MyHeritage -- Snaps Up Geni.com

Naude Visser b2c12d1e3f10g1h8i5j2k4 You may find our FAQ's about the announcement helpful: http://help.geni.com/forums/21545466-things-to-know

Henny

The original "historic" Geni tree was populated with GEDCOM uploads, not so much "hand built" entries. We've been trying to weave together all the duplicates into merged profiles, designate them as Masters, and get them documented and correct. We've come a long way in that mission in the last couple of years, I'm quite proud of everyone's contributions, and expect they continue.

For "closer to now" trees it's really about the manager, isn't it? And of course we may only have limited information with research on going and welcome from our collaborators.

Private User if it were some one who was born 300 years ago i can see why they wouldn't put place of birth or date because A it can get a bit tricky B maybe they don't exactly know where as the further back you get. as for prior to 1880 to present day i can see why they would want it private for concerns of ex spouses identity thieves etc etc

Michael McCann - In Denmark we have access to the churchbooks back in the 1600s. So information about places of birth and death is available online for free. Just laying there to be picked up by the profile manager.

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Erica - I'll stay quiet from now on :-) I'm quite sure you all have focus on the problems.

Henny

We don't have church books in the US. Even in the 20th century it can be very difficult to find information about birth, death, and places. When it's our own grand parents, what can we do? We enter what we know and keep searching ....

Henny

But feel free to yell at those who aren't entering data that IS easily known! :):)

Alex Moes - No, Basic Users were NOT able to accept mergers - the only exception being for their own claimed profile - if they accepted an invitation to a Tree, using the e-mail they had already established on another Tree, they could accept the request to merge the two versions of their own profile. BUT they COULD NOT accept mergers on any other profiles they managed and/or that were within their family group.

And many, many Pros complained about this and requested it be changed, because it definitely hampered what they wanted to do.

I understand this may be of topic but my question concerns Geni and MH .... Would someone please give me the definition of what is considered a private tree in Geni. Private trees in Geni appear to be frowned on and if MH also has them won't' the problem still exist. A definition would really help ..... I have read some strong opininions most against private trees .... no privacy, privacy on minors only, privacy by generations etc. I am just trying to get it straight in order to make a decision ...... Thanks

Dave,
It really varies depending on who is posting and what they are discussing.
Some people refer to private trees in the sense that they are not connected to The Big Tree (i prefer to call these Isolated Trees) but there is nothing to stop every profile in an Isolated Tree having it's privacy settings set to Public.
Another connotation is that if you are part of The Big Tree you can make the profiles that immediately surround you (your Family Group) to Private, so that while they are still part of the Big Tree they cannot be seen by others.

Clear as mud?

Lois,

If what you describe is correct then that was a terrible thing to do to the Basic users.
I can accept not allowing Basics to start merges but if I as a Pro initiate a merge with a Basic user who has an Isolated Tree there would be no way to complete the merge (aside from Family Group invites)!
I'm trying very hard to resist using the word "insane".

Alex & Lois - let's end this digression slightly?

1). If a tree is isolated, then "collaboration" (public profiles) or "family group" (private profiles) is needed to join that member's tree to the World Family Tree

2) Basic members were able to accept merges initiated by their collaborators / family group members. Now they can also initiate them.

Back to MyHeritage ...

Dave

"I understand this may be of topic but my question concerns Geni and MH .... Would someone please give me the definition of what is considered a private tree in Geni. Private trees in Geni appear to be frowned on and if MH also has them won't' the problem still exist. A definition would really help ..... I have read some strong opininions most against private trees .... no privacy, privacy on minors only, privacy by generations etc. I am just trying to get it straight in order to make a decision ...... Thanks"

I may need to break this out into several posts so bear with me.

1). Alex's term of "isolated tree" is correct. It refers to a tree UN connected to the World Family Tree. See http://www.geni.com/worldfamilytree to watch it tick. :):). You know a tree is isolated when you go to a profile and it shows you: No Path Found

Here's an example:

col john jackson

Now you'll notice: this profile is public, I presume deliberately so, and I also presume is deceased. So this is a function of the manager not yet having yet found a connection to the WFT - and sadly, not yet being offered collaboration.

Dave (continued)

Now as I understand MyHeritage trees, they work like Ancestry trees. Everyone has their own and can invite others to join them, but it's a forest of "isolated trees.". This is their business model, has always been, and continues to be.

