Lilith

We had Lillith on the tree. I think they broke the biblical tree in 2...one that followed the Christian-Judeo tree and the other with the non-Christian-Judeo people and entities.

Lilith: http://www.geni.com/family-tree/index/6000000003521987523 an alternative route, although I think it ALL should be combined as one, but I've heard of collaborators, managers and curators getting the 3rd degree from staunch Christians who do NOT want it to steer away from what the current Bibles say. This is not a Christian website, it is a genealogy website and should be treated as such, with notes stating things if they differ than what Books or Legends they heard from someone else without any documentation.

Mimi,
beyond the continuous objections, combining the two versions of the tree, would just create one big tangle of a mess, with merge-conflicts that can't be resolved.

For future reference, I'll tag the relevant profiles:
Adam of Eden & Eve of Eden
Adam (Assyrian mythology) . & Lilith the Demoness
see also Enki, Lord of Earth & Waters.

It's a strange world out there, and we try to keep everyone happy with the tree.

I know, Shmuel, but it defeats the purpose of One World Tree when we have a separate branch. I understand why though, because of different genealogies and how irate people get over certain entities or people they believe should not be on their tree as it is not written in "their" bible, but may be in someone else's. This is why I had proposed a flip-node that allows us to flip a node backward in tree view for alternative parents. LOL Not sure if that would work, but it would be nice for those who have multiple parents or for those that have "could be" parents.

Mini, I don't think it does defeat the purpose of One World Tree. It's not the same people in different branches; it's a completely different story. Maybe there are two Adams, but there is not mass duplication of the same people beyond that.

And just what is the purpose of One World Tree? There are MANY genealogists who disagree on the facts of certain family lines. How are curators in any place to make that decision?

Beth,

There are several mechanisms to reflect genealogical disagreement. Please note I am working in Colonial America so can only really speak to that area.

1. In the "about me" overview, put in a "discussion" section which links to the various arguments presented.

2. In the "curator note" of a Master Profile, after consultation with the managers on the profile and / or a review of the arguments, summarize it. I tend to do so with "parents of so & so are not known" or "parents of so & so are not verified."

3. Ask family descendants to work together to verify and source their information.

Unless I have directly researched (and noted that research in the "about me"), I think of my curatorial work as a kind of technical support, to help build the most accurate profiles possible.

It's going to only be as good as what exists in geni and as a result of everyone's collaboration.

Thanks Erica. Forgive me, but I don't believe that curators have the magic know how in all places. Indiscriminate merging just for the sake of the big tree causes more problems than is helpful. I have looked at quite a few "public profiles" and I'm not seeing much in they way of official documentation. I see some written notes and some links - but no real source information. That's the downfall of Geni - no requirements for source information prior to merging.

I think the concept of Geni seems interesting, the implementation is just bad. I dare say the tree will always have lots of duplicates and errors. This is, on it's face,going to be an issue forever as new people come and go and build new trees.

Someday I see Geni taking all the information that volunteer curators and others have so generously spent enormous amounts of time "fixing" and locking the tree. That's when the fees go up and they try to figure out how to compete with Ancestry.

I'm still not convinced I want to be part of this experiment. But, I'm watching and seeing where things go. In the meantime, I keep my tree limited.

Interesting that you seem to hold curators responsible for the dearth of documentation. I more see it as curators will try and correct that. Not much point in sourcing out 1 of 50 profiles, is there?

The curator program started with 10 people in September. It's December, we're up to 50 or so, and still merging. Unlike you I see the documented profiles emerge -- how would one ever know that there have been users hard at work sourcing their profiles? It's been a pleasant surprise.

But sure, with 50 copies of a profile, what do you think the first step should be?

Wikimedia for overviews was implemented what, 2 weeks ago, with more to come? Do you always drive this fast, have such high expectations of start up companies, and shoot down brand new programs?

My challenge to you is to document your ancestors properly. Then it will become the Master Profile. Until then, I need to waste my time making "merge guides" to help disambiguate all the UNdocumented GEDCOM uploads I had nothing to do with. :)

Interesting that you seem to hold curators responsible for the dearth of documentation. I more see it as curators will try and correct that. Not much point in sourcing out 1 of 50 profiles, is there?

