My 3 projects were deleted without any prior warning

Not to mention that I said from the beginning that I did not receive any prior warning of any sort. y very explicit explanation is as following: Being VERY ACTIVE in my 3 projects, I was attending my emails on a DAILY basis until my 3 projects were GONE !!!

Private User -
No insult to your intelligence meant by thinking things that applied to me might apply to you as well.

You told us in your first post when you discovered the Projects were gone.
Not when you had last seen them.

I distinguish between emails and messages that go to my Geni inbox (which I sometimes refer to as Geni-mail)
I have no idea if you have looked in your Geni inbox as well as your email.
Nor do I know whether mentioning how far back you looked in the Geni Inbox without seeing anything relevant would matter when writing to misconduct, but I thought it might.

Private User
Out of curiosity -- have you gone to some of the Profiles that were in one of your Projects and looked at their Revision Tab - can you see listed when and by whom they were added to the project, and when and by whom they were removed from it, or??

I can verify her projects were active a couple of days ago. I am the user who was researching a few new to me branches, and noticed while moving around the lines several of these relatives were included.

I hope Geni will reinstate the projects, as I for one found them helpful. There are a lot of spots left here where it isn't always immediately obvious how families are related, and projects like Martine's can give a nice "big picture" view to help close some of the loops.

For what it's worth, the "wayback machine" site archived this project as of December 14, 2024, https://web.archive.org/web/20241214224927/https://www.geni.com/pro... - so it would have been deleted some time later.

Dimitri Vulis Good observation, thank you for pointing this out, I did not think to do it. My 3 projects were definitively deleted on December 30th, confirmed both by myself and another person who participated here. The cat is starting to scratch the bag in order to come out of it as we speak...

I did NOT contact Geni. And I asked not to contact them on my behalf TWICE.

Now meet Customer Service:
Customer Service
A very interesting link.

The "Customer Service" profile can be signed into by at least two people that I know of -
Geni's General Manager and the person who usually responds when I submit a ticket.
It is not an actual person link.
But it will be interesting to see if anyone responds now that you have tagged it.

Oh well. Nobody is perfect.

Private User Thank you for the information you provided based on your personal experience.

Private User Your quote: "But it will be interesting to see if anyone responds now that you have tagged it."

It would indeed.

Just a side note. There are people who did not notice when I reply while tagging somebody and when I'm not. This is not mere coincidence. Allow me to explain myself please.
For instance, when I said that my intelligence was insulted - which I felt it was - I did not tag anybody because it was not addressed to somebody in particular. But this is just an example.
There are other replies I did where I did not tag anybody. Which means I was speaking in general, not personally to somebody. I'm not shy, I can tag no problem. Please note that this reply is not tagged either.

Mike Stangel - for one answer to "what function do those projects serve for anyone else on Gen" -
see
https://www.geni.com/discussions/286983?msg=1738388

Private User - - tagging you to increase chance you see - Mike, Geni's General Manager, has responded

Private User - Do you want to fill in any details in response to Ashley's post above?

Geni's General Manager explained why the projects were Deleted here: https://www.geni.com/discussions/286983?msg=1738638
But says they can be restored if that was a mistake, and asks "what function do those projects serve for anyone else on Geni?"

I was not aware a project needed to serve a function other than being of use or interest to the Creator. Nothing in either of these suggests that:
https://help.geni.com/hc/en-us/articles/229705827-What-is-a-Project
https://help.geni.com/hc/en-us/articles/229705947-How-do-I-create-a...

Sharon Doubell -
What I look at is what we are officially told is acceptable.
Even if this was what is meant by a vanity project - there is nothing I can find saying vanity projects are not acceptable

If in addition nothing was said to the Project Creator and Collaborators before the Project was removed, that is ghastly.
It is clearly something the Project Creator worked hard on and valued.
I never saw it - I have no idea how much or what type info it contained.

Can you explain to me what you see as "the individualistic value of projects".?
And can you give some examples of
"the significant historical collection projects that we create on Geni" so I can see if they speak to me at all. The ones I have seen so far do not.
But different people enjoy different things. So I figured if some enjoyed it, then that was fine.

As for "People use MPed profiles' project lists to find their public historical / cultural relevance" - it never, ever occurred to me to do that, nor that anybody else did that.
It seems to me it makes more sense to put in the About that the person was in WWI and WWII or whatever than to create Projects that are just lists of people for whom each was true. But as I said, I am aware different people enjoy different things.
But it seems to me we now have a situation where people enjoying creating one type of Project are seen by you and undoubtedly others as detracting from the type Project you and they enjoy creating.

I am pretty compulsive about checking Public Discussions - and I have seen none before this one suggesting any criteria for how many folks had to find a Project useful or interesting for it to be allowed.

I sense from reading I use Projects in different ways than some of you, so I will give it a go. If this is not clear, please ask and I will try to drill it down.

With any of the "macro Projects", for lack of a better term to describe those with hundreds + profiles included, occasionally to wind down, or when stuck on a genealogical problem, such as difficulty finding an original source for a grandmother born in the 1500s to a family with confusing surnames and conflicting sources, I will sometimes pick a Project and click around as a way to refocus and see what "pops up"....will elaborate.....

For whatever it's worth to the conversation, I'm not "neurotypical", so if you're lost here, I do understand.

In this process, I have often had moments of discovery with other lines, where I have seen an interesting pattern while checking paths, dozens of paths r more--click, click, click--all the"Vikings", all the "Goths". a bunch of the "Nobles of Interests" or "people from Fill In The Town"...where I have noticed gaps I am able to fill in --which I meant by "closing the loops" here on Geni, that is tree building. A spot where I knew of surname connections, or had a hunch, found the original sources and built the connecting lines. OR I saw the problem where there was clearly spurious genealogy, identified it and started a discussion.

