ATTENTION Curators, please assist

Sounds like the lack of a common understanding of the definition of "another person's tree" persist here in Geni. The whole point with Geni is that we're all in the SAME tree. When you add profiles, you are adding them to EVERYONE's tree, not just a tree that you want to believe is your own.

A little addon to my 4:06 PM post to Francine

You can also export GEDCOM's for inlaw trees if necessary: http://www.geni.com/family-tree/forest

… just go 'Actions' > 'Export' on the specific set of profiles you want to grab there.

JUDI

You're asking me why I think no one should be allowed to edit MY family tree. Refer to your lengthy 3rd paragraph, wherein you answered your own question.

MIKE
I appreciate your taking the time to respond. Your front page advertisement reads as follows:

:Use Geni to:

Build your family tree

Invite relatives to collaborate

Preserve your family history

Discover new relatives

Share family photos and videos."

Nowhere does it mention that my work can be usurped without due credit, changed without permission and without warning, deleted without cause, etc...

You guys can keep tossing out the collaborative terms all you want. Collaboration means we work together. It does not condone theft of information or research, nor does it condone unauthorized tampering with other user's personal family trees.

You may do it, and your users may do it, but do no for one moment presume to think that might justifies right. Because you are wrong.

No one has the right to change, steal, edit, or otherwise make changes to another user's work WITHOUT PERMISSION. Period.

http://www.geni.com/merge/compare/6000000000475164867?fsession_id=1...

Nothing can be done with these - Geni warning -

http://www.geni.com/merge/compare/6000000000475164867?fsession_id=1...

Judi, that isn't true. My tree was merged, profiles were changed, and information hijacked without warning and without consent.

Why else would I come here and make such a huge fuss about it?

I am sorry I Ihave to approve or disprove every merge that is made into my profiles - and I have to approve data changes - and I have to go in and correct conflicting data - - excpet for those i have set on automatic which are done with the curators for the higher up branches of the tree - - the only ones are recent family members which are new to geni - and new to genealogy or deal with my very direct line and research in greene county indiana i have found the saying i wanted to post - - thisis on profiles that i have added and manage my self -

'You are the manager of Jon or Jane doe' profile. You can edit his profile and control who has access to his information using your managed profiles settings'.

this does not appear on those that i have granted co-mannager ship of through colloboration - -

NONE of my profiles have ever been HIJACkED as you claimed - I granted colloboration shortly after i began in November 2009 - and merged profiles - as requested or asked to do that matched my profiles

i do not see any of the curator's hijacking you profiles - and I personally can not go in and Hojack them as I either have to request to edit them - or request to colloborate - or request you to merge a profile and then you must agree to it - - that is definetely NOT HIJACKING

I habe many profiles that need to be merged in my Greene county lines but I am denied access to them, and have tried requested to colloborate. There is a group of profiles of my grandfather and his siblings and his parents that if i could HIJACK I would be in 7th heaven as this person has the family divided my grandfather is a son of on of the parents - and the other 6-7 kids are with the other parent and neither parent is married to each other - and there are a total of 12 kids and data is in correct for those that are listed

it has been one reason I have been very very careful of choosing who i colloborate with and limit the number of colloborators - tho i am always being told 'more is the merrier'

Let me know how the Hijacking is done - it would solve some of my major merge issues in my lower tree :-)

Judi, what reason would I have to make this stuff up?

I am telling you, for a fact, my tree was merged without my permission. Profiles were changed, edited, etc... Again, without my permission. This is a fact.

If you want to know how other user's trees are merged or changed without permission, contact Jason Wills, Rawdon Parry, or Ofir Friedman.

Jeremiah,have not read the full discussion but are these merges for duplicates or completely wrong?

Would you mind sharing a link to an example and I would be glad to look into what happended and also help if need be (and if possible) to set things right?

Mauritz if Jeremiah agrees to start working with you, would it be possible to move your discussion elsewhere, this particular thread was setup to help users that needed Curators help.

Unfortunately it has been completely hijacked by the discussions with Jeremiah..

Seems Jeremiah can do with some help though so he came to the right place. I will take it private from my side.

Although I do not believe I have touched any of Jeremiah's profiles (yet), as a Curator, I merge the profiles of users with whom I am not a collaborator all the time. That is exactly the task that Geni created the Curator role to do: reconcile all of the duplicates in the database, toward the goal of building one tree of everyone who lives and who has ever lived, with no duplicates.

Since Geni asked me to do it, I do not apologize for it. Yes, Jeremiah and many others [rightfully, in my opinion] feel they were not adequately warned by Geni that this is the way it works here- by design. But the fact remains that this boils down to a dispute between a user (customer) and Geni proper on its business model and policies- something that the Curators have little or no power to affect.

