CURATORS AND PRO USERS PLEASE HELP RESOLVING THE ABANDONED TREE-CONFLICTS !

Hi Fred, Here is a question for you. re:

Lena Ethel Partridge

I do not have privileges to see, let alone merge the parents of Lena Ethel Gish Partridge. I have written to the manager asking that she unlock, or make public and merge these profiles but it appears that I cannot initiate anything on my own. Can you help?
PS. I have complete some of you merge issues, etc. above dealing with Isaac Fifer et al., and a few others,
Don

Fred,
Is the idea to click on a Request number that you have posted here and then resolve all the data conflicts associated with that profile?

For example i clicked on #3d which has 41 data conflicts connected to it.
I selected the first conflict on the list and by chance it is a conflict regarding birth name and location for a Finnish woman born in 1691. Knowing a bit about Finnish geography and naming conventions i am confident that i can reslove the minor issue. However my corrections have to be approved by the manager so no real progress.

Or have i missed something?

Alex, you didn't miss something, but I missed to tell, that I do control all afterwards and send the private and for not familymembers impossible issues to the direct family users. Yesterday I could make public a lot of profiles from an manager who abandoned Geni. These profiles now doesn't have a manager and can be merged. So all help is working now.
These merge issues are all from 2011, so it appears these are the difficult ones!

Donald William Earnest Partridge, I did what I could in that tree. The profiles from Cindi are still pending - can't seem to get them even though the tree appears connected.

You'll have some data conflicts to resolve and I'd personally suggest using the mixed case for the last name. Configuration of naming can then be chosen by you if you prefer to have them all presented in upper case, but there is no reason to force it in new software and most prefer it mixed.

Geni doesn't have preferences for capitals or undercase, but the curators do have preferences: http://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Naming_Conventions

No names with all capitals, only the first letter of a name. I wouldnot ask you to change the capitals, but in Geni it should be better because of the match and search functions.
This discussion-item is a resolving item for tree-conflicts. All mergerequests with private profiles I send to the managers and also all dataconflicts I send to the managers, after all public tree-conflicts are resolved of an item. I think that's the best way to work.

Fred Bergman 1941, Geni does have preferences for naming conventions. You can view it in your tree by clicking the preferences tab at the bottom and selecting "Names".

You can also view it in your settings:
http://www.geni.com/account_settings/name_preferences

This allows everyone to view the profiles as they see fit. If you use capitals, then you force everyone to view it that way. It's better, and I think the Geni goal, to allow people to view it the way they wish to view it.

Jeff, you are to optimistic. I had to do with an user who changed all my familysurnames in all capitals and I suspended her editing rights because I thought this was vandalism. Geni Customer Service warned me that I was wrong and that this wasn't vandalism but done in good truth because that user thought it was more efficient! At the same time Geni Customer Service did tell me that Geni doesn't forbid all capitals. My conclusion: Geni self, has no preference for any kind of namewriting, all capitals or all undercase, for Geni it is equal.
Should it not be equal to Geni, then it is peace of cake to build in in the software a conversion from all capital names to all undercasenames with the start of a capital. Other sites have such a built in conversion method. It works as follow2s: has a profile all capitals then the first time an user edits the profile and saved, also without any edit, then the capitals are converted!

In the profile box for surnames represented in a profile the program/system differ between BERGMAN, bergman and Bergman. Such phenomenons is not an optimal way to use computers. We meet every day all the alternatives all managers or users can prefer. On a page like Geni it Geni who should tell what spelling rules that are supposed to be used. Most easy woul probarbly the "spelling"-rules from some academis authority for different languages. I Sweden we have 'Språknämnden" and I knew that since a couple of years all teacher in Germany teach the children to write ue insted of ü. All languages in Europe that use roman alphabeth have person names with a Capital in beginning and followed by lower case letters. One can also look in the encyklopedias for different countries and languages how they use the alphabetic order and spell.

It's nothing that ought to be a problem to Geni or it's users. It's something that the users ought to just accept and respect like in the paper versions of encyklopedias. van, de, la, von and af is not found under van, de, la, von or af in any encyklopedia. These prefixes are always spelled with lower case letters like in Leonardi da Vinci, Carl vom Linné e.g. To write CARL VON LINNÈ, carl von linné, Carl Von Linné or Carl von linné or Carl von Linné or carl Vonlinné or what so ever we, users, feel comfortable with, does confuse the servers.

