Can I have your help with my merges??

Good point about orphaned profiles. Luckily, you can still find them after being orphaned by using a "All of Geni" search.

Anne Marit Grønvik: Your computer is saving a "cookie" that automatically logs into Geni (and/or Facebook) using your account. To prevent this, make sure that you manually log off from Geni and Facebook before letting someone else use your computer. Just turning your computer off isn't the same as manually logging off.

Better yet, create a Guest account on your computer and make your visitors use that.

Okay, okay, I finally sympathize with all you guys asking for help with mergers. I thought I had everything cleaned up yesterday (I had a God-awful ten mergers to deal with) and log on today to find that I now have 5064 mergers!! Where the hell did they come from?

Hi David Kaleita. Thank You very much for useful information. By the way, I find out that You are my 23rd cousin four times removed. Funny :-) I would never have found out withour "Geni". Thats a mathematical challenge.....

@Private User :

I suspect you are seeing the merge issues of your collaborators, and not just your own.

Goto your merge issues [http://www.geni.com/list/merge_issues ]... select "Show advanced controls" at the top of the list (right next to "Janice Weeks Hollenczer's Merge Issues").

UNCHECK the box next to "Include Collaborators". This should greatly reduce the number of merge issues you see.

Jason P Herbert

@David, thanks for the advice on how to manage the splitting the tree warnings. So many of my near ancestors were merged by someone that didn't notice the different dates and merged parents with children etc. (and I added to the mess myself out of sheer frustration!). Will go in now and try to fix.
Thanks again!

David(s): Thanks for the tips. I will look into it, but I'm not sure I'm able to solve the problem alone, as there are many profiles involved that I'm not a manager or collaborator on, and they're all tangled with mine. I send collaboration requests as needed, but there are some people who never respond, and I don't know how to get rid of their profiles.

Also, I mentioned this before: why are there "locked" profiles (in gray) in my tree that can't be merged? If a person wants to keep those profiles to themselves, why are they in someone else's tree? Is there some way of keeping people from inserting their private profiles into my tree?

The gray are set to "living". I doubt that it has to do with someone wanting to keep the profile private.

The person probably adding the profile via "add family" and forgot to change the status to deceased. When the manager of the profile views the tree, he doesn't see the "gray". Unless he is "computer suavy", he/she may not realize that the profile is locked.

@Victor I empathize with you. I have over 19 thousand merges. There is no way I can deal with that!

@Sally Thomas :

Please follow the advice I gave to Victor, and Janice, and others.

I guarantee you do not have 19 thousand merge issues, and following my directions will prove it.

Jason P Herbert

Thank you much, Jason. That did work. Now it says my collaborators have 5064 merges!!

The greyed-out profiles with the little padlocks on them could also be profiles that are managed by someone who has their permission and privacy setting set very high (restrictive). I'm afraid there isn't much you can do about those unless you can contact the profile manager and convince them to change their settings.

David K: Yes, I understand that. My question is, Why, if they want that much privacy, are their profiles in MY tree? If they want a private tree, fine. But why should they clutter my tree with duplicates that can't be merged? I ought to have the right to delete them from my tree without affecting their tree. Private should mean separate. (Nor do I understand why people dead for a century or more need "privacy.")

Martin, do you realize that the concept of "your" tree is a relative thing? A profile that appears grey/padlocked to you may be completely viewable, mergeable and editable by one or more of your other family members or collaborators. It all depends upon whether the manager of the grey/padlocked profile has agreed to add anyone to their Family Group, and whether they have adopted less restrictive privacy settings for collaborators and family members than they have for strangers.

Please note that gray or inaccessible profiles in the tree might also be abandoned profiles without a manager and you can be the manager of these automatically by requesting it.

To check if it is an abandoned profile you can check it and access the profiles via family list or similar on a nearby profile you have access to.

Happy profile hunting!

I was just wondering if anyone else was banging their head against the wall due to gray profiles. I'm confused as to how one of my direct ancestors, who I added to the tree, became gray due to a merge and was locked down from me. Shouldn't I have been a manager by default?

I also REALLY don't understand how someone born a thousand years ago can be private. And I have no idea what this does to the tree itself. If there's a grayed out profile of one parent and not another, is it appropriate to re-add the other parent and then break the family ties to the gray one, leaving them an orphan, or is that just adding more confusion?

