Profile "Favorites" - does anyone care about them?

I'm not sure I would call it "important" but I wouldn't want to lose the info the people have already entered in these fields.

get rid of them

I have never used it.

Not a big deal for this type of application. It can go as far as I am concerned.

I don't see these as necessary unless we want to put more emphasis on the social networking aspect of Geni. Many, perhaps most, of us have profiles on Facebook or other networking sites. Agreeing in part with David, I think there may be some relevant information stored in some profiles under "Favorites". This might be especially true for those who are deceased.

I've used them for some profiles because I may have been working on it and wanted to go back to that particular profile in the future...

I would love to see them them go. It always bothered me that they were there because it felt like a chore to fill them out, and they'd never be full for ancestors. Most importantly though, I think it also intimidates more casual users, like my grandparents, who feel like there's an overwhelming amount of information they need to fill out. When that happens, you often end up with family members who give up rather than jumping in to help build your tree.

As David and Ray said, however, I'd make sure that the information in those fields gets transferred to the 'about me' section, where people can decide whether or not to keep it. You could easily do it in this format:

"[previous about me text]

----------------

Favorite Movies: Casablanca, Sunset Blvd, etc

Favorite Sports: Soccer, Baseball, etc

[and so forth]"

PS. Mimi I think you're thinking of bookmarked profiles, rather that the 'favourites' tab under profile information.

I would be happy to see them go, I never used them!

If Geni decides to eliminate these fields, I suggest that the field names and data be formetted into regular readable text, and then be appended onto the end of whatever is in the "About Me" field. That way the old fields can be removed without losing the info that people have already entered.

OH DUH...I thought he meant the FAVORITES as in BOOKMARKS.

Sorry, I don't mind if they go, but sometimes for some more recent historic figures it was nice...like I thought it was neat to know what foods or music Marilyn Monroe or Adolf Hitler liked. Just a little trivia...

doesn't matter never use them - if you have better options - fine

Ok to remove them.

So Noah, has Geni decided on what the fate will be for these fields yet?

As I said earlier, I wouldn't mid if the About Me field became the new home for this info.

I, for one, would like to see this kind of information stored and preserved -- though I don't care about the format. Geni is aiming to be a historical record for years to come, unlike Facebook, and I think it would be great for my great grandkids to know that I'm passionate about the outdoors, and love sushi. My grandfather loved fishing, it was part of who he was, and I'd want to see that captured on Geni. "About me" would be okay for that, if anyone thought to enter that kind of info there. Maybe the "edit about me" page needs some introductory text suggesting that this is the place to document those sorts of things?

In a sense we do need to split the "overview" page.

1. Narrative biography

Preferably a link to a published source, Wikipedia, book, newspaper sketch.

2. References

Every profile really needs to refer to primary or secondary sources, with copies of primary material appended, if possible, in "documentation" and "sources."

3. Reminiscences

For instance, I found a charming story about my fourth great grandfather versus a wildcat: Abijah Cornelius Ross, Sr.. I haven't found the original source yet and who knows if it's true ... and who cares, actually. It gives a flavor for what Old Abijah's life must have been like.

And that was, I believe, the intent behind "favorites."

Based on a lot of feedback about profiles, primarily about the recent activity module, we are working on enhancing the profile to make it less cluttered while presenting the most important information on the face of the profile. We will be removing the favorites module as part of this change. Here are the highlights of what we are working on:

1. Consolidate the info and overview tabs
2. Move photos, documents, and videos to their own media tab
3. A new activity tab for user profiles that will contain the recent activity module as well as other modules that only relate to user profiles, such as the list of collaborators.

The new overview tab will have the following modules:
Main column - About Me, Immediate Family, Guestbook
Side column - Recently viewed by, User stats, Contact, Personal

This sounds pretty good, Noah. Many thanks.

Noah,
I'm with Mike and others on this one. I like having this information in profiles.

I like to think of things like "Favorites" in terms of "structured" vs "unstructured". Things have to be "structured" if the machines are ever to take action on the meaning of the contents - such as searching for people born within a certain range of years whose father was named Bruce.

For things that some people want to search for, they can be either - free-text search is powerful these days, but searching for "Paris" the place instead of "Paris" the name makes a huge difference in precision of search.

For the stuff that's currently in "Favorites", I'd prefer to relegate it to unstructed. Nobody's going to expect to match precisely on them, and I can't imagine Geni wanting to paint all Libertarian profles red or other actions based on "Favorites".

Let's get rid of the structured fields.

Harald,

Thank you. That's the point I was struggling to articulate.

A database field for "likes fishing" is a snooze. In a sense it's "marketing speak." But a "Mike's grandpa versus the big fish" story is fantastic social history and as he points out, one for the ages.

The geni platform needs to evoke that kind of story and preserve it. To my mind, unstructured text is the way to do so.

Does this mean Geni is starting to focus less on the social networking and get serious with the genealogy?

I'd hate to see these go as the family members that are not into genealogy still fill out these fields.

Leaving just the About Me section and you'll never get that kind of data in the same levels. This type of Geni user won't take the time and effort to write a story. I'd rather have the fields there to provide that low barrier to entry than not have anything from them at all.