ATTENTION Curators, please assist

That was done, Martin, and it's an important profile indeed. Thank you for calling attention to the error.

thank you madam Howton that was a fast one .thanks for your time i apreciate very much
merci

Ok, It’s been 4+ days now since users have been able to do any meaningful work on ancestry.com and had to flounder around uninformed trying to fix problems they really didn’t have all the while worrying about the security of their identities and years of compiled work. That’s bad, but no one can blame Ancestry for what some malicious malcontent devised. However, Ancestry has grown recently at a very rapid pace, acquiring resources from smaller competitors to make available to it’s users. This should be a good thing for the user base. On the way to this though, little if any and certainly insufficient thought and money was given to protecting the resources. One line from Scott Sorensen’s blog post of June 17 at 1:57pm caught my attention from the middle of the last paragraph, “and build the defenses necessary to mitigate future attacks of this sort”. That’s about as blatant an admission of lack of forethought as we will ever get. I don’t single out Mr. Sorensen. I’m sure the “bean counters” had the greater part of the blame for not implementing protection since it detracts from the bottom line in the short run, and they are all about profit. It probably didn’t occur to them that they were much of a target. They didn’t realize that the bigger and more visible you are the more a malefactor is likely to strike you. So now they spend the money after the “horse” has left the barn. As to the lack of timely and useful information being transmitted to the customers, The PR department probably gets the award for that abysmal train wreck. Information was disseminated too late, too slowly, via too few outlets and actually caused people to take actions which were both unnecessary and sometimes damaging to their software and data. Some information was actually misleading, even if not intentional a bad thing. It appeared that the PR department was more concerned with preserving and defending the “corporate image” than assisting their customers and that there was no coordination of the different outlets. The PR department should be placed in the hands of some one who has the “P” (Public) part foremost in his or her priority list. So now “we” yet wait for “Humpty Dumpty” to be reassembled by an organization whose motives and priorities we now have rational and good reason to distrust. Sound familar to the 2011 crash on here anyone?

I've had personal servers unintentionally DDOSed in the past (it used to be called the Slashdot Effect).
It's not trivial to defend against - even testing your defenses is a major hassle, because normal organizations don't have the resources to *mount* such an attack so that you can verify that the defenses work. And there's always something unexpected breaking when an attack actually happens.

And all this was with nobody actually trying to make things work. A malicious attack will deliberately try to make the attack more damaging.

No comments on the PR department. But on the technical side, I feel for the people who have dealt with this on the defending side.

No, it doesn't, Mike. Geni and Ancestry.com are vastly different - about as different as you can get in the same product space.

The good news is that Ancestry & their subsidiaries are back on line, and all genealogists are nothing but pleased.

Mike I was in 9-11 and in IT. Tech depts from "competitors" jumped in to help in every way possible. It was our colleagues suffering.

My name is Israel Adin-( born Framdlich- and I live in Israel . I build my personal family tree and with some more data I build another family tree in behalf to another person, There is and it was not any relationship between the member from the two family trees also some of the names are the same but there is not any evidence about a direct or indirect relationship, I don't know anyone from the members from the second family Tree. I live near Tel Aviv and the data owner from the second tree lives near Haifa. One of your curators merged the data from the two different trees because He thinks the names are from relatives. As I'm not interested in data about people I don't know who they are or who they wore I ask help to make the transference from the second Family Tree to the real and only proprietor Mrs. Rachel Gadot and she and all her family are registered in the tree ( from 1820 to 2010) . She is a direct descendent from the founders. I'M Not Interested To Make DELETE To Any Data Belonging To People From My Family. See Zakalik and Friendly (Frajndlich) in the second tree that was merged in my Tree :Frajndlich and family named Zakalik.

Good day,
I posted information at the following link:
http://www.geni.com/discussions/108820

The information is publicly displayed and i want help to either delete/change or hide the information, more specifically my previous name which it appears under.

My only goal is for my real name not to appear. The information can remain.

Please assist.

I had to create another profile to post this.
Your assistance would be highly regarded.

Sadly, Erica, you are not correct. Ancestry.com and Findagrave.com are back up and running - but the rest of their sites are still down. Including Rootsweb.com, Genforum.com, Myfamily.com, Mundia.com, Mycanvas.com, etc.

The loss of the Rootsweb information is particularly disturbing, since some of that information is priceless and irreplaceable.

I agree with maven.. ancestry.com isn't a billy gates run billonare company but it has more money then most and the fact they don't use it wisely says a lot.

as for harold's suggestion that crap happens when testing stuff that is true but if they were wouldn't they have just come out and said we unintentionally messed up when testing our front end?

and due to their lack of communacation skills we don't know if it was a hack attack to steal credit card data or a mess up on their end. I am quite familar with a ddos attack seeing as weebly and evernote were attacked several days before this.

Michael - Companies just about NEVER admit when their "improvements" break something. At most they mutter about "temporary inconveniences while we improve services". It's part PR and part butt-covering.

