Fictional people

Because not everyone knows they're fictional. Usually, they appear in thousands of Internet genealogies. If we delete them, someone adds them back. By keeping them on Geni, we can show they're fictional and help people improve their private databases.

Ah - makes sense. Would be nice to have some way of excluding these people from our trees though.

And today we have people who add fictional profile and cry "religious feelings" when somebody tells them that there's no way to be related to a non-existent mythology.

There are a couple of ways that we have ancestors.

One would be the genetic biology.

Another would be the stories.

Even the biology can be confounded by the stories. For instance, unless we have DNA evidence, we don't always know certainly whether all those fathers we have listed in our trees were really the fathers.

The fictional ancestors were at one time believed to be real ancestors. They were part of the story that we told about who we are and how we came to be here.

So for that, they make sense to me in Geni. They might not be part of our genetic tree but they are part of our story tree.

And as Justin says, since they show up in the old genealogies, we have to account for them. They'd keep getting put back in anyway.

Which is why disconnecting them wouldn't work.

Except that mythological characters are not marked as fictional.

Anyone can add a Display Name to a profile that marks it as Fictional. If the profile doesn't have it already, it's only because no one has taken the time to do it.

Nope, these fields on fictional profiles are normally locked from being edited, because otherwise somebody would take care of that.

Case in point: God Almighty .

All you have to do is start a public discussion asking the curator who locked the name to add the Fictional Designation.

Of course, if you want to insist that God is fictional, you might want to find a web site where such discussions would be on topic.

Which was exactly my point, people add fictional profiles and then protect them against all reason.

But actually i'm quite satisfied that at least they've finally disconnected God from the real tree, because i was honestly at one point ready to start adding profiles for https://www.geni.com/projects/People-killed-by-Judeo-Christian-God-...

Geni is a collaborative site. It's best to adopt a collaborative approach. I find it's easiest to work with people who aren't preaching their religion or non-religion.

I've seen hundreds of fictional profiles on Geni where the name isn't locked but no one, not even me, as taken the time to mark them as fictional. That seems to mean it's not a high priority for most people.

Certainly we have people who add very foolish lines, then defend them stoutly, but that's why Geni has curators. They are the only ones who can lock a profile.

Ok, glad that you've admitted that you initially were trolling when you said "Anyone can add a Display Name to a profile that marks it as Fictional. If the profile doesn't have it already, it's only because no one has taken the time to do it." ( https://www.geni.com/discussions/116751?msg=1087554 )

Anyhow, now that it is clear that it's impossible to edit fictional profiles that are protected by curators and *nobody* can actually accuse me (when not trolling) of only complaining and not partaking in any cleanup i'll continue fighting against fictional profiles by trying to source all the stuff i'm adding and leading by example.

You are making a serious mistake in your reading.

Only curators can change the name on a locked profile.

There are hundreds of profiles that are not locked. Anyone could change the name but no one has.

I think , Volodya, that you're also not understanding that Curators try to 'protect' other profiles from being merged into fictional ones by locking the fictional ones.

I have no time arguing this point any longer. I will be spending what free time i have by making as many real profiles as i can, and hopefully drowning out the fictional crap.

That's a good aim :-)

Making this fictional and isolated from the world tree, now that we can.