Gold mines that need mining

Randy Schoenberg, this is a great idea. Would you want to start a project to do this? I would be happy to enter some data, but it might be nice to have some discussions and resources to manage the coordination?

RE: http://www.sternmail.co.uk/genealogy/index.html
7,000 German Jews - This site is clearly states:

"The site is protected to safeguard details of living relatives. Please email genealogy@sternmail.co.uk giving your name and details and we will respond with a Username and Password to give you access to the site."

And at the bottom of the page it has:
"COPYRIGHT NOTICE

© All material on the site is protected by Copyright. The site is password protected as it contains peoples dates of birth and sometimes other personal information. The Testimonies for example are often rather private expressions of thoughts and feelings intended primarily, at least during the author’s lifetime, for the family. This material is therefore for reference and information but strictly not for publication either in part or whole without the written permission of the author or the author’s Estate. "

I do not know if what you are suggesting doing is Illegal - but it is clearly contrary to the desires of the folks who created that website, and I would say totally not cool.

Private User, it is always good to check the copyright info. There is no way to access the data on that site without getting a login from the site admins. If someone wants to do that and ask for permission, there shouldn't be an issue with that.

I could have a website and say that everything inside is made of green cheese, but that doesn't make it necessarily true. Genealogical data is not "original" and therefore never covered by copyright. All you have to do is ask the owner of the website to see if he will give access to help import the data to geni. Doesn't hurt to ask.

Just make sure that the publicly available trees have sourced information before adding the information to Geni. There are more questionable family trees on the internet than there are good sourced ones.

The information taken from publicly available family trees should have sources that can be verified before added to Geni if someone wanted to verify them.

That is bad advice for most people, Remi. I suppose you do not have personal experience adding large numbers of profiles. For many areas, it makes sense to add the data quickly, so long as it is unique and not duplicative. Then everyone can work on the sources together, which is a more time-consuming and labor-intensive process. The key is to start by getting the basic structure of the tree uploaded. Corrections and improvements can come later.

And I prefer to do it the other way. Get the data as correct as possible, then upload it to a site like Geni.

You should be careful adding unsourced information from public family trees since the job of correcting the information can get big.

So, no Randy, I disagree. I see it as good and important advice for every genealogist and family history/data collector.

In my opinion profiles shouldn't be added in large numbers. The chance of getting a lot of errors are to big.

Remi & Randy

This is an interesting question to me because I can see both points.

Remi - As someone who spends a lot of Geni time correcting bad, corrupted, spurious, Mis merged, typo's, mistaken and downright fictitious data -

I end up agreeing with Randy.

:)

That's because it's about what, when, where the data source is.

I'm familiar with the data in the Auden & Peerage sites. It's pretty good quality.

The Jewish sites are likely to be unique and have been gathered with great caring.

Michelle - you say if someone wants to ask for a login from the site admins "and ask for permission, there shouldn't be an issue with that." - If they are upfront about wanting to use the info from that site on Geni, and get permission to enter it all here on Geni (or only enter that which they get permission to enter here) then I would agree.

Actually, let me amend the above - IF they have not only gotten permission to enter the info on Geni AND explained that all they enter from there onto Geni would be Publicly visible to the whole world, then if the Admins gave approval, then I guess a person would be justified in thinking it was okay to do it. However, it also looks like they should also get the permission from the author or the author's estate for any info in that category - and morally I would think they should, even if the an admin were to go so far as to say it could be used.

Lois and Remi, neither of you have added more than 1,200 profiles to Geni. I am not sure why you feel the need to impose your way of working on the rest of us, who have different goals and different methods. If you don't want to participate, that's fine. But there's no reason to interfere with what I am doing, even if you don't understand it.

Randy, am i missing a trick here?
" 100k+ British peers" represents a LOT of time spent making profiles.
I've been here nearly 2 years and only managed to add 1700 profiles which averages... 2.5 profiles per day? 100K would take me 109 years to create!
Do i just need to type faster?

