Hi everyone,
When we introduced projects many years ago, we intentionally left their usage vague because we knew our creative users would come up with so many unique and wonderful ways to use them. And we weren't wrong; the projects you all have created have been beyond our wildest dreams and have become one of Geni's crown jewels.
Unfortunately we've had a couple of cases recently where we have felt the need to delete "vanity" projects on Geni -- things like "Mike's Famous Ancestors" or whatever. It's hard to point at anything specific in our Terms of Use or project creation instructions for why these should not be on Geni, but when thinking about the system as a whole it becomes obvious that we cannot support having millions (or even tens of thousands) of users creating projects each to their own specific genealogy or circumstance. They are not of general interest, a large number of them would overwhelm the system (particularly where we list projects on public profile pages; can you imaging Charlemagne?!) and they dilute the pool of projects that have broader interest.
So far the number of vanity projects have remained small, which is why many users don't see the problem; but as administrators of the system we recognize that if we can't allow tens of thousands of users to do it, then we shouldn't allow a handful of "first creators" to do it, either. For this reason, we must insist that our users please do not create vanity projects that are focused on a single user's genealogy and/or lack broader applicability or interest. And I'm sorry but we must continue to delete such projects as they become known to us.
Kind regards,
Mike at Geni
