Privacy issues

Can you link to a profile example?

Sorry, I wrote an answer but it disappeared this morning.

You and your cousin should each add the other to your own Family Group. That way you can see and edit each other's private profiles. To do this go to Actions (upper lefthand) and from the pull down menu choose Add to Family Group. She should do this from YOUR profile in Profile View and you do this from HER profile, Profile View.

You should then each be able to see up to 4th great grandparents of each other, even if private.

Hate
I do not understand your answer. Both me and my cousin are on the family tree I started many years ago. My entries have me as manager and her entries have her as manager. In the past We made each coma avers. Now for some reason she makes the entries she adds as Private. This prevents me from confirming matches I get from My Heritage for those people she has entered!

In the past we made each co managers!

Private User

All Hatte is suggesting is that you check to see if you and your cousin is in same Family Group

It is easy to check if you and your cousin are in the same family group. Open her profile, go to Actions (top right) if you see 'Add to Family Group' it means you are not in the same family group, click and request to be added, if it isn't there it means you are in the same family group and you should be able to see each others close relatives.

Thanks Angus. In "Actions" there is nothing regarding Family Group.
I can see close relatives but when I try to add confirmations of various data matches to those marked private I can not. My questions "Is there a way I can change those entries to public by myself as she refuses to do so? Or I am not going to update their profiles, etc. as long as they are marked private?

Unfortunately as long as they are marked private you will have no access and unable to edit.

Did you co manage some of the profiles she privatized?

An example profile would really help us here in understanding the relationships that exist and how the profile privacy settings are impacting it.

Knowing all of this, would greatly assist:
Relation from you to the common profile.
Relation from your cousin to the common profile.
Relation from you to your cousin.

An example profile would allow us to see where each of the three points are in relation to each other.

Sorry Jonathon I am the person who started the tree and I invited her several years ago. I do not wish to add more info at this time. I will live with the problem. I know how we are related and that is not the problem.
Time to end this discussion.

Any unclaimed Profiles in your Max Extended Family (out to 4th Cousin, back to 3rd great-grandparent - ie what Geni currently calls "close family") you should be able to edit - regardless of who added them, and even if they are Private.

Also - you should be able to edit any unclaimed Private Profiles added by a member of your Family Group. Family Group is folks with claimed profiles - usually out to 4th Cousin and back to 3rd Great-Grandparent - but each person has the option of reducing this group - or dropping specific individuals out of their Family Group. (However - do not think approving Smart Matches is treated the same as edit rights here).

I believe this is the link that gives you the members of your Family Group, so you can see if Geni counts your Cousin as in your Family Group: http://www.geni.com/list/index?group=family

Having difficulty with terms. What are "unclaimed" Profiles?
What are "claimed" Profiles?
Is my GENI Tree under my original title my Family Group?
What is a Family Group?

Claimed means the person it is a Profile of has logged into it (and/or created it) [fully claimed if they have also set their own password. (once fully claimed, default is only they can edit it]).

Your profile of You is a claimed profile. My profile of me is a claimed profile. The profile I added of my deceased grandparent is an unclaimed profile. As are the profiles I have added of many of my cousins who have never joined Geni. If you invited somebody and they clicked on the link (and never subsequently closed their account) - that is a claimed profile - whether they are an active Geni-member or not. In Tree View you can tell the claimed profiles because Geni shows them with a blue outline around the Profile Photo space.

Did you try clicking on the link I gave?? It will give you your Family Group. That should give you some idea what I am talking about.

No, "Family Group" is definitely NOT the same as your Geni Tree. "Family Group" is ONLY (per Geni's current definition) folks with claimed profiles - ie folks who have joined Geni - and who are closely enough related to you (or who you have added to your Family Group).
I explicitly defined "Family Group" above thusly:
" Family Group is folks with claimed profiles - usually out to 4th Cousin and back to 3rd Great-Grandparent - but each person has the option of reducing this group - or dropping specific individuals out of their Family Group"
See http://www.geni.com/account_settings/family for Geni's explanation

Read above, check the link in this and the one in my comment above - then let me know if it helped at all to explain the terms.

Lois
Thank you for your help and directions. I guess I am still confused. I have entered many individuals and manage them. Some people have whom I invited have joined Geni. I have 945 blood relatives at this time. There are some I can edit/add info too and some I cannot. Is this because they now have a "claimed" profile which does not permit me to add info to them? Or is it because they have a "Family Group" which they have removed me from?

My Family Group seems to consist of 148 people a small subset of the individuals I have entered over the last several years.

Stafford -
How many folks have you invited to Geni? Probably way fewer than profiles added. None of the deceased profiles will be in your Family Group (at least, they should not be -- the dead are not supposed to be online at all). And most of us do not even get all the living invited. And then, not everyone that is invited actually clicks on the link. So makes sense that Family Group will be way less than the number of profiles you have added.

If you can still see all the info on their Profile, but just cannot edit it -- then that is a fully claimed profile with the default setting allowing only the user him/herself to edit it. If they had removed you from their family group, you should not be able to view the profile - tho you can check by clicking on "Actions" and see if up near top you see "Remove from Family Group" (so now they are in your Family Group) or "Add to Family Group" (letting you know currently they are not in your Family Group). If they are in your Family Group but you can still edit the profile - could be they never set their own password, could be they chose (in account settings) to let Family edit their profile, could be at least one other possibility for those who joined long ago. [for a short time, long ago, if someone was inactive for a long time - think possibly only six months - Geni opened their profile up so family could edit it; then they stopped doing that, but did not reverse the ones they did it to]

Well I guess I am old fashioned. When I setup my tree and added everyone I had found related to me my tree grew! Then I invited relatives to join - that seems to have had bad effects on my ability to provide more research info to their parts of our family. But that has created the problem that I can not access additional entries if I am so restricted. And the first issued I inquired about and still resent is that relatives enter persons who are mutual relatives and mark them as private - ergo I can not even obtain the name of such a relative! I will no longer invite people to join and may delete all entries I can. I am not happy with GENi!

