An Oversight with the new Privacy Changes!

why would you make any deceased private let alone 3,880? you realise no one can search for private profiles at all anymore, so you stopping relatives from connecting to you? whats the point? what are you gaining other than a giant white hole in the big tree? your just hurting yourself in the long run.

I agree, hence the need for a change in this policy. A person born in the year 1600 who had 4 children mathematically has 1.5-4 Million descendants alive today. It makes no sense to allow someone born prior to 1800 to be marked private.

As far as why would I mark ANY deceased profile private? Here's why:

I think I'm different than most Genealogists. 70% of the people I've entered into Geni are living. These are 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and even 6th cousins my Grandmother spent her lifetime archiving in family tree books. I have only had the privilege of meeting just a tiny percent of these 12,000 relatives, and I would like to respect their privacy here on Geni.

I know the SEO is fantastic, and it's awesome that my name (thanks to geni) is the #1 hit for most google searches for any of my distant relatives, the 3,880 who are deceased of course.

But in that same breath, these relatives don't know me personally, I don't have permission from them to post their deceased children / siblings / parents / grandparents on the internet with a complete family tree attached, including all surnames and all data for all of us in the family.

So personally for distant family members, I don't mark anyone public until they've been dead 50 years. That's just what I feel is appropriate, but you can feel free to disagree.

Mike Stangel I wonder if there's a way Geni can assist Stephen in meeting his goals (that is, living / private - deceased / public). Apparently the list tool resulted in not doing it as preferred.

Stephen - I think "deceased 50 years" is a reasonable approach. I also think it would be much easier on us customers if the business rules would more easily align with good genealogical practices. So - until that happens, I'm hopeful the Geni tech team will be able to automate tasks that take so very long to do by hand.

I think I may have confused you Erica, the list tool worked great, it has nothing to do with this issue. :)

I just don't think there should be any private deceased profiles outside of the Geni defined "Family Group" ( http://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Family_Group ) That's 4th Cousins out to First cousins.

The new privacy options allow any profile to be marked as private, even if they were born in 1600 and have 4 million descendants. I see this as a big problem for Geni as another user has marked my 14th great-grandparents as private, and I can no longer even view their first names.

Can you post the close profile to the private 14th great grand parent?

Well, I couldn't open them, but someone already fixed that issue, they no longer appear in the list of "Ancestors who are marked private"

Oops, correction, they are still private. I was mistaken, they are my 21st Great Grandparents:

http://www.geni.com/family-tree/index/6000000002969950094

Private User

You are correct the following two profiles (placemats) are showing as living I have made them deceased and are now public

Unknown de Salisbury

Unknown de Salisbury

That one was a "miss" by the technical update to the privacy policy detecting zombies & setting to "presumed deceased."

It was created as private over a year ago - I would think so no one in the world tree can attach parents to Cicely de Salisbury when in fact they are not known. This kind of placeholder can be needed in the Geni environment - an " end of line / we know no more" profile. Better though that they are Master Profiles that cannot be merged with any other, and so I have made the former zombies.

Thanks Erica Howton

Erica, your timing on this is perfect for me. As I was creating the Nth placeholder for unknown parents this morning, I was muttering under my breath (again) that there should be a checkbox for this, and it should be controlled by curators. In a merge, the "no parents" and the supposed parents should create a conflict that needs a curator to resolve.

I would love that! I'm finding some of my older "end of line" placeholders have parent conflicts themselves & as a curator I "don't" easily see these.

We had chatted about some of the pitfalls of a relationship locking function, I think this might be the right track to addressing it.

Alright, my mistake. I had assumed incorrectly about how those profiles were marked since the manager of those profiles was active very recently.

Regardless, back to the problem at hand. Anyone can mark people private, accidentally or not, way beyond their 4th cousin tree. I think that's a big mistake. People born prior to the 1800's should not be able to be marked private.

Stephen - can you describe further why you find it a mistake?

I can, but I would first ask you to think about the alternative;

What benefit is there in allowing someone born before 1800 to be marked as private? What reason could there possibly be? Profiles outside of a Geni user's "Family Group" should always remain public. That's simply my opinion, and I'm not sure why the new privacy rules discarded that great policy that existed up until July 1st.

I'm as puzzled as you are, Stephen. :)

Stephen, I agree with your opinion, in fact I go further and consider that anyone born before 1850 should be public. You are exactly right, long dead people have many ancestors and relatives and do not "belong" to a single manager. If they are public, they are searchable. Certainly before 1700.

I do understand people's motivation. They want a tree that reflects their work only. Which they can easily have on their own computer at home or on My Heritage. The difference is that Geni allows various people to contribute to a "profile," which often creates better information and gives you a broader view of your heritage quickly for better known lines. I have learned so much from distant cousins and others who have expertise in a particular period or group.

I do understand that merges and sometimes others editing profiles can be aggravating. We have all experienced this, but Geni has provided quite a few, different ways of maintaining good information on a profile. I think some of the "private profile" people do not understand these tools well yet.

Jason Scott Wills - re: " you realise no one can search for private profiles at all anymore, .." - this is Not True - you can still search for them just fine. For example - put "Jonathan Smith" in search box - it will pull them all up - then go to the yellow box to left of results - put "Jonathan" in first name field, "Smith" in last name field - and if you know spouse or etc - fill those in -- you now know each Profile showing in search results for "<Private> Smith" is, in fact, "Jonathan Smith" -- and if you entered Spouse, you know that as well. Search still works.

Also - Geni's matching algorithms still work - and when they suggest a match - Compare Profiles shows (or usually shows?) actual first names. So although life is harder, it is not as hard as you suggest.