Introducing the Geni Consistency Checker

Mike Stangel
another minor issue for your team: Checker considers quite common girl's name 'Regina' to be a suffix and asks to remove it from the name's field

Randel Vuks You made your point very clear and simple, and I couldn't agree more. These checkers do invite users to mess up profiles that others have had great effort making right..!

If any profiles have faulty content, this should be an issue between the administrators of each profile. I have had many interesting discussions with co-administrators regarding the content in many profiles in my three.

Randel Vuks, can you put a link to the profile please

I think Regina should only suggest as a inconsistency if there is more than one value in the first name field ie Regina Rachel in the first name field will bring up an inconsisistency. Regina in the first name field and Rachel in the middle name field should not bring up an inconsistency.

Private User

Yes, that person had several first names.
We don't have the concept of middle name, so generally we do not use the middle name field. Everything that comes before last name is considered to be a given name (or a first name).
Gretchen Anna Regina Auster

And the other Reginas, whose names were kindly asked to remove from the name field had also multiple first/given names.

That explains it. I think Geni expects the first "given name" to be entered into the "first name" field and subsequent "given names" to be entered into the "middle name" field. When it sees a name that could be a title or a suffix (ie General, Sir, Regina etc) then it asks you to check have you entered it correctly.

If you want to keep all the given names in one field then you need to select "ignore" on the inconsistency.

Mike Stangel,

Could these language dependent checks be optional for the default language tab?
That tab is used for multiple languages but the checks are based on English. That may be okay for users using English, but it means too many ignores to be practical for those using other languages.

I still think it would be better to have the possibility to specify which language tab should be the default and have the possibility of a English non default tab. But that would be a mayor change.

I'm afraid changing it to just depend on language is not going to work (at least not to the full extent). Because although we have some more or less predominantly one nation countries, there are still a lot of countries with a variety of different nations living there, like US, Canada, Australia and so on, where the language is English, but the names of the people are based on their national habits, like gender based family names and so on. So, the checker will still consider all those names to have errors.

Randel Vuks,

True, but there they could use middle name. There might still be a number of cases that should be ignored, but much less. So it might not be the best solution but it would help and hopefully could be realized easily.

One of the problems when it comes to language dependent name checking is probably the default name language that geni assigns.

It gives all my Swedish profiles a default language of English, which seems silly.

Kenneth Ekman, what language do you use Geni in?

When looking at https://www.geni.com/home I see it in Swedish.

And now i see that Swedish is also set in Regional Settings in my account.

When you create a new profile does it default the name to Swedish or to English (apologies I would test it but I only speak and read English)

Randel Vuks makes a really good point and it is why my inconsistency issues abound. My mother's whole side is Finnish with a few Swedish lines thrown in and both conventions are used interchangeably for some profiles of even married couples or families as different people have added them and Swedish was the official language for so long. Then there is my father's long line of Welsh/Scots/English/ until we head into Viking territory and some French/German migrations and marriages plus a bit of Iberia.

I am proud of the mix that I am, but it is problematic for setting computerized naming conventions and I am sure others have the same problems. In the words of my late father, "I am not sure that it is fixable unless you just cut it off." It was a good idea, but I am just ignoring it for now as it makes my head spin around. I, for sure, don't want to touch profiles that some have developed who are familiar with the language and customs just to make them fit. I don't think that is a good way to connect with relatives. :-)

It Does always default to english when creating a profile

Here is a related support ticket

https://help.geni.com/hc/en-us/requests/109820

Mike Stangel
Perhaps it is more of the technical problem/malfunction, but as this issue with wrong names has risen most sharply here in this topic, I will cover it here.
I use the English version of geni (as this was the language here when I started and I just haven't changed it to Estonian).
So, when entering a few profiles today, I discovered, that geni has automatically entered other, different family names to these profiles for Estonian version.
Ado Wak / Waks
Ewa Wak / Waks

Both Ado and Ewa have been given 2 different/alternative family names for Estonian version by geni. Their family names (in Estonian version) now stand as "Käis [Wakk]"
* Wakk - no information so far, that this name was ever used in this family;
* Käis - this is the family name, that Ado's son Jaan's wife got from her second marriage after Jaan's death. So, never used in Wak / Waks family.

Come on, we are already struggling with this people adding false names to profiles and now even the system itself is not even just adding inaccurate names which it finds from surrounding profiles, but even generating new names, thinking they should fit more properly?!
This will raise a question, has anyone from geni team themselves ever entered a single profile? You don't make up names by guessing, but you use old church records for that purpose instead.
So everybody, be aware, that system automatically changes the names of the profiles you enter!

