About Me contents

Ken for those of us who work with "the merged tree" it's been necessary. It has also been a good place to add book and record citations. I appreciate your point aesthetically but try weaving together 25 dups that are tree "fragments" - or teasing apart from mis merges - without it. I can't do it.

Also if the tree has been wrongly merged the Geni listing of the immediate family most likely is not going to be correct, so information in the 'About' section can be a big help.

About the same issues with the sourced documents, if you do not input each detail from the document in the sources then if the profile has been changed it will not be easily seen that the source may be for a total different person.

I guess I'm seeing it from the other side.

They're almost invariably wrong because they haven't been updated. The investigations I've done have always proven the tree to be right, and the About Me wrong.

When you attempt to do this against the mother and then against the father and then against the tree, it becomes a pointless exercise.

I'm wondering if this should be reviewed when the 'merge phase' is over. The separate trees of the previous rules of Geni are being merged and presumably this won't be so much of a problem in the future.

I'm presuming that someone won't take their new tree back to the middle ages without merging somewhere.

Ken you will see different states of cleanup, merges and curator and PRO activity efforts depending on where in the trees, "notability" of the profile, projects, etc. Carole and I are two who focus on the Anglo American tree, and we're squarely on documenting and tree correction still.

There is an "about cleanup" project that always needs help.

Thanks, but I'll look after my part of the tree :-)

As you know, I avoid About Me wherever possible because Timeline Events are usually more applicable.

I do love to learn something about a person right in the "About" and it may be more and more interesting than the limited comment space available in the timeline fields. On the hand, that could be me being verbose.

Limited space? So far as I know it is unlimited. I've put an entire page of a newspaper in there on occasion.

A passenger list from an immigrant ship is a common inclusion. As our colonial newspapers have been digitised, copy-and-pasting the relevant article into an event is more useful than attached an image of the article.

Mr. Joe Average has about 15-20 entries from the newspapers and the national archives during his lifetime. I don't interpret his life into About Me - that is for the reader to do from the articles.

Simply attaching these articles to the profile would leave the reader to sort out the jumble.

Indeed - and I learn from your use of timeline. But again - in the documenting / merging / un merging effort I'm more focused on sourcing data. In my own tree I like picking out anecdotes to make a kind of biography to read in the overview. And frankly I also find it useful to "read" a narrative type view of the family group, including children's spouses. I try to section off the overview for a better flow.

I try always to update the About Me to match discoveries about the family as I research. I've seen a hecka lot of profiles that aren't updated, though - and I confess I'll often jump in and edit them... Dunno if that makes me helpful or just nuts.

I have often seen cases where the About Me is way more accurate than the actual tree, especially in active and/or disputed areas...

The About Me is invaluable for listing conflicting data, questions, quotations about the person by others, disambiguation notes, etc.

Often, as I am researching, I find bits and pieces that I need to record so as to come back to them later, but they wouldn't work on the Timeline, or they wouldn't be appropriate there.

I have a TON to learn about using the Timeline feature and continue to educate myself through your use of it especially, Kenneth! You've turned it into an artform...

To me, both are important ways to document an ancestor. They're complementary, but not interchangeable. The Timeline is all about facts; however, in genealogical research, speculation, fable, humor, and even a little magic are useful and necessary tools as well. JMHO, FWIW.