Do anybody collaborate with:

Do anyone know why: http://www.geni.com/people/Max-B%C3%A9gon-Lours/6000000006918924055
has blocked us all out??

Hello and a pleasant day to you,
My name has come up in this discussion so I feel I should respond. It was posted on 05/28/10 that I was possibly another noncooperative manager. I am indeed a manager of the profiles that I spent hours/days etc. inputting from other sources. Granted, as I have disclosed to Anne Marit Berge, I am NOT a genealogist but it is a hobby to me. I am happy to merge people upon request but I am NOT comfortable collaborating as I understand it to be at this time. I personally know none of you out there except those of my immediate extended family... so why should I trust you to have unlimited access to my managed profiles without my having a say-so? Perhaps I am being paranoid, but that is my preogative. I didn't ask to be in the "big tree" and if anyone knows how, they are welcome to take me out. As I said, this is a hobby to me and no pressure to do something is welcomed. That said, let me re-affirm... I am happy to make merges whenever requested. I make merge requests myself to you all all the time and I thank you for your accepting the merges... but just as I place no pressure on you I ask that you place no pressure on me. FYI, if your merge requests to me had a delayed response from me recently, it was because I was out of town with priorities other than communicating with my Geni colleagues such as yourselves during that time. No offense meant. :) As such, I hope that clears some things up regarding my position as a very cooperative manager just not interested in collaborating. Have a very lovely weekend.
Sincerely,
Connie Barrow

I totally understand Connie Barrow's perspective. I am also hesitant to collaborate with other uses, especially those whom I do not know, but I have added one collaborator who was already collaborating with my cousin-in-law, who, when he left, bequeathed all his 1000s of profiles to me, which I never intended to manage. It seemed appropriate to inherit his collaborator, too. Slowly I'm working my way through the back log of merge requests--I literally have 100s, and I appreciate Shmuel-Aharon Kam (Kahn / שמואל-אהרן קם (קאן's help in helping me whittle them down.

I understand I have outstanding collaborate requests with many of you, in addition to merge requests. I hope there is no offense taken at my turning down your collaborate requests. Over time I may warm up to some of you and accept your requests.... but since this is part time hobby for me it may take some time.

Cheers,
Bernard

I respect my fellow hobbyists decisions. I am thankful that Bernard, Connie, Paul and Rulene have had the courtesy to tell me that they do not want to collaborate, and/or merge.

I am irritated at those who do not communicate - Glenn and Geoge Dixon, Carolyn Palmer and Arthur Thorensten come to mind.

A community project of the size and scope of the Big Tree, will succeed and flourish only with good will. Honesty and communication are neccessary to build goodwill.

I reserve my anger and irritation for those who create havoc (the man who writes in Cyrillic) and those who want to own the community project (SDH).

Best wishes and an early midsummer blessing to my colleagues around the world.

Janet Conrow Palo Jackson

As spoken from my mouth - but how do we convince them to collaborate that's the big question.

Janet could you please make a list with URLs of the uncooperative, I know most of them but not all. - hoping GENI will do something on the matter sooner or later!!
I have also startet to request every merge I come around no matter that I know it will not be answered, but then I have them in my requested list!!

Thank you Janet and Bernard and a blessing for you too. :) Connie

ok so these folks do nt want to collaborate. but their profiles keep getting merged back in causing merge issues. how do we let them have their own tree and and stop them from getting merged back in? when i unlink their profiles i just go back to that area of the tree and they are there again. so what do i do? i am not using the hotmatches. can geni, just take the lines totally out so their tree is private again? and how did they get there in the first place?

