Someone lobbed off huge branches of my tree this week!!!

doubtful that someone deleted each and every profile you had in that portion of the tree, but merely severed its connection to the rest of your tree. not sure how to suggest you go about figuring out where the cut was made though.

where is the connection removed? the information you entered will all still be there

Go to the location where the tree is missing, then click the little icon on the bottom right that looks like a clock. These are the revisions for that area. It's unlikely that the information is gone. If the profiles were really deleted, the manager would be notified and you'd have the ability to undelete them. More likely as Renee stated, some branch of the tree was disconnected. The revision list should help you determine who did it, and then you can ask them. To reconnect the tree, you'll just have to add a few profiles to re-establish the merge.

If there is a name of an ancestor within the group that is missing, I can try to see if it is merely disconnected and floating in space somewhere (hopefully nothing more serious than that). There were a few of mine that ended up that way after some early merges. It's usually easy for me to reconnect if I can find the disconnected person in a search. Let me know if I can help.

Checked the path between us and there are several places where there is parent conflicts (parents that needs to be merged) which stops the tree to be displayed.

Just open your merge center and start merging profiles.
http://www.geni.com/list/merge_issues

The same happened to me in my personal tree a short time ago after someone had been inside my tree to merge without my permission. I got the tree back with help from cutator Martin Eriksen. Thanks to him.

Thanks, folks. I looked at the clock icon (great idea). Unfortunatey, it seems to only list changes *I* made. Even those are only as of December and I have definitely been on it since.

I'm sure it is a matter of having gotten disconnected, not deleted, but I lost MANY generations of multiple branches it seems. Some are perfectly intact. My American family goes so far back that there are many overlapping branches of my tree, so lobbing off even one branch can have cascading effects to my whole tree. It seems I lost more than one branch. I'll try some of the other methods you've all suggested.

What I love about geni is the ability to collaborate with PEOPLE. But the same is the weakness that can mess everything up. Ancestry is great for DOCUMENTS, and no one can mess with your tree, but it is short on it's ability to collaborate and full of errors, too. I wish there was a site with a happy medium. I pay for memberships to both geni and ancestry and then have been trying to put it all into my personal tree on Reunion in my computer. But it is a LOT to manage.

I am still lucky that my great grandfather paid professional genealogists long long ago to create a huge book of information for us to pass down. No one can ever erase that BOOK from a computer file. :) With his book, I have been building the tree even further back.

If you see that you have an overlap of my tree, I am happy to help you fill in blanks, if I can. Even before the tree disconnection mishap, I hadn't put all of my info online. I might have historical info, text from wills, names of siblings, etc. in my book, etc. that could add to your trees/family story.

Private User

I am pretty sure your problem is pending merges, as previously mentioned. Incomplete merges mess with tree views and paths big time.

Can you provide a link to a missing ancestor, or one where the ancestral line seems lost, so we can take a closer look?

Ironic that something that looks like your missing large branches of your tree, might really end up being an expansion of your tree once the merges are complete.

Thanks for your help to investigate!!!

I am not 100% certain which are missing because I don’t have a recent back-up of my geni account. I also can’t say for certain that all of the generations were entered, but I do recall doing work on them, and now I don’t see them. My apologies in advance if any of these were simply never entered vs. missing. I am starting with my mother’s father’s line and working my way over... I know that in the past all but my four generations of Stephensons have been wiped out before. That is my mom’s maternal grandfather’s line. They seem much smaller at first glace, too. I wish I could be more specific. I was alerted to the problem when my number of tree matches went from over 1000 to just over 100 overnight.

From my Floyd Carlisle Heritage (my mother’s paternal grandfather):

Hannah Buck Shuler
Hannah Shuler
I thought I had more entered on her. I have 7 or more generations for her in my book that I can’t believe I wouldn’t have entered somehow.

William Waffle
William Waffle
There are locked profiles attached to him now, and I’m not sure how to move on here.

Elizabeth Dornberger
Elizabeth Dornberger
She also has locked profiles attached to her.

Temperence Gorham
Temperance Baxter
She is just a hot mess now.

Abraham Kilbourne
Abraham Kilborn
I thought I had more entered on him, too. I have many generations going back for him in my book, too. Is it possible I never entered it?!

