Deleting Profiles

I agree, Private User

It should not be so easy for one to delete another's profile.

Another issue I am seeing is people removing others as managers. But this is another issue entirely.
One of the contributing factors is Gedcom uploads that bring in many duplicates which go unmerged or worse, are mismerged.

Sort of annoying to discover all the times I dutifully moved a spouse or child I had just created from the wrong profile to the right one was not in any way helping Geni or preferred to deleting. Since moving is not preferred, and it leaves a cleaner Revision Tab if I delete and create a new Profile, rather than move, think I will try to switch to doing that (given up on expecting the brain to never make such a mistake again).

I think the first indication I saw that Geni was changing its attitude towards deleting Profiles was when I discovered Geni had programmed in a way for folks to undo a Gedcom Import. Often a whole lot of deleting there, by a person of Profiles that person had created.

https://help.geni.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018818713-Can-I-undo-a-G...
Explains how to undo a Gedcom import one has done.
Can be used as long as the GEDCOM file still exists on Geni (and it shows you how to tell if it does)

And one can undo it even if many were already merged. The merges will be undone before the profile created by the import is deleted.
Does not work quite as cleanly as one might hope when there have been merges, due to current shortcomings of unmerge, but still a very good tool to know about.
Please enlighten folks about it, especially ones doing imports and not interested in putting in the work to merge the profiles and/or did not want that happening.
Many might be much happier to undo the import and work with SmartCopy instead.

Oh my!

I get the feeling that which Profiles it is fine for a Curator to Delete has been evolving since Geni resumed allowing GEDCOM imports.

First I believe I saw if an import was in a separate Tree then under certain conditions a Curator could mark it Fictional and ask Customer Service to delete it. Then I saw a new category, Isolated Tree, had been added to be used for those situations instead of using the label Fictional for those as well as truly Fictional ones.
Then I saw references to cutting off a section of the profiles of an import, either before or after some merged, and a Curator marking one section as Isolated and requesting Customer Service to delete it. [Possibly the act of Labelling as Isolated acted to send the request to Delete it to Customer Service, not sure]

I wish I could find one of those posts, so I could quote from it what they said the 'certain conditions' were.

At some point in there, I believe I also saw a Curator saying it was, at least sometimes, fine for a Curator to delete a Profile that got cut off from the World Tree, rather than simply leave it as a singleton separate Tree.

The comment in Mike's post on July 19th - https://www.geni.com/discussions/216411 -
"Just to chime in here, Geni supports curators' decisions to delete rather than merge if they are confident about the current data on the existing profiles"
Was the first time I saw anything officially indicating it was fine for Curators to ever delete profiles.
And although he went on to say "Nothing good can come of forcing them to merge every Charlemagne that every newbie adds to Geni (and all the wives and partners, etc)." -- there is nothing in his first sentence which I quoted that restricts it to Charlemagne -- or in any other way - just that the Curator is "confident about the current data on the existing" profile.
Also, not clearly stated what is meant by "existing" - the one first created? the one that is a Master Profile, even if the other had been created earlier?, even by a Close Family member if we are talking recently enough for such to exist?
His comments above seem to be, if anything, even more amorphous

Mike Stangel -

What you are picturing may well not be what a given Curator is picturing.
(Plus people make mistakes, so not all their actions may be in line with what they mean to be doing - probably no way someone else can tell when that is the case.)

Are you now authorizing Curators to be total arbitrary Dictators except for the few actions designated as unacceptable here: https://help.geni.com/hc/en-us/articles/360050649553-Can-curators-e...
Or can you be a bit clearer on what is actually acceptable?

(Or should folks send an email to misconduct@geni.com every time they think a Curator did not act in accordance with what that user thinks your vision is? Or???)

Thanks, Erica for your response
In case it matters - I was working on my comment above when it posted.

I know I have reported people going about deleting profiles willy nilly and several times. Different curators have stepped in and halted the people doing this (more than one occasion so I word it this way). People delete profiles for different reasons. Curators do it for different reasons still and NOW, Geni automatically stamps PROFILE DELETED when someone merges a profile and that is weird and misleading (it happened to me again just today and I had to UNdelete a no name mother profile in order to give her the name Unknown...)
On the day the curator deleted my profile I adopted rather than MERGE it with a curated duplicate, I had just cleaned out my AOL email and saw the alert/notification.
Mere hours later, I got an alert that someone else had deleted a profile I added while tree building I think in 2020. THAT profile was deleted by an immediate family member and I chose to respect her wishes even though her actin was wrong.

My concern was that there may have been and may be other profiles deleted that I have missed notification due to my overly full inbox and when it happened more than once in such a short time, it seems an issue that needs discussed

Neither of the two instances that occurred to me that day fall into these categories mentioned here.
The curator who gave me information as to what can happen when a curator unlocks a profile in order to merge made a LOT of sense to me but the carte blanche response from the curator that did it and the manager defending it were not applicable to either situation and it just felt like a shut up and take it scenario.
I still think the fact that a profile can be deleted by a general user needs to be addressed and the way Geni deletes or shows a profile as deleted when it is merged or when a child with only one parent is added needs to be "fixed"
I appreciate the job of the curator and the staff and etc. That doesn't mean I should not question or just accept when something I don't understand or don't like happens.

In other words, deleting a profile should never be seen as no big deal.

Cynthia -- This is a generic link that, for each person, takes them to their list of deleted profiles: http://www.geni.com/list/deleted
I think your concern can perhaps be solved by bookmarking it and checking periodically.

Private User yes, Geni tends to show the link whenever you discover a profile has been deleted. I have deleted many of my own but the new thing of Geni saying a profile is deleted when it isn't (lost to a merge/has been merged) is misleading and saying I have deleted a profile of a parent with a Smart copy of a child with only one parent showing is not a good thing to automatically happen...
The fact that these are all happening at the same time is really making me focus on the deleting of profiles as something that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later

Yes, that Revision History of the non-Primary Profile finishes with saying it was deleted is perhaps misleading -- how it might be better phrased can perhaps be discussed elsewhere.

SmartCopy resulting in a message saying you have deleted a profile of a parent with a Smart copy of a child with only one parent showing should probably be discussed here: https://www.geni.com/discussions/145968

I created this post to discuss the rules and official recommendations with regard to deleting Profiles, and much appreciate seeing Curators discuss their individual practices with regard to deleting profiles within the choices allowed..

:D

Just because I failed to give a good link to the specific post mentioned here https://www.geni.com/discussions/234459?msg=1488800
- it is post on July 19, 2021 https://www.geni.com/discussions/216411?msg=1487941