The curator program started with 10 people in September. It's December, we're up to 50 or so, and still merging. Unlike you I see the documented profiles emerge -- how would one ever know that there have been users hard at work sourcing their profiles? It's been a pleasant surprise.

But sure, with 50 copies of a profile, what do you think the first step should be?

Wikimedia for overviews was implemented what, 2 weeks ago, with more to come? Do you always drive this fast, have such high expectations of start up companies, and shoot down brand new programs?

My challenge to you is to document your ancestors properly. Then it will become the Master Profile. Until then, I need to waste my time making "merge guides" to help disambiguate all the UNdocumented GEDCOM uploads I had nothing to do with. :)

Oh no, you completely misunderstand. I wasn't stepping on your famous toes. I don't hold curators responsible... I think "experts" should be those that have researched their family try. And that's exactly my point. Curators are not experts in my family line and I wouldn't want it any other way. Who cares if there are duplicate profiles... really? What's the value of all these merged trees? I certainly takes all the fun out of Genealogy - at least from my perspective. Most of the fun is the journey, not the result. But Geni doesn't get that.

Beth,
I have been on Geni for over three years now, dealing with the Biblical Tree for almost as long. While this might sound a bit harsh, my experience of the population of Geni user is such:
* Less than 1 in 10,000 are what you'd call experts, even of their very OWN family.
* 1 in 1000 even CARE about the accuracy of the data that THEY themselves uploaded.
* 1 in 100 are even familiar with EVERY profile in their tree.

This is NOT a put-down, but pretty much what you would expect in this field. Genealogy is the most popular hobby in the Western World, so you will find ALL levels of "expertise". Most people just find a GEDCOM of completely unknown value/accuracy somewhere on the internet, and copy-paste this into their tree, which then gets uploaded to Geni (a dozen times, by a dozen users).

Curators don't have a magic-wand, nor are we interested in "playing god". So you won't see Curators going around and knowingly making incorrect merges. That would only create MORE work, and we already have more than enough.

We DO rely on you the experts and people with specific interests, that is precisely what Projects are for: to create and focus community interest in specific areas. By and large, this aspect of Projects has been a big success. We care that they are duplicates because as Erica points out, it is so much easier to research, document and modify a single copy than it is to do so for 50. 50 people working together will almost ALWAYS achieve far more than 50 people duplicating each others efforts.

If it's the journey that concerns you, isn't it so much more fun walking together, than sludging through the murky swamps of history by yourself?

Curators are NOT the "tour guides". We're just the coordinators that make the journey easier and more pleasant for those that walk with us.

Shmuel... If curators rely on experts why are they merging trees without asking those involved? This happened to me which caused all sorts of incorrect conflicts in my tree ... and the precipitating reason I disconnected from the tree. At this time I'm just not interested in working with 50 other people on fixing, unfixing, arguing, and stomping our way through 300,000 merge conflicts.

Again, I'm not belittling the good work you do - I remain unconvinced that this is the most appropriate way to go about it. I'm not sure it matters if individuals have trees that aren't sourced or accurate - it only becomes important if Geni thinks they should be merged into other trees. That's the detail in the devil that makes this process less than ideal.

Again, I suspect that a much better approach would have been to build the "one world one tree" separately from the individual trees and borrowing from the public profiles. This would have accomplished two goals at once and kept some element of individual family trees alive. I know Geni professes not to be interested in individual family trees - but I think this is ill advised. Without individual trees there ISN'T one big tree.

Geni should be careful whereth they stomp - or at least try to wear much softer shoes.

Beth,

You'd need to be more specific about the conflicts / unwanted merges before I can answer further.

I follow my own family lines and merge inactive profiles. They have made my family tree far more accurate and opened up new avenues and new family lines that collaboration and merging would never have done.

I always defer to whom seems the most expert / documented / interested in a family line and / or historical area in merges, resolving data and tree conflicts. I have started many Projects for family lines to further document, validate and build.

I'm hardly famous nor do I want to be. Just want to discover, and hate duplication and waste. :)

Beth,
you're missing a CRITICAL piece of information / history here:

There Is NO "Big-Tree"!

