Restricting Editing of Profiles

You can request that profiles be made Master Profiles and the fields be locked. They should be complete, documented and sourced ideally. Complete dates and locations of birth / death with sources attached. A filled in Overview. Living profiles cannot usually be MPs.

Even you will not be able to make edits after that however, without a curator unlocking the fields. Curators are responsive and any curator can take the request. And anyone in your family group could ask for the profiles to be unlocked too.

As for profiles that were added by someone in your family group that you cannot delete, family group have all the same rights you have except with respect to claimed profiles so you have to reach agreements with those who you add to your family group or be very selective.

Why can't you delete them? We normally do not delete, it's rare and I would not delete without consulting the person who created the profile. Either we merge if it's a duplicate, or we detach if the person does not belong where they are attached on the tree? If the profile is claimed you cannot delete them. I believe if it's in your family group you can delete them otherwise but again, the courteous thing to do is contact the manager.

I guess I don't understand why under MY family tree, that I need to log in to access. that I have created over the past 7 years, has additions/edits that I did not add, nor wanted to add. Does Geni automatically just merge from other trees? I did not agree to merge my tree with anyone else's. Where is the privacy setting that allows ONLY ME, the creator of my tree, to make changes to my tree?

Kathleen - re: "Where is the privacy setting that allows ONLY ME, the creator of my tree, to make changes to my tree?" I see you joined about a month before I did -- I recall having a choice to let Family edit profiles I added and managed, or to let Family only View them. However, that went away years and years ago - perhaps somebody else remembers when - but I am pretty sure over 5 years ago, at least.

We do still have a tiny bit of control -- Blocking someone will prevent them from editing (or deleting) any Private Profiles where you are the only Manager. Is this possibly what is going on with Profiles you cannot delete?

And yes, Curators are now allowed to merge (no permission needed from anyone) even separate Stand-Alone Trees into the World Tree -- AND once connected to the World Tree, anyone can merge (again, no permission needed) in to Public Profiles.

If someone Merged in falsely, or has added incorrect info or etc. -- Hatte is a very good one to work with to get it corrected!!

Also - many of your Family Profiles are Public when they could be Private. I see one of Geni's eager beavers has been going thru and doing many merges in the past 5-6 hours (probably merging a Tree someone else created into the Tree you created) - which he probably could not have done if you had changed the profiles to Private [Geni went thru last summer and changed basically all Deceased to Public - tho we were (and are) allowed to change them back. (They told us, but did you miss that announcement? Or did you purposely have your deceased relatives set as Public?)]

Kathleen SAN FANANDRE - If you add people to your family group they can make changes to your tree. That discussion is between you and them. I have had ZERO issues with the 200 people I have added to my family group. You can remove someone from your family group if they add erroneous information.

There is NO setting that will allow only you to make changes to the tree that you created. As Lois said, you could keep several generations of your tree private.

You can do this in the List view, which is the easiest or do it profile by profile from the Actions upper right hand side.

It is also possible to ask for merges to be undone now. Contact a curator, any curator.

And it is also possible to REMOVE managers if they are not closely related to your close family member but were added through a merge.

I think if you contact a curator and work with them you will learn more about the various ways that Geni tools can be used to safeguard the information that you added. That would be my recommendation. That you make profiles private, remove non-family members as managers.

Master Profiles do not appear to be an option if you want profiles to be private. They are public. But can then be field locked and can only be merged by a curator.

re: "And it is also possible to REMOVE managers if they are not closely related to your close family member" - extremely important in my view - but probably will not help you -- I saw on your husband's side, the merges apparently were to profiles managed by a nephew of your husband (and the nephew did the merging).

On your side I think I saw the merges were to profiles managed by someone who was spouse of a 2nd great-grandchild where you were a great-grandchild [tho that person was not the one who did the merging!!] - in other words, it may be the case that the folks added as managers thru the merges are also legitimate family members of the profiles [tho possibly not always the case - you can check].

