Merges.. What happened???

Click here:
http://blog.geni.com/2010/08/new-feature-merge-center.html

I don't understand the whole Geni thing. The above link is helpful but I don't intend to do all these merges. I don't have the time to spend on it.

Thank you for the information

Thanks David

So what do you do when you find this message: "You cannot merge a profile with its ancestor" Under Profile Merges?

It says to do the following: We've found duplicates for these profiles. View the pending merge to verify that they are the same.

But you can't view it, because it's a mistake,

Gudröd I Haraldsson, konge Manager @Anders Eriksson

I include the name of Noah Tutak here to attract his attention. Hi Noah!

Alice and others, you will soon work out how this works. I am interested to hear the views of others. At first glance, I am not convinced the changes are for the good. Here are some of my thoughts:

1. You can't now see or choose who a merge request is going to. It used to be useful to choose who you sent the merge request to. While the new merging system may be helpful if people have you on auto-accept, most people are NOT using auto-accept.

2. You can't send a message with a merge request, to explain why you want the merge, what your connection is, etc. That used to be a useful feature.

3. You also can't now include a collaboration or join family request with a merge request. Again a useful feature that has apparently been lost.

4. Outstanding sent requests for merges that were sent before today have disappeared, along with all the supporting text put with them. That was valuable information to encourage others to complete merges - all now apparently lost. All record of previous targeted merge requests to others - all now lost.

5. You don't get notified of a merge request as it is sent - it just goes in your list. This list does not apparently distinguish between profiles that have just been merged in tree view, as against actual requests sent from others that they have targeted for your attention. Many I know on Geni who manage large numbers of profiles have tons of outstanding merges from tree view merging, which don't get their immediate attention - they just sit there, and nobody worries too much. But if you get an actual merge request sent from someone else, targeted to you, you try to oblige and deal with that one more quickly. Now with no distinction in category, they will all just sit there. Most of us have limited time to spend on Geni, so likely we will not do too much more merging, because we don't now know where best to put our effort. People will just say: "It's all too much", like Mary Alice did in the comment above.

Overall, my initial view on the changes is negative. I am of course as always interested to hear the views of others.

Hi All,
As a casual (lately anyway) user of Geni, I've not gotten involved with the nuts and bolts of the system. But this morning I received Alice's query in my email and decided to look and see what the problem might be. My brother and I basically started the root tree for this group as a Strohmeyer project, and to her immense credit Alice has taken it far beyond where we initially envisioned it going, especially on the Gallagher side.

So I manage a handful of relatives' profiles, and this morning when I clicked on "Pending Profile Merges" I found over a thousand awaiting my action, many if not all of which are people I've never heard of.

I don't have a really good idea of what the "old" system looked like, but I'm not at all sure what to do with these 1000 either. Any advice would be most welcome.

Michael,

When you go to your Merge Issues page at http://www.geni.com/list/requested_merges, make sure that the little box that says "Include Collaborators" near the upper right side is NOT checked.

Does un-checking this box make the number of pending merges drop down to something more reasonable?

Including collaborators means that you are not only seeing the ones that affect your own tree, but also the trees of everyone whom you have accepted as collaborators.

Mike, as one of my collaborators, it means that you are seeing the merges that I am dealing with, I have been taking care of the most of the merges. On another note, I had done most of the Gallagher research years ago and didn't really think anyone was interested in it. There is so much more information that I would like to get, but can't because I'm unable to go back east and collect the data. Maybe someday...

I just blazed through 59 pending merges from "my merge center," including 1 merge that led to 20 pending merges on a profile with 185 managers.

The hot matching also seems improved and there are far less erroneous profiles attracted to the stack.

So while I appreciate the concerns raised, so far I am finding this enhancement a major step forward.

Alice Knapp asked one of my questions? What to do when there are errors that can't be fixed by merging. They need the ability to delete from the merge an item that you cannot verify or that you know is wrong.

Pro users can cut bad connections.

Bjorn, as a Pro user, how do I cut bad connections?

In the tree view, edit profile, relationship tab, patience, and then it will pop up buttons for cutting any connection.

Except to children and siblings, but you can cut parent connections from them.

Please note that you ONLY can cut connections which are merged into the main profiles. Connections which comes in via a pending merge cannot be cut, mainly because the connection is not real yet and a simple undo of the bad pending merge will remove it.

Bjorn, Thank you for the info. There should be a user manual!

Thanks for all your responses. David, unchecked the box you mentioned and that thousand quickly shrunk to one!!

Alice, can you please email me privately and let me know if there's anything I can do to help out with your East Coast search. I have a friend up in PA who can get whatever we might need from local resources if we can just tell him what we're looking for. It may take a while, but it's bound to be quicker than a trip east.

Also, can you check on Christine Mulligan's profile? It shows up as the one record needing a possible merger, but I already approved a merger some time ago. I'm not sure I can do anything further from this end.

Mary Alice Benedict Grindol
Mary, merges are essential to make Geni work. The new merge center makes it easy to do merges and correct problems in the tree.

Okay, I need help. This message keeps showing up "Unable to complete merge: Profile id#6000000006441075667 has been merged into a different profile" I keep getting it into my merge files and it won't disappear.

Yes, I'm getting the same error message. To me it's because the merge gets completed by a different collaborator but that is not yet being reflected through the merge center. In other words, the database needs to be refreshed / re-indexed.

I skip on to other issues and trust that it will sort itself in time.

George this is a public discussion if the information you posted there is your personal information I would recommend posting everything up to your personal information and then delete that message.

A suggestion when you get a merge request look at the profile and see who is the manager and when last they were online, if it is recent, click on their name and request to Collaborate.

If the manager has not been online for a long time for over a year click on help at the bottom of the page and tell them you cannot merge because this manager has been away for a long time

Anoother suggestion is if you are having problems merging maybe a Curator can help so post a request here http://www.geni.com/discussions/80793

Also you may get more luck with merges if you join the Collaborators project
http://www.geni.com/projects/Collaboration-Pool

Angus - most of us are not curators so cannot see when another manager with whom we do not collaborate was last online. Recent activity can tell us they were online recently, but lack of recent activity does not prove anything.

Thanks for pointing that out David I completely forgot that.

So I guess the best thing would be to post in the 'Curators..please assist' discussion or what do you suggest?

Angus, the best thing would be for Geni to bring back last online for everyone. The curators have enough to do without burdening them with some thing that Geni could solve easily

There were some privacy issues with that so it was removed

I find myself somewhat agreeing with both Angus and Eldon here.

On the one hand, yes Angus a non-curator would best bring it to curator attention.

On the other hand, I agree with Eldon that curators have enough to do already.

And on the third hand, I do wonder about the privacy issue. Is it really a privacy issue for everyone to see on your profile when you were last online? I ask this, given that I can just list the person in the appropriate public discussion and a curator will gladly tell me and the whole world in that public discussion when the person was last online, without any apparent concern for that person's "privacy"?

There is something wrong here.

I agree with David, I have had issues with other relatives, or old time managers of some of my profiles, and I am wasting someones time at Geni, sending a request & asking for control of the profile, if I don't know when the last time was that they were on here. It's aggravating to send a message to someone who hasnt' been on in 2 years, waiting for a reply from them, and not knowing if they will ever respondl.

This should be an option that the user can switch between "show" and "hide" my last online.
default should be "show"