Geni is more like Wikipedia meets Facebook. There are groupings. Currently it functions to be "trees blending upwards." Or it's a lot easier for me to conceptualize it as an acrostic puzzle. There is "across" (the Family Group, with gaps). There is "down" (for us young whipper snappers, the descendant generations be pretty small in stats). And there is "up" - the ancestral count, or what I would call the Historic Tree. Again, for us young 'uns, we're talking 1900 and back. However there is a privacy zone which can being that zone back as far as 1750 - which to my mind defeats the purpose of collaborative genealogy, as I'm incredibly fortunate to find ANY ancestor that far back (n.b. In fact I was told by family it couldn't be done, so HAH). But ... That's getting into opinion, sorry. :):)

Dave (cont'd)

The group for the Geni Family Tree and privacy zone is here
http://www.geni.com/company/privacy

You will notice: Updated on August 11, 2011

Meaning - it was differently defined before then. On fact in my time using Geni it has been refined several times (this is where Lois pipes in ...).

Now my interest is in the historic tree so to be honest I don't pay a great deal of attention to all this, except when cool cats ask interesting questions nicely.

In terms of making a platform decision for me it's always been easy:

1) I like collaborative genealogy.
2) I like history.
3) I don't put anything on the internet I'm not comfortable with anyone seeing, partly because I used to do IT Security, and know everything is hackable - but identity theft is all about credit card batch theft, NOT maiden names.

Hope this helps.

If identity theft were just about names and dates then things like the LSD database couldn't exist and that would be kinda sad :/

I meant LDS, not LSD lol

Mormons on acid? That would be a trip ... :):)

Wendy m Erica, that is definitely a trip..........................kik....

BTW There was a button on Geni for bookmark. Where is it now? Thanks.

Erica,
The strength of Geni is it's collaborative nature, i rely on "your part" of the tree being accurately built by you just as you rely on "my part" of the tree being accurately built by me.
As i mentioned earlier i have relatives who left Geni purely because of the Basic 100 profile limit, they are now building trees on MH. The quality of their trees on MH will be no different to "their part" of the Big Tree here on Geni.
Why should i spend "a couple of hours" to check and manually enter that info from MH here into Geni when it could be transferred in an eye blink?

I have a free MH account and looked at those MH trees but despite always having had the ability to cut and paste the info across i've never felt so inclined to spend my limited free time doing so.

PS: no match notifications have yet come thru for profiles that i manage which coincide with profiles on MH. I assume that service hasn't started yet but i'm curious how it will work if/when it does kick in.

Alex you are one impatient young fellow! The Sharpie ink is not even dry on the contracts.:):)

I will be blunt. Data TREE interchange will take quite a long time. Embrace the copy & paste.

RECORD match will be much easier to implement and that's just a "stay tuned" away.

"Transferred in an eye blink?" Do you have any idea what "transferred in an eye blink" resulted in for Geni? I'm still "slaying zooombies" two years later.

Cecil

Somewhere in the document function there's a "try our document bookmarklet" lab. I don't think it works for discussions. I would use a browser bookmark or bookmark service or discussion search, which works decently. And of course "following" a discussion, which is automatic for those you've posted in and can "unfollow" as need be.

The transfers didnt create the zombies, lazy importers created them.

As for the wet ink, these things take months (if not years) to come to fruition just because they only just told us about it this week doesn't mean they haven't had time to plan anything.

Incorrect about zombies Alex. There was a bug in the GEDCOM upload which resulted in profiles without dates being set to living and private instead of deceased and public.

Volunteers developed a script; Geni enhanced it and tested it; it blew up servers; and eventually when it was tweaked enough and tested enough by the president of the company at the time, personally, was entrusted to a few people at a time to use.

There are in addition new "zombies" being created daily by mistake when a) users don't realize they are setting a profile to private b) they don't realize they are setting a profile to living instead of deceased.

Alex with all due respect - here I have lived what I'm talking about when you have not. If it were so easy it would have been done. Things that are easy are implemented very rapidly in Geni. If it takes time, it's because - guess what - it takes time.

I refer you to:

http://www.geni.com/discussions/76010?msg=600151

Notice the date stamp:

5/28/2010 at 2:37 PM

And ... we have not gotten all the zombies "laid to rest" yet.

Erica,

Thanks for your reply. I was referring to a bookmark for profiles. I remember that there was a tag on the top right side of the screen.

Not that I've ever seen for within the Geni application. Sorry!

Respectfully Erica,
Regardless of this bug affecting the uploads if individual users uploading gedcoms took the time to check through all of the profiles that their upload created then would not that have resolved the Private and Living profiles to their correct status thus avoiding the need for zombie tools and curators entirely?

Alex Moes - - Curators do FAR MORE than just kill zombies. They are an extremely valuable and important part of Geni imho.

That's true Wendi, i was referring back to the curator's original purpose (as described by Erica in previous discussions) rather than the broad role they now play.