The names don't (shouldn't) change, when you switch the language, but should remain the same!
What next?
If you are Fox in English, will you become Fuchs when you switch to German version, o Volpe quando passi alla versione Italiana?

Entering names in different variants per language might be a good idea for kings and some historical figures but I certainly don't want to do it for the generations of my family that I manage.

Kenneth Ekman
Yes, I agree. A lot of kings and rulers and other famous historical figures had their own version in different language.
And even then, it was more about their nicknames (e.g. "the Great", etc., which you translate).
But you don't change the family name of a common man.

Randel Vuks I completely agree.

On the other hand, there has been a (bad) habit historically of using language specific names of rulers, I have noted.

In this way some "king Charles xx" would be called "kung Karl xx" in Swedish.

I think this is a quite bad and confusing habit, but have seen it being done all to often. Some historians might have other opinions...

Which actually proves the original statement again: changes, based on different languages, should made by users, manually, so they will be accurate, based on actual history.
The current situation, where system puts the names for different languages itself automatically (either picking some random name from surrounding profiles or just guessing and making up an imaginary name, which never existed) is not good at all.
I guess normally the main profile should be in language, which was used in the country, where that person lived and other versions of names on nickname field (and under this 'in different language' section/option.
But, to think too much ahead, it might be a bit tricky for persons from countries, where the Latin Alphabet was not used (like Russian Tsars etc.). Although maybe it's technically not so difficult at all. When your language in geni is English, then you see the English name of the profile; when your language is some other, then you see the version in your language (if it has been entered).
But the system should not make up it's own versions of names for other languages. Something has to be let for doing by users!

Agreed.

And if your default language is Swedish it should select your created profile names to Swedish, not English like it currently does.

1) The other day, I accidentally clicked "Mark this profile as deceased" when I meant to click on the Profile to go to it - it was way too way too easy to make a change one did not really want to make using the Consistency Checker, thus emphasizing some points made above

I managed to recall which profile it was and went to it, did some work there - then thought I had not seen any notification before I made those other changes

2) for another, I first made a comment in his mother's profile that I was changing him to deceased thru Consistency Checker, and did so -- Wanted to see if notifications were sent when update was made solely thru the Consistency Checker -- got no notification about the change thru Consistency, nor about the change to his mother's about
-- -- -- Could others please watch to make sure the notifications are being sent for changes made that way - and please note that if the system is not sending notifications of changes to profiles (on that day, it missed notifications of both types of changes!!) this poses a major problem to keeping profile information correct

Could someone explain why this generates https://www.geni.com/inconsistencies/for_profile/6000000006444589314 generates an inconsistency?

All I see it doing is differentiating between two people with an otherwise identical name just as I, II or Sr or Jr. does.

Curiously, further down in the same branch is John Fortescue which uses the suffix field in what appears to me to be exactly the same way without invoking an inconsistency?!

Two possible reasons
1. The inconsistency may not have been run on the profile yet
2. The inconsistency has been set to ignore for all

“Of Preston” is not a standard suffix, whereas Jnr, Snr is.
Ie it has not been added to the list of standard suffixes.

If appropriate use of suffix, then it needs to be ignored for all. (If merged it may be unignored)
Alternatively curate it and move it to the display name.

Checker considers it to be an error, when man's profile does not have maiden name (birth name). And once that profile has a maiden name, then it's OK for the checker. But for the rest of us, this is not correct.
Whatever alternative name shapes you find, you add them to the nicknames field, not to the maiden name (birth name) field.
So, it makes me ask, which are the countries, where men have (or had in the past) maiden names? If there is any at all.
Because it seems, the checker thinks, that men have/had maiden names in every country.

Randel Vuks,

The field was maiden name before, but changed to surname at birth around 2011 and is used for both sexes. The last name is used for the latest value of last name and if there was no name change should be the same as the surname at birth.
That is the way for the current standard.
It should be translated in all languages according to this and never use maiden name or translation thereof.
The surname at birth is also the field that will be exported as last name when doing at GEDCOM export. If you leave the field empty you will get a lot of no name profiles in the export.

I agree most (if not all) language dependent checks need work, because they do not function correctly for other languages than English and may lead to users making changes to the tree that are wrong and are very irritating to many users.
I hope Geni will make some adjustments to them.