The academical language rules are about the same in both the indo-german and lathin language areas.That means it's the same for North- and South America to as far as it's these languages used. (I do not know anything about the indian spellings rules i America or the sami in Sweden.)

Agneta you are right, but Geni staff has to take decisions in this matter. Where I see names in the in my opinion wrong way I make corrections in the way you describes. Most important here is that the match and searchfunction of Geni needs one uniform namingsystem for optimalization of the merges for the Big Tree!

As you say: It's a Geni staff decission It's enoough with all the different languages we users have. Swedish is a small indo-german language. Itäs very practical for me to use it as it is my mother language. But I cannot go to China or even to the south of Europe and belive they whod understand it.

It is usual on Geni to use the same language on a profile as the nationality of the person in the profile, but it is also advised to use in the displayfield English language if the language is not to understand or to read for the majority of the users.

@jeff Gentes, @Fred Bergman Thank you for working on the merger issues for the real Partridge Family. I received 21 emails from Geni saying that these mergers have been completed.
Thank you also for the comment about using capital letters in the surname and the reference to the Geni naming convention. http://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Naming_Conventions It is interesting that one of early things I learned in conversations with experienced Genealogists was (presumably) an Ontario Genealogy Society naming convention which calls for the surname to be written in capital letters. Now this practice may date from the era of the typewriter when formatting was more problematic. Or it may have been misinformation. Now I have 1,100 or so names to update gradually!

Surnames in capitals is still obliged on some other genealogical sites, it is a choice. On my homesite for my private genealogy database I have all my surnames in capitals because I want there a difference between my direct family tree and pedigree and the isolated profiles. Others use capitals to make the difference between the end of the first names and the start of the last names. On Geni it should be obliged to use the undercase with the start capital, because of the uniformuty for matching and searching re the Big Tree. I upload my database to Geni by copy and paste from my homesite and afterwards I change the capitals to the undercase.

If you look at tree preferences you can view lastnames/surnames in all caps even if they are entered normally. According to the geni naming conventions, they ask that users NOT use all caps.

Wendy, that can be true, but Geni did forget to open the possibility to see surnames in full capaitals, it is only possible for birthnames of married women!

Oh really? I thought it was an option under tree preferences. I'm on my blackberry right now so I can't even look, but I trust that you know ;)

Fred & eveyone

Please note

The "birth surname" field does NOT mean "maiden name."

I have many ancestors - both men and women - who immigrated from country to country, or had other reasons, to be born with one surname (birth surname) yet recorded with another (last name).

Populating BOTH of these fields in Geni is the only way to accurately capture the name change.

I AM VERY HAPPY THAT SO MANY USERS, EVEN BASIC USERS, ARE HELPING TO RESOLVE THESE OLD CONFLICTS AND COMPLETING OLD MERGEREQUESTS!

In a very short time has been done a huge acivity and an unbelievable number of edits.

That is great news Fred. I'm glad you got this initiative going.

Erica, also please note, that we have an extra field for AKA (also known as) which could and should be used for additional info in such cases.

/Sten

Absolutely, Sten. The AKA field is under utilized. Please note it is comma separated for best display to make complete "name blocks." If you see slashes that's usually a legacy from GEDCOM uploads.

N.b. I put spelling variations in the AKA field - using the name fields results in LACK of effective matches.

Erica, spelling variations, name changes over the years like born Andersdotter after 1980 becomes born Andersson later (Sweden) or changes of EU names to match US common uses (Nilsson to Nelson et al) all belong in there, at AKA.

Erica, spelling variations, name changes over the years like born Andersdotter after 1980 becomes born Andersson later (Sweden) or changes of EU names to match US common uses (Nilsson to Nelson et al) all belong in there, at AKA.

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## 37/39 done and removed

#42 was blocked by a historic claimed profile. Solved.

note - #42 has a hundred more conflicts behind it, but some of these look llike bad mergers, so I'm not going in there without a reference.

#44 is a private profile. I can't resolve that.