Can we take this over to the Findagrave discussion and let the curators get on with solving problems that *can* be fixed on Geni?

Danny Smith re: your message of http://www.geni.com/discussions/80793?msg=947611 ... You will need to open a Ticket with Customer Service to get that taken care of -- Use the Help (small word at the bottom of every Geni page).

Private User, those two have an active manager, so technically you should go through him before having a curator edit his private profiles.

Private User they did not need editing; they became public when I checked them (and Geni already thought they should be dead).

@Dan Cornett: I submitted a ticket two weeks ago to support to assist me, but no reply.

Horrible service.

Curators, please, will you finish the pending merge in two profiles?

Niels Sørensen Dalgaard
Johanne Pedersdatter

Private User,
we are unable to complete merges between different trees. Only a manager in the other tree can do that. :(

OK, thanks - but the profiles in the other tree are public too.
I'll contact the other manager.

Hello Curators, There are two things I am trying to do, I have tried doing everything I can but the system does not let me do so:
1. Split the two trees that my husband Joey is linked to. Our two families are NOT interested in receiving information about each other. My husband has even just tried to delete himself, but no luck- the system will not let!!!
2. Remove someone in my tree who is no longer in the family (broken engagement). I have tried to sever the relationship but it will not let. And I am the manager of the group.

My husband sent a support request to Geni but we have heard nothing back and are growing very frustrated. Can you please help??

Sorahleah Mandelbaum there are two questions in your query, I don't know which ones you're interested in.

- how to stop receiving information about families you're not interested in. Profile settings are available for each person to choose what kind of information they receive (they can, for instance, turn off birthday reminders on http://www.geni.com/account_settings/notifications, and set the size of family they want information from at http://www.geni.com/account_settings/family). There are also settings that allow you to hide relationships of living people on the tree so that the tree remains, but people aren't bothered by being reminded of facts they don't want to be reminded of.

- how to remove correct information from the tree about the relationships in the family

The latter is of course something that we're very hesitant to do - first of all because Geni's mission is to gather and share correct information, but also because it's very hard to construct a tree where someone who doesn't know the sensitivities won't just come along and "fix the errors" at a later time - and, of course, there is never just one link between two families.

I'd like to discuss some more on what you want to achieve here, and why.

The third piece - severing a relationship that no longer exists and doesn't need to be recorded - is easy. Just send me the link to the profiles (privately if you don't want to put it out in a public discussion), with information about what is to be cut, and I'll fix it for you.

I don't want to take part in this discussion . I have a bad impression from the freedom from a local curator that decided to merge data belonging to different people for " the pleasure to do something" against my request no to merge. This is ignorance and against a logical sense. I ask only to end with my personal problem and continue with my family tree. A theoretical discussions between Your people us not the answer I need/

I think this thread's descritpion needs to be updated.. it's becoming a complain at the cuators area and we are getting off topic. Shmuel-Aharon Kam (Kahn) / (שמואל אהרן קם (קאן's goals were good but that was 2 years ago and i think it's time for a update to them.. Some internet forums have a total room or thread devoted to rants I think some one should start that.. and leave this open for support questions only i back up Harald Tveit Alvestrand's statements it's incorrect info we should be focused on not correct ones..

and I don't know who force merged what isreal... personally I've never had that problem.. all the people with one or two exceptions that i have spoken with on here about merges have said mind you this is after i've sent them a e-mail on here saying politely this is correct and accurate info with sources please don't mess with it.. they usally withdraw their merge request and honor my wishes.. Erica Howton has been esp helpfull in regards to that

Private User was your note related to what Sorahleah was saying, or was it directed at something furhter upthread? This thread is a bit hard to follow, since usually it's "one question / one answer". when we get a long back-and-forth, and new questions come in while we're chatting, the thread becomes hard to read.
It is usually best to start a new discussion on new topics - if you @ - tag people in the new discussion, they will probably notice it.

Israel Adin, your messages here are as confused as your messages to me some months ago. And I did help you with your tree after you specifically asked me for help. You even found my private cellular number and called me friday evening. And one more thing: If you live in a glass house, don't throw stones.
I don't want to be more specific, but these unrelated families are not really what you claim.

resisting urge to make comment about trolls

Dear Curators,
This showed up in my conflict resolution box. I think there could be a bad merge here.

http://www.geni.com/merge/resolve/6000000006442422712

Check out her timeline. I don't think it's possible to give birth when you're 1 year old.
Thanks,
Jessie German

Jessica Marie German ... Please start a discussion under the Deborah Johnson (Ward) [an immigrant to Americas] profile ... it looks like a genealogical "sorting out" issue that may not need curator-specific assistance (although some who know that 'area' may get involved!).

I have not received the Geni weekly family newsletter for several months. I have contacted the staff at Geni. They told me that it is sent to me. I then changed my e-mail to another account. Still I have received no newsletter. Any suggestions of what I can do?