Sarah Goodrich Kilbourne
Sarah [Kilbourn] Boardman
I thought I had more entered on her, too. I have many generations going back for him in my book, too. Is it possible I never entered it?!

Adam Burdick, Jr.
Adam Burdick, Jr.
I am fairly certain there were more generations linked to him.

Anne Eva Getman Frank
Anne Eva Getman
I thought there should be more than just her parents listed here. I have more generations for her that I am fairly certain I’d added.

Jacob Zimmerman
Jacob Zimmerman, Jr.
I think I should have many more generations than just his parents listed.

Margaret Bellinger Zimmerman
Maria Margaretha Zimmerman
I should have many more generations for her as well.

From my Edna May Rogers Carlisle Heritage (my mother’s paternal grandmother):

Jonathan Remington
Judge Jonathan Remington
He’s a hot mess. Now strangely, in this section of my tree, there is way MORE than I ever remember being there, even though it still doesn’t go as far back as I’d recalled.

In general Edna’s line seems intact or bigger than recalled. There are definitely some big messes in there, though.

Now for where I think the most missing information is from:

My Barton Kingman Stephenson (mother’s maternal grandfather) Heritage:

Brian P. Stephenson
Briant P. (Parrott?) Stephenson
I had information chopped off about him ages ago. I have pages and pages of information left to add. I am pretty sure it used to be there.

Nancy Killerman Stephenson
Nancy Killeran Stephenson
Also missing a chunk of info

Barton’s mother is from the GRANT family line. Perhaps that line is still intact because I was made a curator of a Grant project a while ago. Except that women married into the Grant line have been chopped off.

Eiza Ann Warner Grant
Eliza A. Grant

Lydia King Grant
Lydia Grant
I never had much about her father, and certainly no parents for him. But I did have lots about her mother and beyond.

Micah Lovell
Micah Lovell
Both of his parents should have MANY more generations listed.

Bethiah Allen Turner
Bethiah Turner
Should have many more generations than just her parents listed.

Betsey Whitmarsh Lovell
Betsey Lovell
Should have many generations attached to her. They overlap into the world of Lovell’s as well.

Mary French Lovell
Mary Lovell
Should have many generations more than just her parents listed.

Stephen Tirrell
Stephen Tirrell
Should have many generations more than just her parents listed.

Susan Loud Tirrell
Susannah Tirrell
Should have many generations more than just her parents listed.

Rebecca Smith Hastings
Rebecca Hastings
Should have many generations more than just her parents listed.

Anna Sears Crane
Anna Sears
Should have many generations more than just her parents listed.

Isaac Crane
Isaac Crane
From his parents upward is a hot mess, too.

I have a technical question. When using the "Relationships" tab when editing a profile, could that cause whole branches of a tree to disappear? Sometimes I find multiple listings of eg. a wife's name, and "Remove" any duplicates that I can.
What happens to the ancestors and descendents of this person, or it that when I get the "Removal will split the tree" notice? I stay away from those.

Also, you cannot view which version of a name you are deleting. Are MP profiles automatically protected from being removed?

Thanks for any info. Mary

Oops, and the from the Lovells down, is from my mother's maternal grandmother (Madge Condit Lovell Stephenson) Heritage.

Thanks again for anything you can do! And again, If any of these names link to your trees, I might be able to help you add supplemental info/evidence.
THANKS THANKS THANKS

Lisa - Because Temperance Gorham is a Mayflower descendant, there may have been work done around her in cleaning up and making master profiles. She is my 8th great aunt and I recognized her name. You might contact the curator(s) for her mother or her grandfather/grandmother who were Mayflower passengers. I had my colonial American ancestors made into Master Profiles and curated and I started projects to try to clean up the mess and avoid bad merges around them. Some profiles had to be locked in fact.

If any of the other branches of your family that are "missing" are in the historical period and connected to specific curators, they might be able to help.

Lisa - I am noticing that some of the links you gave are for profiles managed by others with no comanagers. Is there a chance that you are looking at the wrong profiles?

Lori,

I took them all from "my own tree." It seems like I lost managing privileges to many of my own records. Is that possible? Or maybe I never got them when I merged files long ago? I am utterly confused by Geni at times.

