GEDCOM Madness

David: Does it matter?

Karl Freiherr von Grotthuss is not connected to the big tree at all.

Just avoid him/his profiles... and it won't be a problem for us.

Jason P Herbert

I am assuming that all 60 of these were uploaded using the same account, which means that they are all connected together in at least one place. This means that even if only ONE of them EVER finds its way to being connected to the Big Tree, then all sixty of them will show up in tree matches as being connected to us

The time to prevent further chaos is long before a new mess gets merged in to the Big Tree. Geni needs to prevent these things from happening- even in completely private, isolated trees. Otherwise we just have more ticking time bombs lurking in the database.

Have you sent this info to Genihelp? Sometimes the heads up helps them - if they don't choose to ignore it because they don't know what to do.
Sharon

SIXTY times?? I can only think of ONE user who would be that stupid.

If I'm right then I strongly doubt Geni will do anything about it. BUT it is still important to tell them, if only to close the hole, and prevent others from doing this as well.

geni will not stop anything,since geni is free for all to use !

As David says leave them, as long they are not connected they do no harm.

Smuel do you realy think Scott is responsable fore every strange upload??

BTW never try to connect an outstanding tree unless you are 100% certain of the contense.

I would not be alarmed if Geni could assure me that this user will NEVER be allowed to merge into the Big Tree. But history has proven that users with large trees are highly likely to end up becoming connected to us all.

I did submit this to Geni Help. Ticket #AYX-972395

Maybe it was a glitch- or they didn't think it worked. Some folks are not very computer savy.

Yes, and Geni can sometimes be slow, so you don't realise it has actually gone through - but 60! times? Wish he would tell us how that happened. It might be a good story ;-> Maybe Geni help can tell us, David, though all indications are that they are no longer able to explain the programme either. Seems a pity

This is strange indeed - has anyone reached out to the user yet to ask them why they are doing this? My guess is that this is an unintentional mistake that can be corrected by the user.

I've made no attempt to contact him so far. I wanted to hear from Geni first to clarify that sixty GEDCOM uploads by a single user account is even possible within Geni. Are there no restrictions that would prevent this?

What is the age of the profiles?

At this moment, you get one GEDCOM upload for every PRO account you create. So - somewhat expensive. I believe that there was a time when this was less stringent.

All of them are dated within the last 60 days.

@Noah you said " This is strange indeed - has anyone reached out to the user yet to ask them why they are doing this? My guess is that this is an unintentional mistake that can be corrected by the user'

Are you the same Noah who answers our questions in the Forum? If you are, shouldn't Geni be getting in touch with this person?

Doesn't "Freiherr" mean "Baron" in German? I think that this is an active historical account. Look at his wife's name. Anna Sophia v.Maltzan Freiin zu Wartenberg u. Penzlin. "Freiin zu Wartenberg u. Penzlin" means Baroness of Wartenberg and Penzlin.

Did you notice @9.02am this morning that Karl Freiherr von Grotthuss was about to leave a message and deleted it..

Günther,
this seems to be a very SMALL gedcom file, so it should not have taken very long to upload. A quick look-over of the tree gives me an estimate of about 200-300 profiles each. More so, the copies are NOT identical - I'm seeing between 45-48 profiles in each tree's Karl's Family Group.

So repeating the upload SIXTY times over a period of at least four weeks, is rather unlikely. Also some are public and some are not. This all takes conscious effort. Even if, for a moment, we presume it "took forever" to upload each copy, a "normal" person does NOT come back sixty times and press the same button over and over again, if they didn't get results the first 10, 20, 30, 40 times.... Presently I see **158** (one hundred and fifty eight!) copies of this tree.

The only way that could possibly have happened "by accident" is due to a severe error on Geni's Servers. But how likely is it that such a loop would happen for ONLY one file and/or go undetected for four weeks!?

I am willing to bet that the intent here is clearly malicious, and I've only met the one Geni user who was quite that crazy... This is a total of between 30 and 50 THOUSAND profiles. There is only ONE user who plays that particular "numbers game".

I'll further make an educated guess that the method that this is being done is through a service like the one that Visa credit-card company provided, that generates one-time use only credit-card "numbers", for online transactions. So you can create as many Pro-trial accounts as you like.

So someone please DO tell me I'm wrong. Any takers? Noah? Mike? Bueller? Bueller?

Noah did you notice the comment immediately before yours? Written by "Karl Freiherr von Grotthuss" his very self!

"Noah did you notice the comment immediately before yours? Written by "Karl Freiherr von Grotthuss" his very self!"

Noah himself clearly used his magical Geni powers to post that empty message that appeared to be from Karl Freiherr von Grotthuss. I know this because I got two e-mails in a row, both with exactly the same content- one from Karl and one from Noah. Then the contents from Karl's note disappeared. Now the whole thing disappeared.

Yes, the mystery post was from me, not from that user. We're looking into this situation.

Received this duplicate in my email 2 minutes apart from the the same one sent by Noah. Seems he's reaching out to you, Noah ;->

Dear Sharon Lee,
Karl Freiherr von Grotthuss commented in the public discussion "GEDCOM Madness"

Your collaborator, David Kaleita, started this discussion.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes, the mystery post was from me, not from that user. We're looking into this situation.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reply to Karl's message:
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-The Geni Team

This tree now contains 167 duplicates (or near-duplicates).

Noah, had Geni gotten any insight about this person's motives yet?

Talking about Gedcom madness: We have got two new identical large Gedcom's added and managed by historical profiles and blocking merges without any collaborators.

Jacqueli Charlene Finley and Jacqueli Charlene Finley

Examples of identical profiles: Osbern de Bolbec, Lord of Giffard, seigneur de Longueville-sur-Scie vs [6000000008640422822[]]

I have reported it as [#QCG-100571], but if anyone have some knowledge of who is behind these please tell us.

How could that POSSIBLY happen that two different people uploaded the SAME file at the same time? Inconceivable!

David, I see 167 (up from 158) EXACT matches (there are other matches too?)... I'm betting the "new" ones were just not indexed yet, last time we looked. Noah can probably tell us the exact number. It would be really surprising / incriminating if the uploads continued.

Just for fun:
http://www.geni.com/search?names=Kaiser+Karl+%28Charlemagne%29

No insight yet, but I believe we will take appropriate action soon.

I am getting merge requests from numbers of my collaborators for profiles in the family line of Carloman (Charlemagne), and all have upwards of 30 parents etc. Is there a suggestion about whether I should reject them or not. Can we check that these duplicates aren't caused by this problem or aren't going to worsen that tangle?

Why is it the more I try to fix, desolve, complete the more the amount of merge issues goes up? I'm drowning here!! Maybe I need some instruction as to how to manage this better!! thanks anybody!!! :)

When you merge two dad's together, then their wives, their parents and their kids all need merging.

My list is finally settling down around 75 after six months. There is an end.

Also, if you join the collaboration pool, sometimes fairies swing by and do some merges for you.

Best of wishes, Janet