Mr. Kipp,
I have a feeling that you mean well, but force does not work with some people (namely me). My experience with merges with you in the past has been unhampered and no unpleasantness that I know of on either of our parts. I would like to keep it that way. I do have much goodwill towards you and the community project. Absolutely. This is a voluntary project though with voluntary participation and voluntary cooperation. What do you invision it will become if you coerce people into collaborating with you?... or somehow prompt Geni to make stipulations other than what they are now... Some unpleasant feelings and results might arise that I have no care to be a part of. If this is more than just a hobby to you, I respect that entirely. Please re-evaluate your priorities though and consider making your comments more gentle in nature with less drive to collaborate. Merges are slower, but if that is what it takes to keep people cooperating in their comfort level, then it is worth it I would think. Many thanks, Connie Barrow

Dear Connie
I really mean well, and have no bad feeling with you nor Bernard, the problem is the totally unresponsive managers, and if they have thousands of profiles it's really a problem.
The perpose of this discussion is to find out who will cooperate and who not, now we know that you are cooperative, and thats very nice;-))

Dear Gunther,
Thank you for responding. I do see your point and that it would be frustrating to be ignored when a wealth of progress could be made with the tree with minimal effort on their part. :) Thank you for your understanding and I look forward to continuing to work with you and others on the tree. It is fun to speculate about what people's lives must have been like and that we are descended from them... Have a happy weekend.
Sincerely,
Connie Barrow

Kathleen Ann,
in general the problem with such managers is that they are already PARTIALLY merged into the shared tree, so if the merge on the parent / spouse profile(s) have been completed then undoing the uncompleted merge is not going to solve anything. A possible "solution" to this problem, is to break the connections with these profiles, BUT this is not always possible, and in the end, creates an even bigger mess of BOTH trees, and is unfair to ALL managers involved.

Bernard,
I'm happy to handle the merge requests for you. Presently they are coming in at a rate of 20-40 per day. Is this making any change in the rate you are receiving them?

Shmuel-Aharon

Alright... I must add three to the fray:

Private User
David Hugo Ayala
and
Private User

All three are completely unresponsive, and are blocking a large number of merges in the Alden tree.

In fact... I'd say these three are responsible for 75 to 85% of the unresolved merges in the Alden tree.

I plan to start severing ties to their profiles within the next week or so... if this cannot be resolved otherwise (even if this results in breaking their trees).

Jason P Herbert

Dear Members
May I suggest something that perhaps would be best to do right now until these issues would be resolved in some way by those actual managers or by the Geni team;
Since the recent changes to the site the merging process is now having a viewable aspect where you can see with each profile who is their manager . So if you are aware to some specific managers that have no connections with any other members on the site and are considered uncooperative/unresponsive you can try and avoid merging their profiles
And choose more friendly managers that can and will complete the merge. This temporarily solution works in most cases so if you can just try this instated it would be best for now and, perhaps, would saves some of the frustration for all of us
Good Luck & Have a Beautiful, Great and Nice Day
Ofir

Since I made it a point to call this manager out... I also wish to make it a point to thank her for listening to my complaints.

Private User has completed all of my pending requests with her as well as accepted collaboration.

Thank you, Charmaine.

Jason P Herbert

Shmuel, thanks again for the help. Are you getting an e-mail for each merge request addressed to me? Gosh, I hope not! Perhaps you are only aware of the merge request through an Internet page interface. I'd hate for you to be accumulating e-mails as I do! I received 57 merge requests since I last wrote and 50 of them were from Tobias Lukas Jungen. He must have been bored over the weekend! :)

I appreciate the spirit of cooperation and friendliness on this thread and hope it is indicative of the users world-wide. I will try to do a few more merges this week. I found the best way to manage them is to just click on the merge links from my e-mail. For the ones Shmuel has beaten me to, the link shows "merge already completed" and I have a little smile come to my face.

This would be a whole lot more fun if these were people related to me, or at least within a few generations of me. But most of them are for my wife's ancestral line and for people 100s if not 1000s of years removed from me. I had to laugh--one of them was for Julius Caesar!! Good grief, what's he doing in my tree?! (Thanks again to my cousin and his imported tree who left me these thousands of profiles when he left!)

