Major Problem

Started by Thomas Harris on Sunday, January 23, 2011
Problem with this page?

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Ive worked for hours and hours and hours on my tree....NOT WANTING IT TO BE COMBINED AND EDITED BY PEOPLE I DONT KNOW WHO DONT KNOW WHAT THEYRE DOING AND GET OUT OF WACK HAVE A LOT OF ERRORS AND BE CONFUSING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...i did NOT accept any collaberation requests,i log in and my tree has tons of people whom someone else aparently added, and it COMPLETELY screwed up my 5000+ member tree!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! before i MURDER someone, can anybody help me to solve this problem and get rid of all these changes some idiot made to destroy my tree? secondly, can someone tell me how to contact the geni staff? thirdly, can someone tell me how to make sure this doesnt happen again??

Post a link to the area that needs help. Perhaps we'll be able to see what happened based on revisions and correct it. You can contact the Geni staff at help@geni.com, but honestly, I don't see that there is much they'll be able to do for you unless it's a technical issue. As for a solo tree, very difficult to do on Geni as it goes against the entire system and its goals. I'd recommend a different site if you're a solo Genealogist. Soon as you invite one person to your tree, you no longer have full control. It's designed to be a collaborate tree. Here are some details about what Geni has done and plans to do to help maintain accuracy.
http://www.geni.com/blog/looking-back-at-2010/
http://www.geni.com/blog/looking-forward-to-2011/

any site you recomend?, geni is a giant failure due to its not being able to be flexib;e

I think Ancestry.com is built on the model that you describe and if you're a paying member, the sourcing features are excellent as you can link their documents (like census records) right to the profile. Hate to push you away from the site though, Geni is on the right track I think. The new features and soon to be released features are going a long way toward bringing both accuracy and collaboration. It's my personal favorite, so perhaps it's a failure for your needs.

My first suggestion is to please avoid the suggestion to murder people. Although it may be your frustration talking, for those who do not know you as a person it comes across as frightening and threatening. I tend to get better results when I ask nicely for something.

Sorry, clearly a figure of speech, but it is very frustrating when people pay no attention and merge into my tree and in this case erasing a millennia of records. Of course I still have some of the information on paper, but that was quite a bit of work ruined. Now while its very cute to see for example that Heather and I are 17th cousins 16 times removed, this isn't highly relevant and the amount of merging going on becomes counterproductive at a certain point. I guess I'm done with geni

Thomas,

If I follow your profile correctly, you joined a few days ago, Jan 20?

You are extremely lucky (or advanced in your genealogy) to be able to link into the "big tree" so quickly. It took me months of building out, record by record, to be able to link up with common ancestors.

You do know that no source data is lost in a merge, correct? That is counter the collaborative model (Wikipedia) Geni is based on, and I've never seen it happen.

What I've seen more frequently is not understanding how to adjust view options to the area of the tree currently being worked on, or tolerance for the merge / correction culture that is geni's direction.

I've viewed many ancestry trees. My personal opinion is good for currentish time with source documents attached ... pretty lousy for historical period (before 1800 or so).

i think youll find that working with others is immesley better then copying out thousands of profiles that already exist. really how many of those 5000 were new profiles? not many id wager. Curators are hard at work fixing all the problems with the historical tree, so with time its getting better. why not stay and be part of this rather then leave and have your hard work be wasted? yes it looks messy but we're working on it.

This appears to be the area in which Thomas had profiles merged into the big tree:
John MacDonald, Lord of the Isles

Thank you, Jonathan. There's some merging needed there <understatement>.

I'll see who's feeling 14th centuryish. I have some rampant errors in Mayflower land or I'd give it a go.

Thomas,
Even more reason, as I'm sure you know, not to have your master tree on geni. Rather use geni as your backup and for research purposes because for that it is excellent and getting better all the time.

Thomas, if you're considering leaving Geni, I hope you'll then reconsider collaboration. Since your tree is now tied into the larger tree, it makes it much harder for us to fix problems if we don't have a collaboration.

geni.com sucks big time

@brenda then why are you here

@ Jason Wills to complain about my site. I have tried the help and I have e-mailed 2 times and I can not get on my site now. I have worked on my tree for 3 years and now it says I do not have permission to view my own tree???? do you know how to ge geni.com to help with problems?????

@Brendan ... Jason was asking Brenda, not you. The "@ <person name>" is convention to direct a question.

@Brenda ... I will try and get your issue elevate in the support queue.

@Brendan ... BTW, once you get outside of your 3rd GGP, the profiles are public, so might not be a good tool to use as a backup.

I download my Geni tree to a Mac genealogy program regularly. That's the safest thing.

I have gained a lot of benefit from being on Geni. I have been able to build a tree, find relatives all over the world and invite them to Geni, and have them build out their branches and fix places where I didn't have much information.

For the parts of my family for which there are historical records and genealogies, I have been able to search on Geni for where to connect to the Big Tree and suddenly have a much larger tree. Yes, there are mistakes in the Big Tree which we have the tools to fix and with Curators and Master Profiles, the older parts of the tree are being fixed. There is a lot of knowledge here and more joining everyday, so it's a good place to be. Of course that's depending upon your goals.

I also use Ancestry and many sites with historical records and colloboration such as www.jewishgen.org. There is no one answer to genealogy.

@Thomas

Thomas, one of the wonderful things about Geni is that you need to do very little to build your tree if youfon't want to. Others, thats us, will build and fix it for you. All you have to do is collaborate with those you encounter that share parts of the tree. You've loaded 600+ profiles so I would guess you have plenty of merge issues to take care off before your tree will settle. To expect this to happen in a few days is just pretty unrealistic.

So here's my 2 cents worth that should cost you little investment in time, but may just allow you to start seeing the benefits of geni. Everywhere you have a merge point request collaboration with the people you encounter there or just make sure you accept all collaboration requests as they come along. That cannot take you more than a few minutes a day. Do that and observe what happens over a couple of months and let's review how you feel then... The trick is to collaborate more not less. I note you haven't really started the process, so you cannot expect to get the benefits..
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@Thomas Harris, I have as a curator done some work in this area now. Could you please take a look and let me know if you can see areas that still need curatorial work? I'll do what I can.

brenda r. knece, I am sorry to hear you are struggling to view your tree. I thought you were much happier with Geni the last time we communicated. If there is anything more you'd like me to do then please just say.

brenda r. knece I was unable to locate any ticket from you. Can you please send me a private message with your ticket number and/or email address, so I can better assist you.

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