smart copy and duplicates

Doing what?

The difference between geni and the majority of the other online platforms is that geni tries to encourage collaboration.

This means you could have third, fourth or even tenth cousins, as well as many people who are not directly related, but might be separated by a few marriages (at many weddings I hear the parents of the couple welcome each other into their families) making changes to the tree or forest.

So, first you should ensure that all the profiles that you had placed are documented. Sometimes this can be "known in oral family history". Also have an open mind. There are plenty of "buba maasehs" (grandma tales) around. For example my grandmother told me that my family name ZIANTS was originally ZENETSKI and therefore I did see much point in exploring the ZIANTS family. No doubt that the name change was told to her by her mother-in-law but it turned out that it was just a standard name change when marrying. There were other complexities in the family that I did not know from my grandmother.

So even if known in family, good to include a paper trail. I know my date of birth but also quoted the insert my parents put in a newspaper.

If you feel someone made a wrong merge, then you should point it out by sending PM through geni explaining why and where your information is from. This might lead to some discussion but keep an open mind.

David Ziants

I see that you are connected to a WOLF family, which very much could be the Jewish WOLF family who have an in-law relationship with my family (maybe two levels of marriage). This might be determined if the profiles of the generations who are no longer with us, are made public.

I know how Christina feels about her tree. Before there was Geni, a Dutch retired doctor assiduously added neatly 20,000 relatives on Ancestry, from Stamboom and with references. That tree has more than doubled. I connected my Australian tree to it and the site jumped by a few hundred more people.
On Geni I check in every so often and if i see confusing duplicates then i ask people who are currently working on it to tidy it up.

@Private User

Since you messaged me and then blocked me while I was asleep, 12:11 am and then 12:15 am I could not answer your emails. The only reason that I went back and added the people you are talking about is because you deleted the profiles that were already there,
Dieuwerke / Dora Pieters Battema
Anje Edzes van der Weg
Pieter Reinjes Battema
instead of merging them, and then added the same exact information back. I went back to check the work that I had done when I originally added the profiles to see if I made a mistake and found out that they were correct. I just expanded the family out since they were related to me. I try to document why a profile is added and when I first started, documentation was added under the media section. This is not the first time that the work I have done has been deleted and re-entered or just disconnected from my family tree. I didn't know that you were adding them back when I entered the profiles that I did.

Hi all,
I am not really sure what has been happening as I think perhaps some messages have been deleted.

Geni is a collaborative genealogy website and we need to try to work together to get a comprehensive world tree. A few things to be mindful of is
* everyone should be attempting to not create duplicates
* everyone should be merging duplicates when they find them (with the exception of pre 1600 profiles)
* everyone should be trying to fix data conflicts where they can
* no-one should be deleting profiles that are managed by other users

If any of your profiles have been deleted by another user rather than recreating it, you can undelete them by going to the https://www.geni.com/list/deleted.

If you think that someone is doing the wrong thing you should firstly politely ask them not to do it and second you can report them to Geni via Actions / Report.

Thanks
Leanne

Leanne - that is very sound advice.

I am concerned to see three profiles listed above as having been deleted, these being
Dietje Pieters Battema
Anje Edzes van der Weg
Pieter Reinjes Battema

I suggest perhaps "undeleting" them so that an assessment can be done as to how best to handle them.

Hi Private User,
I have undeleted Dieuwerke / Dora Pieters Battema

It was
* created on 18/4/2012 by Private User
* merged twice on Thursday
then deleted

I will reverse as many deletes as I can locate. I will also ask Geni to review all the deletions.

There are also many disconnections that will need to be readded. I will see what I can do.

I have undeleted Anje Edzes van der Weg
It was
* created on 16/11/2018 by Private User
* merged on Thursday
then deleted.

Thank you Leanne. Undeleting gives us a good opportunity to see properly what belongs where, while working together collaboratively.

Please all - no further deletion of profiles managed by others, or deletion of relationships, unless there is strong consensus to do so.

Thank you all for your help.

It looks like Pieter Reinjes Battema also needs undeleting (profile number 6000000084013363913)

Hubert de Vos, I undeleted Pieter Reinjes Battema for you. I put a relationship lock on the profile for now, because I want to do some research on the profile.

I did some cleaning up in that part of the tree, but it needs more work of the profile managers. Please remember that for a Dutch marriage the woman keeps her own last name (the last name of the husband can be added to the also known as field and/or the display name)

Private User, please remember that on Geni it is OUR tree not MY tree if you are connected to the Big Tree.

When a profile has multiple managers you should never delete such a profile without the consent of all the managers!

Also when you think the profile has wrong information in the profile or has wrong connections please add sources!
Try not to make changes without hearing from the other managers first
Be extra careful when your source is not a primary source for all the information you want to change or is open to interpretation (an internet tree is NOT a primary source!).

Sorry Private User, that was not only for you, but for all other users reading this.

Yes, I saw and corrected a few. You could try to collaborate with that user an see if that user will correct the names. I will sent that user a message asking to change the registration for those names.

There are still a few more deletes that I need to review but the system wasn’t letting me yesterday

It is great to see so many people now working collaboratively here on this section of the World Family Tree.

I echo the comments of others - work collaboratively, communicate well, document sources, be gentle with each other, and understand the value of primary sources.

The following is general advice to all readers of this thread, and Geni users at large. Anyone reading this - please feel free to copy it to other threads if you think appropriate.

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In order to understand what is and is not allowed on Geni it is worth reviewing the terms of use from time to time, because we are all bound by those terms of use.

See https://www.geni.com/company/terms_of_use

There is a link at the bottom of each page on Geni.

Quote: "... you agree that you will not delete Content in the Shared Family Tree except to correct inaccurate or offensive data. Willful destruction of Content in a Shared Family Tree without Geni's written permission is a breach of this Agreement and grounds for termination of your Member account."

to the person that started this thread about multiple duplicates, I would say to date that you have created and merged between 30,000 to 50,000 of duplicates that I have added. Some people shouldn't have access to smart copy or the function should be limited to only adding a single person at a time. Maybe you should work on cleaning up all the profiles that you have out there with no information, or all the merge conflicts that you merged multiple times and are manager of. It's a shame that people spend time researching the information and not relying on smart copy, just to have someone create duplicates just to gain management of the profile. Which GENI has a policy about, but apparently you don't have to follow the rules.

Belinda. Please read your last entry.

Out of interest, I discovered that you have added 279 035 profiles, and checking your activity shows that many of the duplicates merged by yourself were both created by yourself.

most of the time the merges appear after the parents are added to the person, if you can tell me how to attach the child when in 2 different areas I would appreciate it.

Job Waterreus

when working on a family group and you add a spouse, when parents are added it will sometimes show as a match for the parents but not the child. How do you drag and drop from 2 different areas. I just did a merge on

Louise Konradine Veldkamp but there is another merge that can be done and it is not showing as a merge but can be merged.

Louise Konradine Veldkamp

the only way that I know how to complete the merge is to merge from the drop down box.

A lot of times, when adding parents to a child the parents do not come up as a match, the following profile is an example.

Job Waterreus

as soon as I added a date of birth to this profile it showed up as a match

Jan Bulthuis

forgot link