ATTENTION Curators, please assist

Rachel Schwartz Smithers We need links to the profiles.

Sorry! Clay Wilbur Bigelow, the other one does not come up (I was not the original requester.)

Also Private, Private, Private - unable to find replacement manager.

Rachel Schwartz Smithers The merges will not happen because there is no active manager to approve them. There are also 2 other pending merges in Seth Kates tree which are the same situation
Just kill the merge requests or ignore them.

Please help!

Someone else's tree was merged with mine without my permission! Now I have hundreds of people that are not related to me in any way.
http://www.geni.com/family-tree#6000000008880034919

Raija Matikainen and her children were added by me, but anyone attached to her son Marko Matikainen should not be in my tree! I do not know any on those people, specially over 500 people related to his ex-wife. It won't let me unmerge that branch of the tree, despite that I deleted the collaboration projects (which I didn't add myself either). Please please please remove everyone related to Marko Matikainen by marriage, the whole huge branch!

Anastasia Oravec

Well, what you call your tree is shared with 28 other users who have full access to both accept merge requests and merge in profiles them self without having to get an approval from you.

I am the one who added all those people there, I created the whole profile and only gave my closest family access to change things. Then suddenly some person related to my third cousin's ex-wife has a right to change the stuff I've input? And change right information for wrong? (He has changed names of my relatives for the wrong ones!) Where did this merger come from in the first place? How can this person get access to the people I've added?

Can you send the URL of a person whose NAME was changed?

That is not something that should be done...

His sister already changed it back, I guess she knows better what her brother's name is. Also the tree they merged to mine doesn't even have normal names of the people. Instead of names they only have initials, question marks and bunch of children that just say "child", "child", "child". No names, no last names, no spouse names, nothing. What is the point of that family tree? I have done some serious research into my family, added stories, dates, places, documents, photos. And now this sloppy excuse for a family tree is attached to all the work I put into mine. I am pissed.
I just don't understand how that person merged with my tree, because none of the other users that have the right to merge would have ever accepted that request. No one knows who those people from Estonia are! Like I said, probably relatives of an ex-wife of my third cousin once removed. So we had ONE person in common and now I have a 1000 "children" and question marks as "relatives"?

My Uncle appears in the tree twice. The conflict is here: http://www.geni.com/merge/compare/6000000000331021817?return=duplic...

It was the result of an accident that split and duplicated his entry a while ago. I managed to merge the two copies of his wife but since he (and his son http://www.geni.com/merge/compare/6000000001065943480?return=duplic...) actually have Geni accounts, nobody can merge those profiles without their assistance. But neither continue to use Geni.

It is clear from the profiles (and the shared wives & kids) that these are the same people. In fact, it's clear that they were previously single profiles that got duplicated if you look at all the data. There are also at least 4 requests to merge on the profiles.

Is there a way you guys can complete those merges for us? Both of them joined to look around and have now moved on. And our family tree is looking quite ugly).

So I guess I'm on my own with this one. Thanks for nothing. My mother-in-law has been trying to convince me to move all my stuff to ancestry.com. It would be a lot of work, but at least I wouldn't be dismissed, mocked (thank you Bjørn P. Brox for "great" customer service) for having shitload of strangers in my tree or dealing with your buggy website. Adios.

Private User First of all, give the curators time to reply. Secondly, you were asked to send a URL of a profile in question . Instead you post a angry reply.. The initials and child are probably private profiles but without links, we don't know what profiles you are talking about. Curators can see but not change private profiles.

Which profile? I already sent a link in my first message. This is the person who has the whole new branch added to him (relatives by marriage). Private

I have created almost the whole tree of people related to me by myself. And I'm sure there are a lot of people, who can accept mergers, but I bet most of them are on my husbands side of the tree so they would never accept someone who they don't know and who is "related" to my side of the tree. My side was created and managed by me and couple of close relatives invited by me until this branch of strangers appeared out of nowhere. And if what you say is true and the profiles are private (which I doubt, look at the people related to the person in the link by marriage, whoever added them has no idea who they are, he just knows that somebody who was related to someone had a child with someone, hence no names, dates, nothing), then what use are they to me anyway and why do those people get access to my profiles, get to explore my family tree, personal information about the other side of my family, etc.? I just want that whole branch gone, I barely know my distant cousin, so I am really not interested in his 3 ex-wives and their 600 (!) relatives. As I am the one who is working on MY ancestry, I would like to only have MY relatives on the tree that I have put together.