Hatte, I have several Mayflower people in my Mom's tree. I think there were 7 at last count, representing 4 different families. How does one get MP status granted? I've seen Master Profiles full of errors, so how do we know those are "the accurate" ones? And how can one find out if there are already Master Profiles for folks in my tree? I have a few, but mostly because I stumbled upon them.

Thanks, All!
Lise

Lise,

I'm going to work on the Frenchs' and Withmarshes -- I'm related.

It looks like your profiles did get separated from the "big tree" and the rest of the families, and also that they married into some zombie trees. Curator tools should help this.

I'll let you know; it's definitely strange and shouldn't have happened. You should be seeing more ancestors, not less.

Thanks, 10th cuz-2x removed-Erica! How does one even get "Curator Tools?" Are they geni employees? Do people have an icon on their profile when they are curators? Kind of like MPs have an icon...?

Lori - I have 8 Mayflower ancestors and many Great Migration ancestors. What I have been doing is asking for a Master Profile to be made for the oldest 2 - 3 generations. I do try to clean up the profile first and often ask for curator help with the profile if the clean up is messy. But I don't wait until all the merges are done and the profile is perfect to make it a Master Profile. Then after it's a Master Profile or even before, I start a project around that family or group of related families and try to get someone to help. Erica has helped on several, as has Tammy Swingle who turned out to be a relative and her husband is an even closer relative so we share an interest in a whole group of early American families.

Erica can answer some of your questions better than I can. I do a search and try to limit the results using filters and then eyeball them to see if there is already a Master Profile.

Having a Master Profile doesn't guarantee that it's 100% accurate but it does guarantee someone knowledgeable is working on improving it, based on reliable sources. Someone who understands how to merge discerningly and find and use sources.

Lise Lovell Rasmussen Simring is Hatte Blejer's 9th cousin twice removed!

Through the Gorhams of course.

Hatte, Who know's, we're probably even closer, but until the branches are recovered, we'll never know! :) I appreciate everyone's help!

And Lori, we're 13th cousins via the Howlands. :)

Yes Lise we curators have the magic C on our profiles so you know who we are!

We have some "super user" rights on our profiles. We can:

- lay zombies to rest (i.e., resolve the bug of profiles set to living who clearly should be deceased)
- merge together public profiles
- make Master Profiles (designation; floating "note")

You can read more about the curating program here:

http://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Curators

Now something is definitely funky with those profiles and I may want to open a HELP desk ticket on it. I got the Frenches all merged up and together, veered off into Boarmans, and when I revisited the Frenches, they were disconnected again! Arghhh!

So ... it's not you. Or me!

Lise,

I opened a ticket # DHT-702735.

NONE of my merging activity on the French line is showing in "revisions" and this is very, very strange. The Help desk needs to take a look.

I'll work on another branch of your disconnects. I was getting into Boardman's and Mudd's, hopefully that work is still there ...

Erica, I really appreciate your help. So, as a curator, are you an employee of Geni? Or are you just a fabulous volunteer? Or both? What sort of ownership does Geni take for such major errors?

I have definitely experienced several glitches from a technical standpoint with geni. When working on merges, half the time those names will continue to appear in my merge, but if I click through there are 0 more matches to look at. I also currently have a floating node for Martha Washington (to whom I am related) that just will NOT go away no matter what I do. In the past I had as many as four stuck, and this means it is a pain to see the tree underneath because I can't make it go away.

And all of this missing info happened once long ago to my Stephenson clan, too... Every public profile I had disapppeared and I was left with my 3-4 direct generations only.

Sorry Lise - I have no tools to investigate beyond what I mentioned above. You need a HELP ticket so they can pull logs, try to understand what happened, do restores, etc. Just a volunteer here!

Curators are all volunteers.
See http://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Curators

So between your help ticket and mine, by when should I expect to hear from someone in customer service? I haven't had one communication from a geni staffer about these reported problems!

Lise - if you and Erica both put in tickets, you should get an answer.

It does take some time and some asking for help to figure out how to use the sophisticated features of Geni. Merges take time because one or more people may have to agree to the merge. Until then, the tree can be very messy. I'm impatient myself and hate messy trees. It's why I have asked for Master Profiles to be made and have started projects. Another thing is to NOT create duplicative historical profiles but to collaborate with and attach your tree to existing branches of the tree with curated MPs.

I'll add Noah Tutak to the discussion since he does work for Geni, unlike the curators.