Discussions about the Collaboration Pool

I agree with Remi. If there are relationship connections that match, I would merge, otherwise I will either ignore it, or unmerge it...especially if the name appears to be common...

I had a problem with that because of my GEDCOM import but I found that after a merge I could select living or deceased with no problem.

I am talking 'common' names, could be anyone, Mary's, John's, David's, etc. I just don't want to take a chance, so I go on to another.

Thanks, Remi!

I usually try to check on the age of the profile, for instance by checking the age of nearby profiles, or looking at whether they're my 25th grandmother or something. If they're ancient, dateless and living, it's probably a zombie left over from the Gedcom import bug (that marked people as "living" when they didn't have an explicit death date); if they're current-generation, I make an educated guess or leave it alone.

Barbara,
this is often simply a case of "zombies", i.e. the profile markes as "living" shouldn't be. Another thing to consider is that IF the connecting profiles (parents or spouses or even children) are already merged, then not merging often causes more problems than merging.

It's very easy to check if they have been merged. If a parent, for example, has the exact same name, then move your mouse over the link, and look at the URL shown in the status line, at the bottom of the browser window. Look at the last 3-4 digits in the profile ID. Now move your mouse to the same name on the other side of the compare view. Is the number the same? If so, this is the same profile.

A lot of similar profiles of unknown, john, elisabeth and so on can be eliminated only by comparing dates and removing profiles that could not possibly be alive at the same time as the "Master" profile of John or whatever. Normally you can reduce 50%, then there is reducing by location eg. born in and died locations, sometimes wife or spouse also gives a clue. Then you are left with the possible´s these must be researched to be reduced.

It is only after collaboration is established that collaborators can see each other's "Statistics" (GeniSpeak for aggregate data), except in those rare cases where a person made their "Statistics" visible to the public.

Such data as quantity of Ancestors and of Managed Profiles could be of value in deciding whether to accept or request collaboration.

Even more illuminating is what one sees when one clicks through on those quantity links, and uses the filtering capabilities of the resulting Relatives/Lists page.

Ancestors/Living gives an idea of how many zombie ancestors the person has. If both one's parents, all four grandparents and all eight great-grandparents are alive, one has 14 living ancestors. In practice, and depending on one's age, that quantity is virtually always smaller. At birth I had 6 living ancestors (now I have 1).
Further filtering for Managed By (the collaborator) tells you how many of those zombies they have control of.

Also of interest is how many of the collaborator's ancestors are:
- deceased and private (one hopes no more than 14 - preferably 6)
- living and public (ideally: none)

Switching from Ancestors to Profiles Managed can also provide insight, although they are harder to evaluate without knowing how broad the collaborator's family is, and how far outside it (s)he ventures.
However, alarms include:
- more than very few living public profiles
- a high percentage of deceased private profiles

Private User

George,

I wanted to direct your attention here and help explain something that's related to your questions.

"I understand what you're looking for better. You're suggesting the "collaborator's pool" work like joining a listserv or other mailing group: one click to "opt-in."

"Collaboration" is a security rights grouping within the application itself, which means that *someone* has to permission it separately from a discussion list. Better it be you yourself after you've looked over a request to collaborate.

thank you, Erica,

I understand what you're saying, but the truth is we have no idea about the quality of a collaborator's work until after we have collaborated. So I am willing to let this work like wikipedia, where everyone has the right to contribute unless he/she has proved unworthy.

best,
george

How come on the list, some names including mine are listed: http://www.geni.com/people/George-Gyorgy-%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%94-Farkas/... with the "http://geni.com/people/ ???
george

George - the problem is about UNICODE letters in names. Geni messaging can't solve URL-s containing UNICODE to names.

