Citing Geni

Well, it does depend upon the style you are looking for. It appears that you are trying for the Harward citation style. But there are several problems:

1. You've forgotten // in your URL (minor)
2. You probably want to link directly to the profile, and not to the main page. Or at the very least give the profile number, making it possible to access it. Who knows, there may very well be another Borick Beagle (1757-1841). You can find the profile number in the end of the URL and it starts with 6000...

Thannks for your response ... helpful tip ... I'll followup with changes.

Oh, lovely! A question after my own heart.

Geni is a website, so one cites it as such, BUT there are different things going on, so the citation would change depending on what you are pointing to, exactly.

And unless you are publishing -- in which case your journal or website tells you what format to use -- you have leeway. You just need to get the information in, in such a way that if can be found.

(I spent my working life living in MLA format, so I'll use that, but change things to fit the format you need for what you are doing.)

If for instance, you are citing a particular profile:

"Borick Beagle (1757-1841)" <URL for Borick Beagle>. "Geni." (3 Nov 2008). Retrieved 5 Dec 2015.

(I didn't put the last name first because that's not how the geni profiles are easily found.)

If you are citing a particular revision:

Stokey, Sherri. Revision to "Borick Beagle (1757-1841) <URL for Borick Beagle>." (3 Nov 2008). "Geni", retrieved 5 Dec 2015.

If you are citing the geni site in general:

"Geni". June, 2006. MyHeritage. Retrieved 5 Dec 1015.

In MLA format, you don't put in the URL when it is easily found. So I didn't put it in for Geni in general, but I did for the profile.

Where are you needing to use the citation? That changes things.

I'm using it for Ancestry.com - do not want to use their complicated format for sources, so i keep a list under my Notes, this way I know where my sources are derived. In the event of needing it for Public, I desire a formal citation. (My Ancestry.com family tree is private as well as my comments posted under Notes),

Fair enough. I think you're free to use any formal format you like.

Enjoy!

I don't see the point of citing someone else's tree as a source. It's a major problem I have with folks using Smartcopy. Many profiles have been blindly copied 'because they're there', and if they clash with Geni data then Geni is changed.

The logic that you could go to that persons tree and find their sources is something you should do first - and use those sources not Smartcopy. If there are no sources, why are you copying the profile to Geni? In your case this applies to your tree on ancestry.com.

Smartmatch is useful in giving you some useful leads. Smartcopy is another story.

I would not discourage anybody's desire to provide the source back to the place you get the information from.

Copying data and then providing only the original primary source is actually called a very funny word "plagiarism". If you insist giving the original source, but you only found the secondary one you do it as so:

[Primary Source] as cited in [Secondary Source that you actually found].

Great discussion, so glad for the topic.

Anne, it was great to see the specifics of different cite styles, uses & needs addressed, I'm going to save that.

Elaine, I particularly "like" using SmartCopy because it annotates exactly where the data was obtained from in clickable fashion and with a date stamp. I can (before and after) inspect what primary sources were used for the tree.

As examples

- My great great grandfather (USA) may appear in several MH trees & several Ancestry trees; suppose I want to reach those tree owners, but not today. Now I have an easy reference to them.

- One of those Ancestry trees has complete census and other records visible. This is the secondary source I'll want to cite, because they've done the compilation, and SmartCopy has made the citation for me already.

NB SmartCopy citations can always be edited into MLA, Harvard, APA etc format if need be.

Erica. You've hit the nail on the head. I don't have the multiple subscriptions that you have. If a source is given as MH, how does that help me? I can't see the census records that you are relying on for citation and can only assume that the MH profile is unsourced. It never mentions that the data came from census records - just MH.

I've got branches of my tree desperately need checking, but all I've got is that they came from <site manager> who cannot be contacted without an MH subscription. The sources that <site manager> used will forever remain a mystery to me.

Smartcopy is lazy genealogy that does not help Geni members (except probably for the instigator) - in fact, I've found it to be an obstruction.

Geni is meant to be self-contained, but this is creating an exceptional reliance upon other sites and their subscriptions.

Elaine - SmartCopy cites narrative that is sourced within the enclosing tree. So if I use SC on a census report to create a family tree, not only is there a link back to the record, there is the "text" of the citation. If I use it on a FindAGrave page that quotes from an obituary, that text is copied over, so I have secondary & primary source in one.

Your beef isn't with the copy utiility, it's with lack of transparency. But a good user can make the Geni profile far "more" transparent & cited faster & more accurately.

My beef is using someone else's family tree as a source - at most it is a conduit or a lead, not a source.

For my part of the tree at least, Smartcopy has been solely used to copy in someone else's tree. I guess geni.com will approve - gets the 100 million faster.

:)

I spend a lot of time merging duplicates that are empty, so believe me, I'd prefer more citations too. As well as uploaded documents etc. But it takes time, and SC actually can help the cause if used effectively as I've tried to describe. And most don't realize profiles already exist or know how to connect to them, so that's what Geni can enhance - that ease - and get everyone more focused on sourcing & citing.

Which is why I like this discussion.

The quality of Geni would be greatly enhanced if Smartcopy dropped the ability to copy more than one profile from another family tree.

I can hear the cries of anguish already.

Elaine I think the specifics matter, because it's not about copying, it's about merging & sourcing - as well as recognizing what's "more likely" to be "more correct."

