This Project is Mislabelled

Hi, I work for Geni and want to address this concern.

It does seem odd that the project name is "Families of the Philippines" while "The Philippine Country Portal Project" is a subheading atop the description. The country portal projects are intended to be a starting place for users within that specific country, who may not be familiar with Geni or the concept of collaborative genealogy. Private User you're a curator and you started this project; would you be agreeable to changing the project name to "Philippine Country Portal" and move "Families of the Philippines" as a subheading within the description?

The "fabulously wealthy" line does sounds elitist and exclusionary, however it's not being used to describe the contents of this project. As Private User noted, it's a footnote to the "By Surnames" section which obviously lists more than 60 surnames. It also states "as well as those that made contributions to society".

Geni's categories and examples of Filipino Families are uninteresting and smack of elitism.

Private User I don't think anyone here is trying to be exclusionary. I guess we should address the question of what this surnames section is trying to accomplish? It would probably be meaningless to include every surname of every person who ever lived in the Philippines; that would surely include every Smith, Jones and Miller, too. The names aren't uniquely Filipino, either, as explained regarding Spanish surnames (Aguilar, etc).

I guess it's a list of common native / generational names in the Philippines. Any modern survey of common names would likely include more than just those mentioned in the Catálogo Alfabético de Apellidos, is that fair to guess? If so, I might suggest we simply label the section "Common Surnames" (or "Frequent" if common sounds derogatory?) and we add a second symbol like † to denote the names that appeared in the 1849 catalog. Then the project participants would be free to add other common Filipino names to the list. Would anyone object to that?

kind regards,

Mike at Geni

I was on Geni when there were hardly any Filipino profiles here. I created the "Families of the Philippines" project in 2009, with many of the early profiles on revolutionary heroes. The project PRECEDED Geni-led initiatives to develop portals. At one point, there was another Geni Philippines Portal that I did not create.

Considering our data privacy laws and how genealogy data is not widely available in the Philippines (the government has regulated familysearch.org and image view is only available to church members), this was a roundabout disclaimer that the profiles I added to the project in the early phases were only for PUBLIC personalities and data was taken from PUBLIC data. I had to start somewhere and PUBLIC PERSONALITIES were low-hanging fruit.

Since then, other users have been actively creating their family trees and adding projects, so we have more to work with. I am happy that we all can develop projects and collaborate.

There was never any restriction on the "fabulously wealthy", although there are projects that feature prominent families. The quote some of you found offensive was from Town and Country Magazine. See the link under "References". Again, there was never any intention to be elitist.

Name-calling on this forum ("smacks of elitism") is not helpful. Talking about actionable suggestions would be more efficient and productive.

Mike Stangel Here is my task list:
1) Change title - done
2) Change the introduction to a more direct disclaimer - done
3) Remove the quote from Town and Country to something more generic - done
4) Add symbol and tag surnames that appear in the 1949 Catalogo - ongoing

For your guidance, I curate profiles included in projects BASED ON QUALITY of content (prominence is not a criteria) -- personal information must be complete, has a photo, has citations, has at least three connected generations. How the profile is connected to the project must also be cited -- for example, for the Filipino Jurists project, I countercheck with the Supreme Court rolls.

The "offending" statements have been stripped from the portal. Let's focus on research moving forward. Thanks.

I'm glad Ahmad commented here because I took my eye off this since my message three years ago -- but the project is looking really good and I thank you all for your hard work!