I will try to solve this chaning name format. Please be patient :)
At least all those links is working links in list

Henn

Now the list of attendees is much better
all the proble is that original URL stored in list during enry is

http://www.geni.com/people/name/ID

when name contains non-english letter, this is converted to UNICODE

I now transalted the URL in equal form:

http://www.geni.com/profile/ndex/ID

this is non name-depending format and works always. Geni can convert this into LINK to profile displaing name

Henn

thank you Henn

I have a question. It was discovered and confirmed by the Help Support Team that someone within this Collaboration Pool has deleted a branch of my tree, namely the Exilarchs. It was also confirmed that it was done deliberately. Can this person still have access to my tree as a result of us mutually belonging to this forum?

Thankx

Sometimes geni sends messages that things were deleted when they really were not. I would suggest asking the person in a private message before it gets out of hand. Or possibly it was disconnected in error when a relationship was being fixed. I have found most on here to be very helpful and with good intentions.

@Gladys
If is confirmed that the deletion of the Exilarchs was malicious, you should rescind collaboration with the culprit (if you know who did it).
Whether you and (s)he subscribe to the same Discussion Groups is irrelevant.

Thanks. That's all I needed to know. I do so want to continue collaborating in this forum. Thanks. And I guess the lesson learned has given rise to me making recommendations to the Help Support Team, so that they consider it a priority to allow managers of profiles be able to give permissions for deletions before any such thing is done. And to facilitate a better way to reattach deleted branches without the tedium of manually entering the names again. MY ADHD self finds that reprehensible. LOLOL!!!!!!! Thanks for the information. . .

Lori and Ann, - there are people out there who have the theory that it is better to delete duplicates instead of merging them, and that making historical profiles private protects them.

Those people has to be stopped, but not by blocking and being removed from collaboration because that always have a boomerang effect. You will block your own access too, - fair enough.

It is much better to send them a message that this is a really bad thing to do and explain them what happens and guide them on "do and don't rules" in Geni.

Deleting profiles instead of merging them sounds and are easier than merging them, but you forget the key problem: Access.

Deleting a profile does also cut off the edit/merge access to that area for all collaborators and family members of the manager as they would have if the profile get merged and the manager becomes a co-manager of the merged profile. The manager itself does probably not notice this as long as he/she are still collaborating with the one who deleted the profile and kept his own profile.
If a private profile is deleted it is even worse because it blocks others totally, even for relationship collaboration.

This leads also into the other problem: Private profiles are protected, - the brutal way
Only family members and the managers themselves have access to the profile, and that includes both for viewing, having clickable links to them and connecting them into pending merges. A private key profile in a historical area blocks everyone else to see that tree and in some cases does also act as a bottleneck in relationship calculation.

Have a nice day!

Thank you Bjorn!! And you know how much I respect your comments. So what do you propose as a solution?

You know my policy. I speak to the person first. Generally they respond. In this case that person denied doing so. I looked at his membership history and discovered he was on Geni almost two years prior to my membership, so that took me as a surprise. He knew that the deletion of any of my profiles is a "no no". He requested that I "friend" him. Having done so, he deleted a whole branch. What I saw as one or two, Geni discovered was quite a number of profiles. These are historical files on my tree that I now have to manually re-attach. These are in the 600 - 700 C.E. and further back. If you all don't know me, I am not without my sense of humor. So this person wants me to hang with Pharoah about a week, I guess. Well I don't mind meeting Nebuchanezzar. But I really was planning to have something better to do this hot summer!!! LOLOL!!!!

I am full agreement with you regarding access. I frankly have great disdain for the privatizing of family trees, as if someone "cornered the market" on relatives, make them exclusively their own and no one else's, or preventing others from that right. We are all likely a part of the Big Tree, which makes it that much more important to maintain access and develop diplomatic ways to reconcile any issues.

I just recently made some discoveries on a branch of my family that was stalled at the late 1700's for many years. We broke that wall down, a cousin and I, and were belly laughing at how many "private" trees ate up our "public" discoveries!!!