Stafford - before deleting anything let's try to identify the problems specifically so there's an opportunity to fix them.

For that curators, who are volunteers, may be able to help fix "user errors."

But we need a link to a public deceased profile as a start point, as there are over 80 million profiles on Geni ...

stafford your my second cousin 8 times removed's wife's 6th great niece's husband's father and while that line is way out i'd rather you not mess things around for me in that area ok?

Stafford - any profile added by a Relative (in your Family Group) should be visible to you - and unless "claimed" (by the person it is of -- not the person who added it or anyone else) - then you should be able to edit it as well, even if it is marked as Private. --Again - I am talking about editing - not confirming Smart Matches (which I never do, so can not tell you about).

Confirming a Smart Match and Editing a Profile are two Different Activities - am not sure if you are complaining about not being able to Confirm Smart Matches or not being able to edit, or not being able to see thedetails on the Profile, or all three.

It is possible there is a bug in the system keeping you from seeing and editing Private profiles you should be able to see and edit. But it is impossible to tell from the info you have provided.

and I agree with you on this privacy thing it was tottally furbar (bleeped out swear) when they did it.. I don't see the need to have everything private maybe just 2 or 3 generations out so that id theft couldn't happen but the ability to make any profile private that has give us problems like crazy and Mike Stangel and mh needs to fix that but i dobut they will revisit that idea because once their mind is made up there is no use changing it.. I think each user should have a choice but should be made aware of the risks before they make that choice as it would mess up things for others .. I know a lot of people want to keep things private eg person knocked up before mariage etc etc . and i get the temptation to make things private . as I have more then a few ax murderders thives and god forbid even hitler in my tree that i wish others didn't know about but i don't hide them.. It's a tricky emotional slope though.. I have some family that is a by product of a divorce and a rapeist it all comes down to getting their consent if they wish to have that info out there

Stafford -

I can assure you, I can see and edit all the Private Profiles added by a third cousin of mine, a spouse of a third cousin, etc.

If you could answer Jonathan's questions above, folks could tell if it was a bug, and have it addressed if it is a bug.

If you do not want to post the answers here, perhaps discuss the questions in a PM with Hatte or Angus or Erica - each of whom is a Curator and has expressed interest in helping - and see if working together you can determine if there is a bug - or if not, if there is a satisfactory way to address the problem.

Stafford,

Your original post was:

"My cousin adds mutual relatives to my tree and makes them private so I have no way of adding additional information to their entries.
She will not change them to Public.
What can I do to solve this problem?"

If your cousin is adding profiles for living people then those profiles will autocratically be designated as Private. It does not matter that you were the original creator of your cousins profile, if the new profile is outside of your Family Group [as Lois has defined so well above] you will not be able to view it. Your "cousin" will have to give you permission to access the profile but she does not have to if she does not want to.

And she refuses! She refuses any sharing of people she added who are mutual relatives. End of discussion!

If the private profile is in her "Max Family Group," but not in yours then she has the right to keep it private and you cannot view it.

If the private profile is in your "Max Family Group," and you are in your cousins Family Group, you should be able to see it and edit it.

I can see why you would be annoyed if they are mutual relatives. I have been lucky so far not to have this problem often.

You can send Angus, me, or Erica links to the profiles in question privately in email as Lois suggests and perhaps we will have additional suggestions.

I don't know if anyone addressed this, but if you are not a direct descendant or a manager, you cannot accept a MyHeritage match on a profile.

Would someone else please confirm that this is correct? Perhaps this is part of the issue that Private User is having, since he is not a co-manager.

Hatte - do not know if this is different from what you are saying or not, but think it is - based on my experience, as well as understanding of how Geni works:

If the private profile is in your Max Extended Family - then you should be able to see it and edit it, regardless of whether you are in your cousins Family Group or not.

On the other hand - If you ARE in Your Cousin's Family Group - then you should be able to see and edit all the Private Profiles he/she manages - even if it is in her "Max Extended Family" and not yours. (This is definitely how it works for those in my Family Group who have added Private Profiles outside of our mutual area - I can see and edit all of them)

Only if your cousin is Outside your "Family Group" AND the profile added and managed by her is outside your "Max Extended Family" should its being Private keep you from seeing it.

As to MyHeritage Matches - a spouse of a third cousin of mine was able to confirm Record Matches on Profiles only I manage - Profiles not ancestors of his, but in his Max Extended Family - but no idea if this is how it is supposed to work and/or how it currently works - those I saw now seemed from over a year ago.

Hattie
That is probably the correct reason. So since this person refuse to let me co manage I am leaving GENI as soon as I remove all those whom I have added and privatize all that I cannot remove.
My work should not be meged with unknown people.

If your work was merged, you should be a co-manager. What I would do if I were you is add PUBLIC profiles to your tree that are duplicates of her private profiles. As long as they are deceased of course.

And if she made too many profiles private and they are long deceased, I think you have a case to ask Customer Service why they should not be public. It's not a matter for curators. We are users just like you who are trying to help and who have a few more "tools" than other users but we are just volunteers and do not determine policy.

However if we can help, we will.

Private User if any of your profiles were made private, you should send an email and the link to Customer Service.