multiple relationships

Yes, the relationship path doesn't always show the closest relationship. It really would be great if we could see them all : )

Geni had plans to show alternate, but a limited number of relationships, but I don't know the status of this. Mike Stangel might be able to comment.

i love knowing that we are related in multiple ways. But I'm realistic that it will be limited to a few ways, if it does get implemented.

I am closer (thanks to Bjorn help with some code) to get my application working to visulise those multiple paths
In meantime, make sure that there are no data conflicts on your direct ancestors lines

Jadranka - that will be awesome when your application can be used to visualize multiple paths.

One of the wonderful aspects of Geni is discovering new (to me) ancestral lines by examining the "path between" cousins (using the pushpin tool) and reading the tree.

We still have plans to show multiple paths, probably the closest blood-relative path and the closest inlaw path, if it's closer. (would it make sense to show the inlaw path if it's farther than the blood-relative path?) We don't yet have a scheduled release date for this feature, however.

This is great news.
When I began my work, I entered my Spouses Relatives first.
Then, through merges, I became increasingly aware that my Spouse and I have many common Ancestors. As time went by, the Relationship path changed, and Profiles that were her relationships were now closer related to me.
I have told my Spouse that I have a thought that we may discover, in the future, that we are some distant Cousin of sorts.
She was "creeped" out by this news.

Mike, - there is actually two requests, at least from my side: Multiple paths AND bloodline only path

What is most interesting is having a bloodline only option where you find the shortest path (am I bloodline related to my wife as an example), - on top on that we can have multiple paths, - in combination with the bloodline only option or not.

Great discussion! Need both of these: Multiple paths AND bloodline only path

I'm hoping we can condense two feature requests into one well-considered feature. If we were to always show the nearest bloodline path, and then also show the inlaw path if it's closer, wouldn't that accomplish both feature requests? Why do we need a separate notion of bloodline only, if we always show the bloodline path?

Nope, - by default you want your wife to bee listed as your wife.

To show the bloodline path you have to request showing it.

Perhaps I am missing something - son of Mirl below - is No longer my Ancestor ? (he use to be)

1) my 9th great grandmother:
http://www.geni.com/path/Peter+Rohel+is+related+to+Mirl+Miriam+Wien...

2) her son: Salman Wiener is your fourth great aunt's first cousin's wife's sister's husband's second cousin 6 times removed
http://www.geni.com/path/Peter+Rohel+is+related+to+Salman+Wiener?fr...

I liked it better when he was :)

Mike,
This is not all. Some programs show multiple blood paths.
For example , my father's parents have 60 different blood paths beetween them
- from 2nd cousin once removed to 8th cousins
This is what I would like to see - all of the different blood paths
Listed

"Need both of these: Multiple paths AND bloodline only path"
"I would like to see all of the different blood paths "

These can be again nice options for choice between Basic, Plus and Pro...

Yes Lauri, the way to go

My mother is just not only my mother, she is my 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 8th , 10th, 11th and 12th cousin. And that is not counting the other bloodlines that connect me and my mother where generations is different from 1.

Now that's weird!:)

A lot of inbreeding in the scandinavian countrysides, it happend that a person marred his 2nd cousins child, which my mothers ancestor did. Know you know why scandinavians are so weird. :-)

Mike Stangel - I agree with most, that boh are needed. Can it be incorporated into 1 as Mike mentioned ?? If the result is A) & B) below - I say Not:

A) 9th great grandmother:
http://www.geni.com/path/Peter+Rohel+is+related+to+Mirl+Miriam+Wien..

B) her only Son: is your 4th great aunt's 1st cousin's wife's sister's husband's 2nd cousin 6 times removed
http://www.geni.com/path/Peter+Rohel+is+related+to+Salman+Wiener?fr...

1) Why is the Only son - a distant Cousin - instead of Ancestor - as he use to be ??
2) is this a result of Combining: a) Blood Line & b) Spouse Path ??
3) is this a New Path change at Geni ??
4) is it a result of New names added on Geni - and the Path changing from the Previous Blood line - to a distant Cousin Path ??

ps. spouse Cousin path is nice - but Not when it Replaces a long Blood line Path

Remi - it was the same in small towns in Lithuanian with my ancestors. My father was the 3rd cousin of his mother :) And that's just counting the recent cousin marriage of my great grandparents, not all the preceding cousin marriages.

These Relationships are indeed important, so that the future Generations of each Family, can examine and understand.
This project needs to be carefully set up.
Not sure, would there be an Algoric Computer Program to study all possible combinations, such as Hatte and Remi suggest?

Could the attraction to distant cousins be, that before they knew they were related, that, THAT is the true attraction? The Blood that runs through the family line? and NOT a sexual relationship. If so, we need to check if we are related before getting involved romantically.
We may be just attracted through genetics, not knowing we are family. Just something to think about.

In the norwegian western parts, where the fjords are, the main reason for all the inbreading is this: In the winter, the fjords froze in the innermost parts of the fjords. Ruining the possibility to use boats as transportation. But the youth didn't lose their lust for love because the fjords froze. So for generations they found their love on the neighboring farms during wintertime. Some villages didn't get roads before in the 1980's, which gives plenty of time for inbreading........

People in small towns had few choices and would also only marry people of the same background in terms of class or education. Travel was difficult and there were even laws that said you could only marry people in your administrative district. But in rabbinical Jewish families, they married other rabbinical families and due to a small initial population, the Black Death, subsequent wholesale slaughter of Jews because people thought they caused the Black Death since they didn't die in as large numbers, and then pogroms, this was a small population.

Or consider our immigrant ancestors in the Plymouth Colony or other early settlements. They also married the same families for quite a few years.

While I understand that the Catholic Church and some Western European laws explicitly opposed cousin marriage, this was not the case in most of the world until recently.

My Palestinian friends tell me in their small villages it was common to marry cousins until recently as well.

I read an article a few years ago that claimed it was an evolutionary advantage to humans, after they started living in settled communities, to know their relationships around the level of first and second cousins. It let them avoid marriage with those people.

And, it was an advantage to forget the more distant relationships, because otherwise there might have been no one to marry.

I don't agree with the author's point that genealogical amnesia is wired in our genes, but it's an interesting point.

(Sorry to bring this up again, but I'd rather comment here than open a new discussion.)

On top of the two requests that Bjorn delineated, I'd like to propose a third one, which is important for the Chinese.

If two Chinese share the same surname, (chances are) they are related by male line only, and that path must be unique. I would like to have this shown, no matter how far up and down it goes, in addition to a shorter bloodline path that goes through some females. (You may accuse the Chinese of sexism, but it did help make our genealogy more systematic. How else would one record thousands of people on paper, before the computer era?)

I'm not sure how to define the approximate notion for 2 of different surnames. Perhaps in addition to comparing number of links (length of a path), we should also take into account the number of colors, as appear in Geni's path. Though I would rather prefer to have colors correspond to surnames instead.

As I'm on this topic, I'd like to also feature-request that a tree mode be available that only shows male offsprings (perhaps also daughters, but not daughter's children). This makes it a real tree (in the mathematical sense, i.e. with no loops). This should take considerably less computer time to calculate, if Mike Stangel
would write a separate algorithm.

Of course, everything is put off until the new graph system is up!