What happens after reporting a fake profile

CS is taking care of them.

I just went through one by one and reported all 120 of the fake "Ronald Weasley" profiles that are parts of various "Harry Potter" related fake trees.

CS should not only delete these profiles but all the numerous fake profiles connected to them.

The question to be asked is "when will it happen?"

"..when will it happen?..."

The only reply I got from geni was "when we get to them". The also said that the profiles need to be tagged as fake ones for them to take action. The fake Ron Weasley reporting is kind of a test case to see how the process goes and how long it takes. We will NOT necessarily get a notification when they are done evaluating them so I'll just have to check back periodically to see if a search for "Ronald Weasley" in the future starts returning less than 120 current profiles. I would expect it to take several weeks before CS takes any planned action on them.

Randy - did this include marking as "Fake Profile" the Ronald Weasley Master Profile that you curate?

Touché ;-)

Anyhow, - as long as the fake or claimed historical profiles is not preventing the work for anypne (by for example have a privacy range blocking merges) - i.e. just annoying I really hope customer support spend their time on more important cases.

"..Randy - did this include marking as "Fake Profile" the Ronald Weasley Master Profile that you curate?.."

No. For now the plan is to leave just one MP for each "Harry Potter character even though they are all fake. Eventually maybe we can get it down to one "correct" fake tree instead of 100+ duplicates of the same info.

Most of these trees were created and quickly abandoned.

For other geni users reading this post....Please do not create additional Harry Potter trees and in please do not create trees containing fake people.

re: "please do not create trees containing fake people" -- when we get back to the legendary folks - who decides whether they are real or fake? Do you allow Adam and Eve and others from the Bible, or not? Gods?

And you must admit - Geni's Tree View format is wonderful for entering folks in some novels so you can keep track of their relationships. Wonder if there is a way for Geni to have a profile / tree category for "fake" profiles such as these - with possibly a clearer, easier way for folks to delete them after they finish the novel and/or stop being interested in it. Possibly a little bit of a money-maker for them, and not a hindrance to others if separate from Big Tree and clearly in the Fake Category - just a fun game for one or more folks, with Geni already having done practically already having done all the programming. (tho Geni and/or user/profile enterer would have to watch out for Copyright infringements. Could also be handy for someone working on a novel, to help them envision the characters and their relationships.
If Geni should decide on such a category --
I think there were also comments I saw at one point of folks using Geni for the family tree of their pet(s) -- perhaps that could be another tree category.

I said please :)

1. Please do not create fake profiles and trees.
2. If tempted to create fake profiles and trees follow step 1.

Seriously the integrity of any genealogy sharing web site, geni included, is lowered when there is a large amount of duplication and invalid family history. My understanding of both the official policy and the geni user culture is that fake profiles contribute to this problem and as a result are strongly discouraged. I'm also under the impression that fake profiles are, at the sole decision of geni management, deletable. Those that spend time creating them may find them deleted sometime in the future and their time wasted. So its best to concentrate on real people.

Your points are all valid and perhaps geni should consider some of them moving forward on how to deal with these issues.

more that a year ago we had this discussion:
http://www.geni.com/discussions/90411
nothing happened since.

Thanks, Yaacov. I see basically both my suggestions were made there, with some additional elaborations/comments. They really should consider if there is a way to use it for additional income - thus allowing them to return more functionality to Basic Users of the real Geni profiles (hope, hope!).

Yaacov, - not happen?

For a year ago there was over 700 "collaborators" in the fake profile project, - how many is there now?

It is just that you don't get a feedback when a fake account is dealt with. In general you never get a feedback on released profiles because of the profile management hunters who are monitoring such discussions and even ask for accounts to be released to be able to grab the profiles if they were not deleted.

Bjorn - what I meant mainly was the ability to separate real profiles that people like you and like me that love genealogy from fake profiles
It's OK to manage the Harry Potter (or Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige) tree on a dedicated platform that everyone understands that it's all about fantasy.

In general we should not have any fake profiles in Geni, - the Harry Project was special because at that time we got three or for new Harry Potter trees every week, but when the project was started and to get a controlled public tree it almost stopped.

Status:

Ron Weasely:
4/16 "Ronald Weasley" 120 profiles
4/19 "Ronald Weasley" 31 Profiles

Newly Reported Today:
4/19 "Narcissa Malfoy" 68 profiles

As you can see by the fake Ron Weasely profiles progress is being made.

Newly Reported Today:

4/19 "Harry Potter" 78 profiles reported. (Search was done for Harry Potter with a parent name of "Lily")

As I see it, Yaacov and I (and Randy and Terry in last year's discussion which Yaacov links to) are basically saying: Hey, creating profiles and family trees of fantasy and other fictional characters and/or animals (thoroughbreds and/or family pets) can be a whole lot of fun, and done easily with the programming Geni has created - so why not provide a way for folks to enjoy doing that without impinging on those doing serious geneology? While Bjorn is sticking with: Geni is for serious genealogy, no one should use it for anything else.

Did I get that right?

Lois - I can't speak for whether you got it right regarding the views of others, but I am happy to be associated with "creating profiles and family trees of fantasy and other fictional characters and/or animals (thoroughbreds and/or family pets) can be a whole lot of fun, and done easily with the programming Geni has created - so why not provide a way for folks to enjoy doing that without impinging on those doing serious genealogy".

David, I agree. As long as I don't find that I'm a distant cousin of Harry Potter, I'm not interested in censoring other people's trees. My hope is that everyone using Geni's platform will find a way to enjoy it.

Geni is wonderful collaborative platform for "family" trees, whatever the family is.
the problem begins when the goal of Geni is "One tree for the world", It's OK to have a single world family tree, but then it cannot hold any "fictional" profiles.
This is why Geni users should have more than one platform: one for the real profiles, and other for fictional profiles.
As far as I know about IT and DB - it's not a big effort to duplicate only the data-base and use a new Geni engine based "entrance" like imaGENI.com for these trees.
all the fictional profiles will be moved there and true genealogists will be able to use Geni without being cousins of Shrek or Captain Kirk or Harry Potter. :-)

Newly Reported Today:

Hermione Granger Wealsey. Cleaned up about 4 that I had access to. Reported another 17 as fake.

All 68 profiles of "Narcissa Malfoy" reported on 4/19 have been removed by customer service.

And heaven help any real Harry Potters and Ronald Weasleys on Geni, if they haven't changed their names yet.

Newly reported Today:
4/25: About 30 Bellatrix Black and Belatrxi Lestrange fake profiles.

How can a Fictional Character - or any unclaimed Profile - be a "Follower" of a Profile? [Check out the "Followers" for Harry James Potter, {FICT} - to see what I mean ]

Well, what the heck -- Aberforth Dumbledore is down as 'Added by: Started family tree' but does not have a Joined on: date, is a Master Profile, and is a manager of the Harry Potter profile.

And - the Harry Potter MP, despite saying do not connect to "big tree" is connected to it.

Those strange situations are the results of merging and of abandoned accounts etc.

4/26 Reported all of the Ursula Black and Ursula Flints that are married to Phineas Nigellus Black as fake Harry Potter profiles.

4/26 Reported about 100 Dumbledore profiles as fakes.

The Dumbledores from fiction are Aberforth, Albus, Ariana, Kendra and Percival. You'll often allso see profiles named "Many Generations" as part of these fake trees.