I'm typing with one finger on iPad and can enter 10 quality, sourced profiles in a family group in an hour.

Thank you Randy!

As I'm not familiar with the persons in all the links you recommend the only thing I can do is to carefully try to connect them and maybe link them to different projects I feel is important. But as Geni now have taken away that possibility too, I feel I have to use my time for other almost as important projects and work "my way".

Yes Alex, type faster : )

By the way:

I have only created 1855 profiles to Geni in the year I've been on Geni. Instead I have tried to create more information about the persons and add into the "About Me"-field, done quite a lot of cleans ups, merges and completed data to profiles (public ones).

Agneta I'd love to do more occupational genealogies. What you did with the Pharmacists Project is cutting edge historical studies, called "prosopography"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopography

I'm trying to do something similar with goldsmiths and silversmiths - found a nice database of American craftsmen, I'm hoping other countries have something similar.

And that's what makes genealoy to a living part of history. To just tell born-died and "I'm related" to someone who just existed by no other reason than exist does not tell anything but waht we already know. We know everyone exist because someone else did exist before. Of course it's then fascinating to find out one is related to Charles le Magne or Elvis Presley. How do you define that kind of genealogy? : )

To me this is taking genealogy to the next level

A prosopography is not just any collection of biographies—the lives must have enough in common for relationships and connections to be uncovered. Genealogy, as practiced by family historians, has as its goal the reconstruction of familial relationships, and as such, well-conducted genealogical research may form the basis of a prosopography, but the goals of prosopographical research are generally wider.

What you name "family historians" could be kept in an ordinary adressbook.

Or a census for the governements so to get knowledge about living or dead. (They found about 200 000 retired dead greecs by only start using a modern computer and ADB-system. Within less than two months. That finding saved a lot of pension payings to dead people.)

Anyhow, if speaking about lower or higher levels, it ought to be discussed in the Geni-board about what they sell on what level, high or low. My suggestion is that to use the "lower level" it's okej to the ordinary price. If people like to keep it as "family history" and secret that should have a price for lets say 1 USD for each profile not usable for anyone else on any level, high or low, as Geni promise them to keep them "private".

And why not let those with "lower" family-historian private profiles be closed out from all the "About me"-boxes in all the duplicates of their private profiles?

There are really many things to be thought about if non-social persons use social media for their "private" purpose. I thought it was okej to pay to Geni as it needs a lot of server space and computer competence.

1) Remi Trygve Pedersen: adding Names to Geni - only sourced material. My site would Not grow from 100 names to 55,000+ -- if I told all the contributors that the Information Must be Sourced - before I add it (same goes for Geni)

2) Private User: COPYRIGHT NOTICE - 1000's of names from my site would Not have been Added by Geni users - if the Notice was respected - thus a Loss to other Geni users. *One person asked, that was Randy.

3) Agneta Åhrberg: Good for you for voicing your Displeasure - with the way Private & Public profiles are handled on Geni. Public tree members are being Shafted & their time is being Wasted - by Tree Huggers ! http://www.geni.com/discussions/78981?msg=818005

I am in a process of Adding few more (abt 30) Famous Paths to my web page - and the Common problem showing Geni the Path ='s Private Profiles. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~prohel/stories/Fa...
In my 1 1/2 years on Geni - it is Unbelievable - how much time is Wasted - dealing with Private profiles. They see Public info. - but Hide theirs - same as Dictatorships & Communists ! ** (I am Not talking about 14 and younger or Living profiles with info other than a name)

Michelle Elena Kempner Geni: - there has to be a Better way - or you will Loose a lot of good customers - and become like All other Single Tree (private) member hosting site !