Of course those results do not always come from entertaining myself in a large Project, but sometimes they do.

The design format for Projects is easier to move around for this purpose, and has a broader reach than the limits of my personal suggested ancestor list.
I will also do this sometimes from a profile plucked in a discussion post, but Projects are nicer for this purpose. Since the end result improves the tree, I think its valid use. Who knows?

Maybe no one really cares what I'm over here doing in my own little corner, but since it was asked, this is one way I use Projects with a lot of profiles in them.

Like Lois, I also had no idea there was an issue with "vanity" criteria for Projects. I never thought about that as long as the focus of a Project wasn't blatantly offensive or something. I would just figure we all have different interests and approaches, and of course profile managers can always decline an invitation for inclusion, right?

What am I overlooking as a negative if we did have an explosion of Projects? I have noticed some profiles are part of several Projects and that doesn't seem to cause a problem-- or does it?

I missed Sharon's reply. I see perhaps there is a feeling against the "descendants of ___"Projects then as well? I bump into those often, and have used similarly to described above. I have also used them for a bit f research and discovery after realizing some of those titled users were cousins. I never considered doing so as vanity?

This feels to me as though it is about preferences, at least in part.

I can see how you could have a problem if an important MP was a member of 500 Projects, and half were something like Sally's Grannies Project, but having tried to find the time in the day to have a life, and do the genealogical research of interest, I personally doubt most people would even put in the work to create and maintain Projects. And with curated MPs, again, the curators could simply decline the invitation.

Private User

You and I are the same way with how we use projects.

Private User I have seen your project and clicked on it a few times. Wasn't something I used. But I can "see" why you were working on it and adding profiles to make connections. Finding out links to our Ancestors is exciting.

I too have created a project, in a way that can be seen as "vanity project". I was advised to create one to put notes and profiles in I'm working on. I have severe ADD and I bounce around a lot. My process is hot mess.
So many interesting Ancestors. :)

For my tree project, I copy/paste/link profiles in the about section instead of adding them to projects for my personal projects. That way I don't have to wait to "add" them or alert anyone else to my project. I work alone on that. I know other members have "vanity projects" as well.

I can see why you're upset! You were collaborating with others, for your own personal goals of tree building. That's a lot of profiles, time and WORK! It be great if Geni would create private projects,we can invite others to,then can do this very "vanity work" in private and not clogg up the Public projects. Best solution.

My best advice is to keep everything you're working on offline in your own tree. So everything you do online, do the same offline. Never TRUST any link or Company. Screenshot documents, census or whatever you have, because links quit working so many times. Download everything!

I've witnessed vandalism all over by people and these Companies. Not so much on Geni as of yet,why I'm here.
For example, Ancestry, has zero trust from me. I'd add sources,links and Ancestors. I'd notice things disappear off their profiles. I thought I was losing my mind! I started screenshots of everything,time stamps on my notes,video recording and double checking my tree for duplicates, just to be sure. It got so bad they kept deleting my second Grandfather Adam DeMont's information, like all of it. It seems to happen anytime they did their "update", where it says their system is experiencing problems. I lose lines and it went back a few generations. Ancestry is only good for getting records and sources,but their links often quit working,so I do screenshots. I have four years of documentation. Still happening to this day, because I'll work on lines there, transfer information here and poof, gone like a month later there.

Familysearch is wild and has more unchecked vandalism there. About 40 percent of my tree there is wrong. I do hope Geni will give you your project back. I'd be pissed and heartbroken if something like that happened to me with zero communication.

This should be a reminder to always keep everything your doing on an offline tree because at anytime someone can come along rather a company or persons and destroy your work.

I'm glad my explanation made sense to at least one other person Annber Lynn Collins! I do think it is important for those designing and maintaining sites like this to remember we all think in different ways and approach problems, in this case tree building and research, differently.

One other advantage to the "broader projects", if/when you spend some time moving around in them is language fluency. This is also an area where I have personally found Martina to be very helpful and the total opposite of selfish in motivation.

We're all clearly doing our best when working with multiple languages, but there are a lot of duplicates and mistakes out there still where the naming convention from another language is the problem. Hopefully I'm explaining this clearly enough. Let me try to narrow more:

We can have the best intentions with an ancestor, source properly and still mangle the proper name when creating or updating a profile. This is not going to show up in any of our personal ancestor lists, since we're going to only have the profiles attached to our trees, but if we are using a broader project and remember we have an ancestor named Annber Collins and now clicking around the Project we see another for Amnberr Collyns dit Welborne (haha) we might take a closer look. Are these the same people? Can we find more sources?

I think users taking the time to create Projects in and of itself can be potentially beneficial. If the creators are paying attention as they add profiles, and collaborators, followers and visitors give even a cursory look, more eyes on profiles which may not have been REALLY looked at in a decade or more.

I understand Geni is a company and can set their own guidelines. If you have users doing something harmful or offensive with their Projects, I get it. I would also feel upset if my work was judged as frivolous or vanity and was deleted without a chance to explain. Hearing of it happening also doesn't give the best feeling.

Erica Howton -
Martina's statement was that she
"did not receive any prior warning of any sort"

I appreciate hearing that "There were 14 discussions attached to the project, mostly from distressed curators, explaining the problems to her, and offering solutions." But none of that, as described there, counts as "any prior warning of any sort"
If Mike or Customer service said to her, "Hey, take one of these suggested solutions or the Projects will be removed." Possibly with "You have X-amount of time to do so or save your info" that would have been with some warning.
It does explains why she thought it was a Curator who deleted the Projects, tho.