Ann; did the relationships also got cut off but are still there or you are just talking about deletion of all of them?
A couple of months ago it was mentioned to me by the Geni team, that they are planning on doing something regarding the deletion of profiles by other members, I'm still waiting
The thing is that I had several cases of deletions that were made by mistake as well as deliberately and when I've asked why they did that they replied that there is nothing wrong with that since they were duplicates

Thanks Ofir, for your inquiry. No these were deletions. I mean, BIG FAT FUDDER MUCKIN DELETIONS!!! LOL!!!! It was an online inquisition in 2010 I TELL YA!!! (please forgive me, but as I grow older, I try to offset frustration with humor.)

Ofir, you remember when I discovered I had accidentally privated some profiles, and you alerted me to that? I immediately responded and even gave you rights to merge. So I try hard to correct any possible mistakes I made. And I 've made some!

I propose that we all find out where these people live, prepare picket signs (I'm good at that -- I'm a baby boomer) and have the entire BIg Tree Community fly in from all over the world, embarrass the heck out of 'em at their front door. I'm a musician so I can write a few songs. Get a few of you that play GOOD GUITAR, singing and chanting away. And the proverbial, "We Shall Overcome. . ."

Have the news media there, asking them, Why did they do it? Then march them down to Geni Rehab for 90 days, teaching them never to delete files again. If they do it again, then their subscription is terminated with no refund and their credit score loses a 100 points for doing so. (well the thought of it gives me some comedic relief!!)

Pinpoint what I said about access.

It is not only a question about access rights between you and him. To give your 98 collaborators and 298 family members access to these profiles as they would have through you if they got merged he have to accept friend and collaboration from all 396 and accept collaboration with every new collaborator you get in the future.

Have you asked Geni to restore your profiles? - they have probably tools for that now, but they might get restored unconnected.

@Bjorn: And that is well stated. That's the way Geni is set up is it not? But Bjorn, you have children. Every once in a while they do something silly and there's always the "time out." Supposing this guy doesn't want to play by the rules. What then?

You don't have to answer. But these are things that Geni needs to address and soon. Cause if I have another amputation like this one, I'll have to transplant my tree back online. And we all know how tedious those merges are. I'm not even thinking about that.

You know, I did ask them that. But this person said, and I quote "Unfortunately, you will have to re-attach these profiles manually." So certainly if they have the tools to restore, this person is unaware.

I did respond to them again. I proposed a way to possibly attach files via an abbreviated portion of our gedcom attached and merged with the same person at the tree where the damage took place so that it wouldn't be so time consuming to repair these deletions. This would also help to upload any documentation as well on individuals.

my 2 cents Ann, OUT them! say their name right here! I have someone in my boyfriends family who has done that and refuses to cooperate! She is a control freak, and is keeping me from merging some of our distant ancestors because she has them locked. I found out some information (BMD) on the family and put it in a private family discussion, and she got pissed because she didn't "know it" first! SHARON ORCUTT PETERS is her name, and being a control freak is her game

Yosef Gavriel (Robbie) Bechhofer is the name. It's not that I wanted to protect the name. I just didn't want people thinking I was being a "brat."

It is absolutely sooooo foolish of people to treat their family history much like that guy who bought up all the Chocolate in the world just so he can "control" the market. If we are all royalty, we are all royalty whether they like it or not. The only difference is if SHARON ORCUTT PETERS took Queen Mary's GENES, and you took Queen Elizabeth's II (who I think for the most part is cool).

An,, I've known Yosef Gavriel (Robbie) Bechhofer for a while. Recently he has been doing a lot of GOOD work on the Exilarchs tree, helping clean it up, after I couldn't do much (I maintain the earlier biblical tree). Sp I'm not sure what happened here. :-(

Ann (sorry to have mistyped your name),
You wouldn't actually need to re-enter these profiles, as the main line still exists (see first Exilarch Zerubbabel 3rd Exilarch / זרובבל). I am a manager of most of these profiles (often the primary). So if you like, I could add you as manager to them. Not that this excuses anyone deleting them, just trying to save you some effort.
Shmuel-Aharon Kam