Jeremiah, I sympathise with the fact that you feel you were unaware of the potential downsides and setbacks that can and do ocurr in Geni. I've been advocating for more complete and to-the-point up front disclosure of what's in store when you start working in Geni for a very long time now. Things are a little better than they used to be [when Geni policy was changing frequently]. But now, even though the mission and policies have mostly settled down, I'm afraid the written warnings/promises from Geni to new users hasn't quite kept up.

The fact is that everything you are describing as what is happening to your data sounds exactly what should be and is happening, according to the Geni model. In other words, your real complaint should be about not having been adequately warned before you put all of your data in, and not that your tree is being hijacked.

Officially stated by Geni or not, any data that falls further away than your 4th grandparents and 4th cousins are virtually guaranteed to eventually be altered in some way by someone whom you never granted any permission to. I agree that this should have been made clearer to you and all users before you started.

Thank you very much David, for stepping up and saying what you did.

I am deeply dissatisfied with what has gone on over the last few days, but it is exactly the kind of response you've made that I was looking for. Accountability is always appreciated.

Best regards,
~Jeremiah

Jeremiah why didn't you raise these concerns when we emailed you two months ago?

I was never made aware that my family tree would be susceptible to change without my permission, Mike. That has been the point all along.

Not true, Jeremiah, it was right there in the email:

"In order to help accomplish this goal, Geni Curators can now merge together duplicate public profiles that are in different trees. "

Eldon - Can you post a specific profile? I tried using the link you provided and got "You don't have permission . . .".

Sherry, the tree link is the only way to show the problem. The six profiles are all private.

Eldon you can edit William Alfred Howell (and add him to projects) because that profile is within your maximum family range. His ancestors are not (you're related to them by marriage) and those profiles have users within their max family range, which means neither Geni or the curators can make them available to you.

Mike, OK, thanks

Eldon (and others with this same issue)

when you have a cluster of profiles that need our attention, and you cannot access their links, there is a simple work around. Give us a link to the closest relative that you CAN access and then in your message say something like this

(link) John Doe --cannot access his 6 children, they are private. Can you see if they can be made public (or whatever it is you need for us to do)? I have/have not reported the manager as abandoning his tree.

This gives us a point to start from, the relationship of the problem profile(s), and a simple explanation of what you need. Also, and you are good at this, telling us that you have reported the manager keeps us from clogging up the system with additional requests.

I hope that helps everyone.

I'll try not to nag if you forget, Eldon.

I never received any such email, Mike. You can continue to be the Geni apologist all you want. I was never informed, nor did I ever give anyone permission to change my tree.

ok.. we really do get it. please stop this discussion is this area. the email did get sent out, maybe it was just before you signed up. no one knows specifically what happened, but it did. as i have said before why not just help fix the area you are talking about ( which we really dont know where that is,) you could have changed all the data back by now to what you had with as much effort as you are putting into this conversation. what you area asking is not possible to do. they cannot re-privatize an area of the tree. sorry you didnt know, i really am and i really wish something could be done. but there isn't anything they can do. i guess i really dont know what you want.

My mistake, I thought you'd been here longer than two weeks.

I do not want anything, Sharon. What I wanted initially was to air my grievances and have them acknowledged by someone affiliated with Geni.

That has happened, and I've not asked anyone for anything since. But every single time this issue goes to die down, we get a fresh body in here to repeat the same drivel over and over again, ad nauseam.

The fact of the matter is my profiles and my family tree were changed without my permission Period. We've got curators at Geni who themselves admit they'd like to see Geni be more upfront about what its aims are.

All of this should have officially been over after David Kaleita's fine post on 2/26. But for whatever reason, a few users here want to continue to beat a horse that died an unfortunate death long, long ago.

I honestly don't know what there is left to be said, but I'm sure someone will swoop in here momentarily and say it, no matter how petty or unnecessary it may be.

Awaiting that response in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

Hi Jeremiah.. again?? - I'm not sure why you're calling me here - We finished our conversation ages ago - and I also wished you well in the private email between us, where you said you were going elsewhere. I do, bud - so it's okay to Go Already.

I don't know how I can help you further? How about:
ALERT: EVERYONE - JEREMIAH WANTS TO HAVE THE LAST WORD ON THIS! PLEASE LET HIM.

As we say in SA, Hamba Kahle (Go Well)

Sorry Sharon, my previous post was directed at Kathy. Don't know why I typed your name. There are so many of you here directing posts in my direction that it is a little hard to keep all of your names straight sometimes.

:-)

Mary this is a Geni Help issue go to bottom of page and click on Help and request help there

I have a bunch of merges that I am doing and came across someone who has a lot of zombies
Salvador Cabral Valdés
and he hasn't been on since August 18, 2009. I would like to merge into his file to clean it up. Any way I can take his over?? I took 78 , but the rest need to be fixed and merged