Also a tolerance for error correction is a useful attribute for working with the Geni tree. As you know, curators aim to please, and we do get the errors fixed - and significant profiles field locked against data corruption - in a timely way.

It IS about copying - and Smartcopy. To copy hundreds of profiles into Geni from someone else's tree knowing full well that you will not provide sources (in fact, if there were sources you will not copy them), and that a Geni member cannot even contact the author to discover the sources is close to pointless.

I've branches of the tree that I've given up on. There's locations and dates that can't be right, but it's pointless opening a discussion with anyone other than the author - who will forever remain uncontactable.

The person who actually did the Smartcopy generally has no particular interest in the profiles beyond something appearing in their merge centre.

Well, it's not the way I see the SC utility used, nor the way I use it. Using SmartCopy is a privilege granted, and that right is revocable, so feel free to work with the NZ & Australia curators privately to examine that solution as a possibility.

I will also point out that unless a match has been confirmed (which I can't do), you can't even see which family tree the Smartcopy came from, or what changed.

In the About section, I've got...

Updated from MyHeritage Family Trees by SmartCopy: Nov 16 2015, 9:48:55 UTC

That is all I have - that is all I know. Given that there are several trees in MH for this person, and I can't contact the author of any of them, I haven't a clue where this information came from.

Sample - William Joseph Norman McLeod Scrimgeour

Mr Google answered some of the questions

http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&amp;db=carol...

https://books.google.com/books?id=evVEAQAAMAAJ&amp;pg=RA4-PA25&amp;...

http://famnet.net.nz/GDB_Pages/gdb2.aspx?Linkid=48db2531-a580-455d-...

http://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/william-joseph-scrimgeour...

That doesn't make sense.

MH is cited as a source, yet you are citing others.

In other words, you are saying the 'Updated from MyHeritage Family Trees by SmartCopy' should be ignored, and do your own research.

Also, please tell me which fields changed.

Erica. I mean 'that is all I know of the Smartcopy', not 'that is all I know of the profile'.

I don't understand why the Smartcopy was done - he was already in Geni. I guess some folks will smartcopy anything that matches.

You can see anything that changed in the revisions tab, when, and by whom. This is the same as anything in Geni done by anyone.

William Joseph Norman McLeod Scrimgeour

There was a Smartcopy on 16 November - tell me what changed, and by whom.

Knowing which MH tree was used would be an advantage.

I actually do not know what "SmartCopy" is all about, have came upon this word for the first time in this thread. So no comment there.

But it is silly to say that you can never trust any tree that doesn't provide the source. I have entered many of my relatives just by knowing them. And i assume that many people do the same. When i come upon the tree created by somebody else, i assume that the person knows one's own relatives within what Geni would consider to be "Family". The further (farther?) away you get from that person, the less likely the information is to be true, if it is unsourced.

See the source for Adria Underwood for example. It is the graphic representation of the person's family tree, and i make a reasonable assumption, that despite the fact that there're no government stamps or agent signatures on it, that the information is still correct. This "document" has given me middle names of people that otherwise would have only initials.

In fact coming from Russia, i would trust personal account of one's own family to be more reliable than official census data (if you come up with contemporary census data from Russia being used to construct the family, take it with a grain of sault... residence and dates are quite likely to be wrong).

Also for some living people that i put into my tree i keep the sources locally (on my machine) and only give a hint upon where the information comes from on the actual profile. I would really hate it if the data that i input were to be too useful to some governmental agency or similar privacy intrusion group.

Copying another person's tree without sources over the top of an existing Geni tree with reasonably good sources is not generally appreciated.

This sequence of Smartcopies has generated an incredible number of emails. We have no idea where the data came from or why the existing data was changed, but it affects several generations of the tree. We don't know what has been changed without arduously recreating the original. I honestly don't feel like re-doing the research.

The sources shown in the profiles are now generally incorrect (which is the topic of most emails), and I've been advised to remove them as they are misleading if now not completely wrong.

Folks have discovered that the easiest way to use Smartcopy is to create new profiles for a generation, then merge them with Geni profiles if they exist.

Emma Spencer
Samuel Vittery Murch

This is one series of Smartcopies - I unfortunately have many more.

What is Smartcopy? What does this have to do with the original "How to cite Geni tree?" question? Shouldn't we split this topic somehow? Or at least explain what is being talked about?

Citing another person's tree as a source is a most unhelpful endeavour in genealogy. It is a dubious technique that Smartcopy relies upon. The effect of using this is clearly shown.

What is Smartcopy? What does this have to do with the original "How to cite Geni tree?" question? Shouldn't we split this topic somehow? Or at least explain what is being talked about?

Volodya - agree. Let's split the topic, maybe even in four

1) how to cite a Geni profile (the question of the Original Poster, and therefore the focus of "this" discussion
2) citations within a Geni profile
3) Elaine - I think your points may have to do with reading Geni profile revisions, so I am calling that (3)
4) the SmartCopy tool

More about SmartCopy here

http://www.geni.com/projects/SmartCopy/18783

And there are discussions within that project, so best kept in that area.

Erica - You suggest keeping the Discussion about Smart Copy in that Project -- BUT when one looks at "Public Discussions" while logged in to Geni, it will not show you Public Discussions that are part of a Project unless you are Following the Project or following that specific Discussion - so by restricting the Discussion about Smart Copy to the Project, you "hide" it from most Geni-Users. I think Elaine makes many very valid points, and that they should not be hidden that way!!