Faith :
i was banging my head big time,and stil does.

1 solution for you,and that most people will axept is a friend request.
this make the gray profiles open again,so you can kill them once and for all.

yesterday,i sent all my collaborators a friend request to solve this.
the sad bit,is that you have to send to one at the time :-(

every one on geni,that collaborats,will get some out of it some way.
so if you do not have to many collaborators,i would say go for it.

David :
even tho your message is to Marty,i still got to answer.

some of the gray profiles,are managed by people that do not want to collaborate unless them self get som out of it.

there is 3 people here on geni,that complitly refuse to collaborate with me and others.
even tho we have hundreds of simulare profiles.
once in awhile,they send me merge requests,just for a single profile or two.
witch i axept,a bit just to test if they have change there mind.
but no.
so one of them,is now on my block list.
2 more wery close.

they want a private tree,but jumps for profiles that gain them self.

This gets crazier by the day. I am getting very disappointed with Geni. They need to come up with a solution fast!

@faith I too am very frustrated with the greyed and locked profiles... and so many of them are with collaborators. I went into one line to add more info and found out that it had been changed to a locked profile... It was rather upsetting for me, to say the least... I am just not merging anymore with people who have done this, and I am separating them from my profiles... I have had enough with this type of behaviour... and why when you do a merge does a list come up of others that should be merged when they cannot be merged due to lock outs?

Faith: The problem is you CAN'T delete the grays from your own tree! If you add another spouse, the duplicate remains. So many of my ancestors now have 4,5,6,7, even 8(!) spouse lines running off into infinity that it's almost impossible to make sense of the tree. I've merged the ones I'm able to, and sent requests on the ones that accept requests, but that's all I can do.

As Martin alluded to, I began refusing all new collaboration requests for a few weeks, hoping that I could somehow simplify my tree again and get back to just my own entries. But it's hopeless--so I now collaborate with everyone I can, so at least I can fix problems that some of them have created for me.

Like Edward says, Geni needs to come up with a solution. I was going to become a Pro member, but not until they fix this. i'm not going to pay for something I may have to abandon.

Agreed. Though the locked profiles show up so sporadically, that one can't know if a merge will include them.
For all of us that are trying to repair this huge tree, it would be nice if Geni was on our side. I would rather be adding to my tree, not spending 99% of my time fixing merges.

@Margaret I agree whole heartedly!

About the zombie problem: I posted a number of suggestions (Urgent changes needed) in this Forum thread: http://forum.geni.com/topic.php?id=62941
Please comment if you have opinions or better suggestions. We all want the current problems solved.

One of the things I have noticed and learned since I became a member last Sept is:

Never invite all of your relatives to the tree and the ones you do invite.. make it known to them that you want to be put on as manager and collaborator of there profile. This will help later no when their excitement runs out. (I wish I did this up front to everyone I invited from my own family)

Keep in mind, those of us who do start a tree have more passion for this than the ones we sometimes invite.

For those who want to collaborate and only give up portions of there tree, well... I have a few choice words I'll keep to myself.

Learning as I go!

I am also fed up with trying to fix merge problems, and not being able to add to my tree. What a friggin mess this has turned into! I have also run into 3 people who have locked me out of my direct ancestors, and I am getting pretty pi**ed off at them, and GENI, for allowing this to happen. Especially with people who have been DEAD for hundreds of years!

Their are some in this completed merge that refuse to collaborate so I am unable to correct the parentage. His father is Cornelius I not Matthew. Can anyone in this merge help with this?
Thanks in advance.

Capt. Cornelius Howard, Jr.

@Margaret I was able to resolve the parents to Cornelius and Elizabeth Sisson Todd. It appears that two generations (perhaps two Corneliuses from differing branches) were merged, as various of the children have birth dates a generation apart. You'll have to research that. Also, Cornelius I and Elizabeth have their own merge problems, as well. If you need more help with completing (or undoing) merges, let me know. If I'm able, I'll do it.

@Margaret Verner
Bjørn P. Brox is one of the managers of that profile. He seems to be most helpful. He is in the list of participants for this forum. Try contacting him for help.

Thanks Marty, There are many valid theories about who Matthew Howard's parents are, though I lean towards John. There is a reference to his son John, the name sake of Matthew's father. I would love to see geni allow multiple parents without screwing up the tree just for cleanliness sake