And concerning my angry reply, the answer I got from the previous curator had a condescending tone to it. I am only polite to the people who are polite to me.

Thank you.

Private User I believe I was able to do this correctly - 4 members requested the merge.

Please double check for me and resolve any data conflicts.

Private User The profile for Private is private. There is no green dot after his name and as a curator, I get a warning. A quick look did not show any profile with child or an initial but that would be normal for s curators view of the tree. Remember, we see the profiles and tree differently than you do which is why we need links to the type of profiles you are describing.

Fay asked for a URL for the profile whose name had been changed, you did not respond to her, are we supposed to guess?

The message from Bjorn is short, and factual. Someone in the 28 other users who have edit rights is where your problem is.

Please remember that once you open your tree up to other family members, the tree is no longer "your" tree it is a family tree for all family members out at least 4 generations to 4th cousins. That includes spouses and their families as well as your direct bloodline.

No, you are not supposed to guess as I did respond, saying that the name has already been changed back. Also Fay did not have a curator sign next to her name so I wasn't sure who she was. And the profile we are talking about is still that same Marko Matikainen, we've been talking about it all day now. What other links do you need?
This is me Private User
This is my grandmother's brother Toivo Matikainen
And this is his son (once again) Private
This is Marko's tree http://www.geni.com/family-tree/index/6000000008469295291
and everybody - EVERYBODY - on the right side of him (except for his mother) are strangers, not added or accepted by me and I DO NOT WANT THEM THERE. Not the ones related to him or his mother by marriage!

And as tired as I am to repeat this, NO ONE would have accepted a merge request from my side of the tree, because I am the only one actively managing it. Everyone who is related to me and has access to changing information has not been participating in creating the tree. Hence it is my tree. My family tree made and upkept by me. So I just have to assume that there's a bug in your software. I have received couple of merger requests and always declined so imagine my shock to see all those lovely strangers added to MY project that I have spent months on contacting relatives, gathering pictures, etc. I'm so happy that now I have all those children and question marks as my "relatives". And that Marko Matikanen's name was suddenly changed to Markku when they joined MY tree without my approval! They did other changes too, like change people's maiden names and shit, and I had to correct it all. What a great collaboration you are enabling! And no wiggling out of it either!! No way to decide how far you want to take your project! No way to keep strangers from accessing and messing with your work! Genius!

You are clearly not going to help me and I am wasting my breath. But I am done working on my tree on this website. I will delete everyone I can so all those stranger mergers can't get their hands on my family info. Excuse me for not wanting my third cousin's once removed ex-wife's uncle's cousin's child named "? ?" to know personal family stories about my grandfather's war experiences.

Anastasia says, "I have received couple of merger requests and always declined " - so since Curators can now forcibly merge Private Profiles when they get a request -- isn't it possible the merge was done by a Curator, at the request of one of the folks Anastasia declined to merge with?

Anastasia -- can you click on the Profile (or at least one, if there were more than one) that was merged, and then click on "Revisions" and see who did the merge (and when)?

Anastasia I've been looking at the tree, it wasn't any more clear to me than to Eldon where / what to disconnect ... Which is what curators can do, we can disconnect some relationships.

I've asked Customer Service to investigate further and assist.

Hope this helps. I'm sure your family privacy will be well maintained, it always is, and it will get sorted properly. And I appreciate the patience.

Private User, that is one reason I want links, which she will not give. You can't help anyone who will not cooperate. also curators do not "forcibly" merge, they act on requests if they can amd many times they can not as I could not earlier today

Anastasia.....the 'P' means a Pro-member on Geni...

What everyone is trying to get you to answer is what PROFILES on your tree are connected to the 'new' ones that you are concerned about.....

Unlike a Curator, I cannot SEE private profiles...only 'public'....but you do not go very far in ANY family before you are connected to someone else's tree...usually by marriage....they work their tree, you work yours but they skim each other....and DO link together with the common marriage connection.....

Depending on how you work your family...(how straight up the tree you go) you will eventually connect with other trees....that is only natural...and you dont seem to want to admit that fact...

If I read what you are saying correctly, you want nothing to do with a branch of the family....yet they exist....