But obviously there is you say, it has almost 50 million profiles in it. Yes, but my point is that this is in NO way any different that the smallest tree that is yet unconnected. In the very same way that you did NOT start your own tree, but were added by Andrew who was added by Ryan, both of whom added and invited relatives or found such relatives already on
Geni and merged tree with them, such as your step-sister who added her relatives and then didn't come back. The moment you have the ability to invite a single person to your tree, or to merge any two profiles, the "Big-Tree" (really a forest) is pretty much a given result. The vast majority of people are connected "side-ways", through marriage.

Is there really any difference between a 3rd cousin and a 7th cousin? Or between a cousin and a cousin's cousin. If you had a cousin in your tree, and his cousin had him in their tree, is it unreasonable to want to merge them?

Shmuel... No, I'm not missing this at all. And it is different. In my tree without any extended relatives added, I have the CHOICE as to whom I want to collaborate with and who I don't. When I extend out my tree and these profiles are merged with others, I am part of the "big tree" experiment. What comes with that? Big headaches. Multiple managers, merges by people with different skill levels, deleted profiles, duplicates, etc. I really don't want to spend my time trying to solve 3000 different merge issues. Nope. I don't miss the point. But I do think you miss mine :)

Oh and Shmuel.. since my profiles are set to private, I'm not so sure that I'm at all comfortable with you discussing the structure of my tree, etc on a public discussion board. This is an example of how "super users" with powers that allow them to snoop into private trees are not appropriate on Geni. I know you have good intentions and don't really want to point my finger at you - but you just did what is an unacceptable thing in my book - took my private information public. Use this an an example when you are talking about how 'safe' information really is in the private mode.

My question is; how did you end up with 3000 merge issues. I manage @ 30000 profiles and the most I ever had at any one time was 7. Uncheck the box at the top that says "Include Collaborators" and see how many you really have.
I would really like for you to tell me where else you can connect yourself with millilons of other people. Before I joined Geni I had "Merge Issues" in my GEDCOM. These are called "Alt Parents" in a GEDCOM. Geni can never get rid of them all, and neither can any other program. The reason that there are conflicts is because they were brought here from other programs. But at least on Geni you have thousand of other people trying to resolve them.
I don't know about you, but I know I'm not perfect and need help every now and then. And know that I can see back well over a 1000 years of ancestors, I know I need my collaborators and the Curators who do a great job I might add .

Beth you are absolutely correct when you say the fun is being taken out of Genealogy! Have you noticed that whenever anyone makes a valid argument some one always says you must be more specific. I think that a standard comment when someone doesn't have an answer for you or you prove them wrong or at least gives them something to think about other than his or her own point of view. Also how has anyone been able to get back to Adam and Eve. If I remember my Old Testament there was a huge gape in time between Adam and Eve and their family and Noah. We don't know how much time lapsed between these diferent people and who was on the the earth at that time. Plus time was diferent then. Merry Christmas Judy

Hi Marvin... You took my exaggeration as truth. It was just an example, nothing more. I'm more interested in discovering my genealogy than having my genealogy presented to me fait accompli. Geni may one day be a great forum for this. However, this merge frenzy experiment needs to run its course for awhile before I'm convinced.

I think that if you look at Geni, you will find that you can discover it even more.
In other programs, you have to look up each and every person in the tree and verify it. It would take more than one lifetime to find 100,000 relatives that way.
Now you say you didn't discover them, someone else did. Well I have learned more about my ancestors by joining Geni than I ever did in the seceral years I was doing my own research, I found 1st and 2ed cousins that I never knew I had. And found Great nephews and nieces
that I never would have found otherwise. I found that my Great Grand Father was married twice (I never knew that) that gave me a whole lot of cousins that I never knew I had. There are lines I never would have found by myself.
And the merge issues..... a great way to find out about your ancestors. Nothing like a good tangled mess to make you do your homework to find out who the REAL aprents are. How many children they REALLY had.
Some of the reseach has been done for you, yes. But there's a loot of other reasearch that hasn't been done. Look at you tree. How many of them only has name, birth, death and nothing else to go with it, Reasearch those people, get details and put it in the overview. It's what you would have done before but now you have 100,000 and more ancestors to do it with. You might find something wrong with the tree and by researching it you can correct a thousand years of history, not just for yourself but for thousands of other people. How Cool is that!
The old way, you would spend thousands of hours just finding the people. This way you can spend that same time and find out about people. A better use of time in my book.

