May 1878

brings up the warning Death date of Mary Ann (Thurston) Eaton [Free Settler "Providence" 1822] is after her burial date.

Job Waterreus, I don't parse the date. Geni gives it to me as specific fields, so there is no interpretation on SmartCopy's part. The date parts get added to Javascript's date as day, month, year, which it converts to a unix date (integer). The integer is then compared as being greater or less than. Oddly, I don't get the warnings you describe or the one that Leanne M (Volunteer Curator - Australia) - on walkabout🇦🇺 sees. Do you still get them?

Private User I think I"m getting something similar to a couple others above. It says: Death date of Catherine T. Meuris (Hackett) is after her burial date

Catherine T. Meuris

Death is 9/30/2012
Burial is 10/4/2012

re: Dates

I've had a couple of times where the date as stored 'swapped' the month & day, or even the year was stored in the day field.

I've found that in some cases I simply "pseudo-edit" the field (e.g. delete a character and re-type it" and 'Save'. While it still looks the same on the screen as it did before, that seems to force the proper parts of the date into the proper locations, and the consistency checker is then happy.

However, this 'trick' did not "fix" Leanne's example of Mary Ann Thurston (I do get the warning). I even added one day to the burial date, and still got the warning. (I did set the date back...).

This has got to be one of the weirdest bugs I've seen and actually seems to be in Javascript's Date function. It has to do with the current date, which is why it failed to work for me on Job and Leanne's issue. When I tested it, my current day was May 30th. On May 31st, the bug surfaced. Apparently, if the month of the date you create, for example September 1972, only has 30 days in it, then the Javascript date function changes your month to October, even when you specifically tell it September.

This happens if you set the year, month, day. However, I found that if you change the order and set the year, day, month, it works correctly. WTF?! Patch coming soon.. though if you made it to the 1st of June, you shouldn't see the warning any more.

If you're interested in seeing the bug in action, here is a jsfiddle. https://jsfiddle.net/ngp3L8so/1/ (note that the date uses a 0-11 month range, so don't get confused by that)

This great feature has helped me to discover many speculative birth dates and relations!

A question: How many generations does this tool check simultaneously in different views?

'''Suggestions for extended features''':
1. It should be easier to systematically search for warnings. For example by compiling a longer list of warnings for all profiles in the "Revisions for profiles you follow" list. Or for all profiles in the list of matches (the merge center). Or for all profiles in my SmartCopy log. Or for all profiles in the list of descendants.

2. I would like to see some of these warnings before i make the SmartCopy import, not only after. That would have saved me from a lot of work reverting imports from bad MyHeritage trees - and from criticism by other Geni users.

3. Geni.com should provide these kind of warnings to all Geni users as a server-side feature - meaning not only for those who have installed SmartCopy.

'''Some bug reports''':
- The warning "Death date of ... is after his burial date" often appears incorrectly. Example: Sten Lindquist and Mariann Lovise Eriksson
- The check that siblings birth are over x months apart should not look at adoptive children and foster children.
- The check that siblings birth are over x months apart warns incorrectly if only the year is provided for one of them. I think it assumes that they are born 1 july in that case.
- The check that Born after parent death may warn incorrectly if the father died less than 9 months before child is born.

Magnus, it only does one generation. If you want to search your entire tree, then I suggest exporting the GEDCOM and importing it into a family tree tool like MyHeritage Family Tree Builder.

For the bug reports.
* "Death date of ... is after his burial date" fixed in 4.1.10 (see above from today).
* Will fix the sibling check to exclude adoption & foster in next version
* "The check that siblings birth are over x months apart warns incorrectly if only the year is provided for one of them." - This should have been fixed in 4.1.9
* The check that Born after parent death may warn incorrectly if the father died less than 9 months before child is born." - This should not be a problem as I already account for the pregnancy range for a father - can you provide an example.

Jeff,

It is still may here and I still see the warnings. It will be 1 June in a couple of hours so I expect them to disappear then. It seems I was lucky in catching this.
Does Geni do any similar date calculations? If so they may have a problem as well.

Update: With the 4.1.10 version I do not get the warnings anymore.

Jeff,

Could SmartCopy Consistency checks be responsible for the 504 errors on Geni?
I getting them more and more frequently.
I asked almost the same question on https://www.geni.com/discussions/145968, but it seems the consistency check could generate some extra load.

No, it is the result of Geni doing some work on the back end.

I had consistency check off for a few hours. It just started to run even though it is turned-off. I verified that it is turned-off. I also turned it on and then back off but it continues to run.

Thanks Jim, looks like I accidentally broke it a few versions ago. It will be fixed in the next release.

I have a suggestion if it could be implemented. It would be nice if there was a way to tie children to both birth parents and adoptive parents without duplicating under both. For example, my sister-in-law adopted 4 of my grandkids after they were taken by the state to keep them in the family. Their names were changed in the process. When #5 came along we had moved to the same state and we adopted him after the state took him. We of course changed his name also. The birth parents know (knew?) and gave the court their approval for both adoptions.

In addition. If I want to see my step kids I have to click on the bubble over my wife's head to show her family. That is not right.

Can't change the flash tree.

David Lee Baker,
Geni allows your children to connect to both adoptive parents and biological parents. You can choose which tree of the child you want to view at any given time. You can edit a child's profile and choose parentage type (foster, adopted, biological)

I don't remember if I was able to do it one time or not but I know I had to create the kids under both sets of parents. And if there is a name change involved at addoptionwouldn't that confuse? After all, when adopted they get new birth certificates with the new name.

David Lee Baker,

I've gone ahead and fixed them all up for you.

They all should be connected as siblings of their biological parents and as adoptive children of their adoptive parents.

Kevin

Thank you, That is great. Now about my stepchildren, Is there any way to get them (and I guess their father) to show under my tree also since I also consider them as my children?

Of the ones I have tried, including Ancestry, Geni is the best I have found. I intend to go pro in the future and maybe the software that ties to it for my computer so I can have an offline copy for the future.

David Lee Baker: When there is more than one parent relationship (e.g. a Biological and an adoptive one), you can (for your own account) select which relationship to show in Tree View. Click on the number at the top of the profile's box in Tree View; you will be shown a little "selection" box where you can choose which of the relationships to show in *your* Tree View.

Version 4.2 released. This is primarily an update to the copying side of things and just a few fixes on the consistency checker. The update focus was on performance and backend stability.

The Javascript Date object is widely thought to be a prime example of just how wrong you can go with designing a Javascript API. I'm not surprised it barfs at you.

Yeah, I even had to fix it again in this latest update. My fix for specifying the day before the month had a similar bug side effect. If your current month only has 30 days, and the past date you're specifying has a day 31, it will set the day to 1 instead of 31. Sooo stupid. I ended up specifying the month, then the day, then checking that the month was what I set it to and set it again if not.