Hatte - will you undo merges like that, if they are accurate? and if not- do you know - are there any curators who will undo a merge like that, if it is accurate? In the second case, it is possible neither of the managers wanted the merge - would that make a difference, or ?

Actually, I am so disgusted that my entries of the last seven years have basically been hijacked, as far as I am concerned, that I will now look into using another family tree site. As there are dozens, I'm sure I will find one that will allow me to be the sole manager of an account without unauthorized changes.

Kathleen - I am sorry to hear this and wish you good luck. You might consider My Heritage.

SO WHEN WILL GENI STOP ALLOWING THESE MERGES? Due to this, I am actually listed THREE times on my own tree, with no way to correct it. Tons of duplicates of ancestors because of a slight spelling difference on their part. RIDICULOUS!! This has to stop. I CANNOT be the only person who has a problem with this!

You posted a month ago and I suggested that you work with a curator to clean up the issues, but you need to actually take the initiative to contact someone and to provide them with links to the places / profiles that need to be corrected or fixed.

We cannot help you if you only want to vent and not to either seek assistance or learn more how to prevent problems from creeping into your tree.

Most of us have large trees on Geni and we understand how Geni works so are able to prevent or at least catch and clean up after any merges with issues.

I suspect that if you took the time to work with someone and learn how Geni worked, you would also be able to maintain your tree as you wish it.

Kathleen - just in case you might misinterpret - when Hatte says "Most of us have large trees on Geni and we understand how Geni works" - by "us" she means Curators - there are lots and lots of folks on Geni with probably less grasp than you have of how it works, but the Curators can only become Curators if they demonstrate a good understanding of Geni, and a good willingness to help others. And Hatte is a good one to ask for the help she is mentioning.

[And yes, I agree much more than Hatte probably does, that merges can be a negative experience. Unfortunately for those of us who do not like it, Geni has its emphasis on encouraging merges, rather than requiring folks to check base with those active on a Profile, in that family or etc.]

I work with people all the time who start out not knowing how to use Geni and who get assistance and become skilled users and do not have the problems and complaints that beginning users have. And they are not curators and they are not Pro either.

Lois you do users a disservice by not telling them that with some experience and some assistance they can avoid a lot of these issues.

Many times with beginners it is a merge that is not complete and the data and tree conflicts have not been resolved, so it looks bad but is not once the conflicts are resolved.

I would love to see relationship locking by the way Lois because once the right spouse, parents and children are there and documented, I ALSO find bad merges very annoying, more so because I handle early American lines where this happens way too much. And I end up having to clean up after it.

But in people's immediate families, there are fewer "real" problems, most really are incomplete merges and beginners who do not know what to do. If they ask for assistance and learn a little, they end up doing very well at keeping a clean family tree.

Well, yes I guess I AM venting. With good cause. I don't have time to work on my tree on a daily basis, so when I actually do have time, it's annoying to have to spend that time "fixing" what I didn't do. How would I contact a curator? And they have the time to spend hours fixing just MY tree? BTW, I spent time when I began using Geni seven years ago learning the site.

https://www.geni.com/discussions/142108

Try asking for assistance in this discussion. It's usually at the top of the public discussions but you can "follow" it to make sure it shows up for you.

I'd like to hear what a curator or other user who helps you discovers. If you have been a user for 7 years, then hopefully you know how to resolve conflicts and that is not the source of the issues.

Provide links to the problem profiles and details of the issues that you would like assistance with. Good luck! I am with a sick, elderly parent so I'm not sure if I personally have the energy or time to help. But in the future, you could contact me on Geni email.

Hatte,

Thanks for your reply. Actually, I've never had any type of issue to resolve until now, so no, I don't know how to resolve conflicts. I have posted a request for help from a curator. Perhaps that will be a starting point. I haven't decided if the time and effort required to clean up the tree is worth it opposed to starting a new one from scratch. Good luck to you and thanks!
Kathleen

I am getting so tired of people adding family members , where they have the wrong information, or decide that the surname is not spelt correctly.