What we are trying to determine is whether the LINK made by the other manager was IN ERROR (and should NOT be attached) or whether it is a valid link to a branch of one of your family members.

IF it is an error, we want to help you in correcting it....but we need the URL of a person connected to one of your legit family members.(with a statment from you telling us who is YOURS and the one that is NOT).

Private User I sent you a email so that you can deal directly with us in customer service and see what can be done to fix your tree.

Private User Thank you, Lois! I looked at the revisions and you were right! A troll CURATOR merged several profiles into mine a couple of months ago and all on the same day! I will work on getting that undone.

Erica Howton Thank you, Erica! I got an apology on the rude curators' behalf and an offer to help from the customer support center! They said that some volunteer curators forget themselves while talking to customers.

Eldon, how many more links can I send you? If you want something other than I have already posted you could steer me in the right direction! And yes, obviously, curators DO forcibly merge, since that's exactly what happened here. Read your instruction manual again, you don't seem to be on top of your game here.

Fay, those people are not related to ME so this has absolutely nothing to do with not wanting to be associated with a certain branch of the family tree. This is not a kindergarten, I do know how to play well with others, I just don't want to be a part of your world family tree. I'm perfectly happy with the one I have and I don't need to eventually see you in it. You can stop non-helping now! Good luck!

Private User You mentioned ones named Child and ones that just only have initials. Those were the ones I asked for.

Did you check with the curator? He must have been asked to do them.

If you don't want to be a part of the world tree, then perhaps Geni is not the place for you but MyHistory probably is.

Anatasia.......YOU are the one that mentioned a third cousin and his ex-wives....not I.....

And I DID say that if they should NOT have been connected (an incorrect merge) that THAT should be severed...did I not?

And dissing Curators is not very "works well with others" behavior.....

Unless you live in a world foreign to the rest of us...mistakes DO happen, we have all made a few....but to take the attitude you have been taking is not very nice either..

IF you bothered to read about Geni...you would know that while you are allowed to learn and create your own private tree....there will come a time when your people ARE connected to other people's trees and are therefore subject to being incorporated into the BIG TREE...(that saves you from searching for people that have already have been found and further expand your own work).

If your goal is to have a completely private tree, all of your own doing, and subject to the same errors that a vast majority of 'private' trees posted on the web have...be our guest....but, as Eldon says, then perhaps Geni is not the proper forum for your endeavors.

We have all gone through our own ANGST when first mixing our work with that of others....and finding small glitches...but we all very soon learned how much nicer it is to have 'kindred sprits' involved in our quests...

Hope you come to see Geni that way also.

Customer Service has directly assisted the user and there is no need to keep dragging on with a temperamental tone. Geni is a welcoming community and we should not be giving a contrary impression. Let's move on.

IMO the concepts of private tree and world tree are incompatible. Geni should deal with it these in different ways

Private User - I wondered about that back in August 2011, and so started this discussion, in a sense specifically asking if the two were compatible - http://www.geni.com/discussions/98590 - and the response from Geni was a definite yes, they were compatible and Geni was dedicated to doing both simultaneously [Michelle Kempner was Geni staff then, and apparently definitely speaking for Geni then]. After firmly and actively soliciting both types of actions and goals for many years, with many folks focusing on one, many folks focusing on the other, I do not know how Geni can fairly separate them now.

It would be a major overhaul to the user interface of the website, but it would be really beneficial for cases like these to separate the concepts of private tree and world tree.

In this case, the problem stemmed from the fact that Anastasia had spent a good deal of time setting up her tree, and when the curator (who is not related in any way to and has no knowledge of this family) merged the trees without any input from the relevant parties with mismatched spellings in the two trees, it screwed up Anastasia's work.

What would be ideal is for users to establish their private trees and should they choose to link trees with others, the location of those links would define what appears in a "show linked trees"/"world tree" mode. In that case, should the linked named for example have discrepancies in the spelling of names (which may arise from language-specific transliteration problems), both interpretations would be shown.

Daniel, that would be than a major overhaul to the user interface, it would be a major change to the whole purpose of Geni.com.

In my opinion, we don't need another "me too" genealogy web site. The World Tree is what it's all about. Everything else is just gravy.

In my own opinion, if you are only looking for records and not for cousins then your private tree belongs on MyHeritage.

This is coming from the Chief Genealogist of MyHeritage, Daniel Horowitz.

Kevin