"Spurious Pedigrees" as a tag

Started by Private User on today
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I'm surprised I've never been bothered by this before, but better late to throw a topic out for discussion than never. :)

I just noticed that we have Dea. John Jackson in this project, as we should; he's a Somerby victim. BUT, by having the phrase "Spurious Pedigrees" on Jackson's profile, it looks like a visual indicator that the pedigree we have on Geni is spurious, which it isn't.

So I'm wondering aloud if maybe we need a "Featured in a Spurious Pedigree" sibling project that would more accurately reflect those sorts of cases, and then we'd only keep ones we're actively untangling on Geni in this one.

Does that make sense?? I just don't want people being confused, and it's easy enough to do.

The Spurious Pedigrees project is one of the first I worked on, and you're only the second "I'm confused" I've gotten. :):)

The idea is to alert members that there is a disproven pedigree "out there," not that the geni profile is wrong. When we have that, I've been using a {Fictional} suffix.

I understand the purpose, promise! But keep in mind that a lot of people looking at Geni profiles aren't actual users; they're seeing the site thanks to Google and aren't clicking through to see the full explainer of what a project actually is.

You know your frequent point about not wanting people to have to go outside of the Geni ecosystem to read a Wikipedia profile to understand who someone is/was? I'm approaching this from the same place. Maybe somebody shouldn't have to go to to project to find out "Oh, the pedigree here on Geni isn't the spurious one." (But of course, maybe it is...you currently have to poke through each profile to figure it out.)

And, it could improve workflow to separate -- here's our pile of ones that are fine on the site (placed into the sibling project), here's our pile of ones that we need to keep repairing (placed into the existing main project).

I view the "{FICT}" ones we've cut away as totally separate; no work is being done on them.

I think I'm confused as to what you're proposing.

I don't like the term ""Featured in a Spurious Pedigree". That's a "Geni process" title and doesn't address the "warning" I'm after. And, additional work. Remember that I've been working on "Spurious Pedigrees" since 2010.

Is there an edit to the title of "Spurious Pedigrees" that would make it better?

https://back-bachgenealogicalsociety.com/
I have DNA matches and am hopeful they will be sorted one day.
My thought is that once a genealogy has been sorted, the profile will be removed from such a Project.
In the meantime, it can be helpful to have them in a project under the umbrella of spurious.
Unfortunately, the term can be seen as a negative thing... like a fraudulent thing , i.e., FAKE genealogy in order to make one famous or keep one from being descended from someone infamous.
My thoughts on it.

It's supposed to be negative.:). The idea is that genealogy has been corrupted, so take extra care when working on the ancestry. If it's not a project with a "spurious pedigree" or similar tag, how would you know?

I know the Backs are pretty mad lol

Erica, I think you have my concept backwards, so I'll try again.

There are two types of profiles of interest to us:

  1. ones that have no spurious pedigrees attached -- we've taken the bad info out, we've relationship-locked, they're well-monitored -- but we still want people to know the person is listed in a published fictive genealogy
  2. ones where the person is listed in a fictive genealogy AND we're still working on cleaning their profile/area up on Geni

In the former, they need more of a "look out elsewhere" tag and in the latter, more of a "look out elsewhere and here" tag.

I don't like that we're conflating them both in the same place, and I think it makes it harder for us to quickly identify which ones are which when we're working. Tell me right away: am I needed to clean this, or am I being told a trivia bit long-since addressed?

John Jackson's genealogy on Geni is fine. He happens to be listed in a vanity genealogy from the mid-19th C., and that needs to be noted -- but ideally, we should be noting it in a way that says "spurious elsewhere, not here, dear Googler/Ashley." :)

Does that make more sense?

Cynthia, I am like Erica in that I wouldn't want profiles to lose a tag altogether. People need to know the profile subject is featured in a fraud. I'm just looking for a little nuance, preferably (to me) in the form of two separate tags distinguishing the difference.

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