All of that sounds wonderful Marvin, glad you discovered these things. But, you make my point. You gladly dove in and it was the right experience for you. For me, it's not about discovering 100,000 relatives - but about the journey. If I choose to collaborate, then my journey will go that direction. But it should be about choice, not merging without discussion.

Beth I am with you on that. I don't care if I have a large amount of profiles. It's find the people myself and learning about them as well as maybe meeting other people who are interested in genealogy. Like you I am glad Marvin found out all this info about his immediate family. I already knew about my grandparents, great grandparents and great great grand parents. I was already back to 56 lines and knew when most first arr. in the area. I had pictures and stores. I grew up hearing these stories. I am the only one in the family that now has all our breakheart pictures.What I didn't have two cousins gave me all of there's. I was back to early 16 hundreds .in this country not to mention all I had in Europe. Now with that said since joining I have found even more but very little did I get from Geni. I did get some, for which I am very happy to have gained. But so far I am the only one still doing my Loubris line, both my Parker lines, cookson and so on.Once I started hitting Europe I have found many other people researching the same lines but not all of them, just certain ones. I only joined genie because I could type out the tree. That was my main reason forgoing onto Geni in the first place. . And I am still only on the free end of it. If the library hadn't offered it I probably never would have heard of it. I had no intentions of merging or collaborating and really I kind of wish I had stayed the way I was uninvolved but then I wouldn't have meet some very interesting and nice people. Judy

Beth,
Curators have NO super-powers regarding private-trees. NONE.

All I did has look at your own profile, and those that added you/them, and one or two others around you. ANY Geni user can easily see this info. People do this often, if they send messages to a user and get no response (so they try whoever added them, hoping for some contact). In fact, the "Added By" field is visible to anybody in the WORLD, in the public (logged-out) version of your profile.

on the note of it when we DO find that path, why is it not permanently attached to our base(leaf?) tree? if it can be found, and matches at least 3 generations, I'd like it to stay as part of "my" tree. that big of a merge should hold more weight. thanks for at least including alternate (possible) persons. a lot of multiple marriages and bad documentation in paper form, from lost records to unspoken family secrets, like native indian ancestors with no birth records, makes it hard to be certain sometimes. but our educated (lol) guesses should have some place on the tree.

J A loubris, if it weren't for someone's thoughtful entry of "Many Generations" represented as a person no one would be able to trace back to Adam+2 or whoever. You are so right. we try from the only written knowledge we have. Sometimes we get it wrong. my own grandmother had her birthday wrong.. it turned out she lived most of her life not knowing her parents had it changed so she could enter school early. it happens. sometimes its funny, sometimes just confusing.

Shmuel, I've been thinking about what you said and wondering why this type of information is available if a tree is set to "private". I suppose my pondering won't make much difference, though.

On that note I worked with a woman many years ago, Bessie and she was a Russian Jew who as child along with her family escaped Russia ,as the Cossack's were killing everyone ,in a hay wagon ,under the hay. They went first to Poland and then other places and then ended up in the US. Ironically she ended up marrying the brother of a man who went to school in Saugus with my mother. Anyway Bessie was all set to retire from John Hancock Co when she discovered she was a year younger then she thought . Had to work an extra year. Things like that happen. Also who ever is reporting info on birth , especially death records sometimes inevitably report the wrong info. A lot of records are lost or thrown away or burned up in a fire a flood. Town hall records are notorious for that. The entire year of 1833 seems to be missing in Saugus Town Hall. Can't find out what killed Tinothy Parker at only age 42. Notice other family members who also died same year, no records. Unfortunately if it's in the records it's legal. As far as going back to Adam I really don't expect to be able to do that. Like I said big Gap and no written records or even oral records between Adan and Eve and family and Noah. But good luck to anyone looking. You never know what you turn up.

Beth,
the only information that is publicly available on Geni are profiles outside the Family-Group of the people who added them, or whom the profile managers themselves chose to make public (such as my deceased grandparents). As such, any ancestors earlier than your 3rd great-grandparents (~1830) are public knowledge (and a matter of public record).

Julia,
you are connected to almost fifty milliion people (50,000,000), surely Geni can't "permanently attach" that many paths to EVERY profile. But you CAN still find the connection, just look at the end of the list of your ancestors:
http://www.geni.com/list?group=ancestors