Bernard: For every person you invite or accept collaboration with you will reduce number of merge requests emails radically.

Has anyone communicated with Jacqueli Charlene Finley ?

Terry I have also tried to write her several rimes, but I think we must put her on the list

Terry - just tried once again - lets hope!!

can geni come up with a program to disentangle the whole tree of the people that dont want to be in the big tree, so we will quit running across them? i think these folks never wanted to be in the big tree. i am still at a loss as to how their profiles got merged in in the first place. there has got to be some way they can have their tree and not make such a mess of ours.

Kath wonderfull idea - but I have understand, that there is no way back - I see your point - but in one way or another those trees must be merged in!!!

I can envision a "duplicate and isolate" function in Geni, where managers that have inadvertently merged into the Big Tree can request of Geni to duplicate all profiles where they are listed as manager, basically creating a new isolated tree for them. Their permissions then get stripped from the original profiles, in a sense, making their original profiles available to be claimed by collaborators of the big tree. Private living profiles should be deleted from the original profiles.

Just a thought...

David,
this "duplicate BUT isolate" concept simply can NOT work on a collaborative tree. The moment someone INVITES another person to their tree, is it no longer solely theirs, right?

So just because the original manager (who sent the invitation) does not want to be part ANY other tree, does not mean they should be able to deny this of all other invited people (and the people THEY invited) in this isolated tree.

If you want a tree that NO one else is part of, then why the hell is this tree on the internet?

Shmuel, I understand what you are saying, but some people joined Geni without understanding such consequences as "invitation" and "merging". They did it once, then began getting a barrage of emails from Geni representing hundreds of requests to merge, and they shut down from the overload. Some blocked, many are ignoring, maybe going as far as obtaining a new email address. For those who have such remorse, and now understand the pitfalls of collaboration, I was simply suggesting a possible option for them...

@Shmuel.
One of the reason can be that they want to have a backup of their work, and have this on internet can be a answer on that.

And some people work away from home, and would like to have access to their work since they don't have laptop but access to a PC.

@David
I serious hope Geni will not do this.
Just imagine if they copy 20.000 profiles to a new “private” tree and this person 1 year later change his mind and start to merge into the big tree.
We would basically get another “GEDCOM” issue again where we have to merge all those duplicates.
Only thing I could think of that would work, is if Geni had a function where they disable merge with profile that does not belong to you own tree. And this disable can only be removed by contact Geni.

Also when people start a new tree, they should have 2 options they have to select.
Private tree and Public tree, and this option can only be changed by Geni after special request.

Just my thought

Glenn, I too have the concern about a manager changing his/her mind, as well...you raised some good ideas as alternatives...

ok so we cant force the people to finish the merges,and they dont want to cooperate to finish the merges, we cant give them their own private tree back, but it causes us tons of work.
so we leave them stacked? and we cant move the wrong merges to the correct position in the tree. man that just dosent sound like the best alternative either.i dont know about the people in the future what alternatives we can come up with, but there are 10 -15 people that we can not do anything with right now.
i watched my collaborators merge issues go UP 60 last night. it looks like its getting worse, not better.
also my people that i am connected to went down from 100,000+ to 5000+.
i got disconnected from 95,000 profiles!
i dont know what other alternatives we can come up with, but one thing i do hope we do come up with is a "no take backs" on the collaborating button. once the merges start, they need to be finished. this is a one world one profile tree.

We are asking the wrong people permission to merge. When 2 profiles are presented, the left profile typically is the "master profile", based on some calculation, and typically has the greates number of managers. Yet when merging, we aren't asking all of those managers, those "experts", whether they are willing to accept another profile and manager into the fold...we are always asking the lone manager on the right whether the merge is good or not. I vote for asking the managers on the LEFT to complete the merge, and not the manager on the RIGHT! WHO IS WITH ME???

David, the main manager is getting that very question in his/hers merge issues!