** Just my 2 cents "again" - about the Private vs. Public - and before someone tells me (again) - I know there is a Discussion on that Topic elsewhere :)

Alex. Yes, type faster. :-) But seriously, the terrific thing about Geni is we all can collaborate. So, even if you only add 1,000 profiles per year, if we can get 1,000 people like you, we can add 1,000,000 in a year, and that's starting to be significant. So keep at it and keep recruiting others to join in. We are building something completely new. This is NOT the same as having a tree on your hard drive to work on. We're working on something MUCH bigger. And for Agneta, we need the profiles on the tree for the projects to work. First step is to get the people input into the tree. Then people can add information, sources, etc and fill things out.

What about Michelle's point of organizing / coordinating via projects? That worked out great for the Titanic passenger data entry.

I have developed a number of projects which are based on occupations and which open the door to developing new trtees/connections on Geni

http://www.geni.com/projects/Geologists-incl-Palaeontologists-Meteo...

http://www.geni.com/projects/Botanists-and-Plant-Collectors/4390

http://www.geni.com/projects/Gardeners-Architects-Designers-and-Lan...

http://www.geni.com/projects/Gardeners-Horticulturists-Nurserymen-a...

These work well from time to time and are good places to kick start research!

The collaborating teamwork in projects are a very constructive way of coming forward and upward, cleaning up and actually come closer to a World Tree.

There are always different things that needs to be done and depending on what part of the World Tree you work with your contributions differs, Randy. To have many profiles is one goal but you also need connections, quality and a social movement towards different geneaological goals. Some contributors may be satisfied with what Erica named "family-genealogy". That's okej to me since some contribution is better than none at all.In all the different shoah-projects I feel a bit insufficient but maybe I can do something. It's an historical geneaological change where my country was non-touched at all. About 6-7 million persons, children and adults, old and young people, complete families, was erazed in my neighborhood Europe. Is it a good and creative kind of collaboration that I kind of have to write about 10-20 kind invitations to managers every day and beg them for collaboration?

I found some qualitative and social reliable collaborators, but since Geni now thought the idea of selling "Standing alone trees" is more worthy I have a feeling that the "Stand aloners" will have to contribute the most of the missing profiles.

It's not a queston of being disappointed or feeling "displeasure" but a statement: I have to find other ways but Geni to do what is important in genealogy. For the collectors of profiles: Please collect. For the interested in when the thirds cousin first childs husbands mothers baptist date occured, go ahead.

The children was killed in the holocaust and Geni has during the last weeks tought the users it's a private matter to "stand aloners". That's why I'm disappointed. I don' know the lathin name of the "knowledge" on that low level. But it's not necessary to know. It's just to low.

This has been an interesting discussion. I did add the Klempners from one of Randy's links and lo and behold they became Kempners and one has a name that is very similar to a relative of mine. Exciting stuff. Now I just have to figure out how to figure out if they are the same person. Jewish genealogical information has been hard for me to come by.

Michelle

Randy & others here have inspired me to look for ways over the brick walls as well. You get familiar with names & locations & occupations & migrations, and begin to more easily rule in / rule out. But you cant do that without entering a lot of data. If it proves out to be: not my family - then there should be, if you've entered it right, a clean "cut point."

Are region based projects most useful in looking at Jewish families?

Definitely Erica for the 1800s before immigration to America or South Africa. At least in the neck of the woods that my ancestors lived in, they were restricted in where they could travel and who they could marry and tended to marry people in the same administrative regions and even often the same village. That's why I have projects devoted to families of Suwalki and Lomza and Volhynia. Also, they tended to immigrate to the same area and continue to intermarry in some cases with those from the same area. And be buried in cemeteries with those from their area in specific sections of cemeteries.

Michelle have you looked at the Otto Klemperer tree?

This is another argument for building "celebrity" trees on Geni - it leads to illuminating possibilities for our own lines, even if it's eliminating them.

I did have to prove to myself for instance that the Franklin's in my tree are NOT Ben's. :)

Hatte how did you even get to the region? I just have Vienna as an immigration point and a German & yiddish speaking family - and have "ruled out" other US families already based on a very good one name study.