My 3 projects were deleted without any prior warning

Re: And with curated MPs, again, the curators could simply decline the invitation.

This is not true. Unless the profile is completely locked, any of the profile managers can approve the request, and in fact, the request doesn't even circulate to the curator (unless they are also a profile manager). So this should illustrate the burden for curators on the "mega" projects. We may not even realize an important MP has been added to a project; we'd see the action in "newsfeed," perhaps, if we're monitoring it closely.

Private User -- Thanks for sharing your process. I appreciate hearing about it.

I am struggling to understand why three additional projects were needed to accomplish what was being done, though.

From what I saw, Martina was going through other existing projects and adding the profiles from those projects into one, two, or all of her "My Ancestors" ones, then linking to those projects from her projects so people could find their paths to people in those other projects. And then in doing so, users like you were able to see some historical connections, especially in the deeper historic tree, that maybe you didn't know about.

But since that was the case, those profiles in the existing projects really didn't need to be added to Martina's projects -- all that really needed to happen was for people to go through the "Profiles" lists on the existing projects and run their relationship paths.

For example, if I wanted to see how I'm related to people in the "Knights of the Garter" and "Charlemagne: Direct Descent Line" projects, I would:

1. Go to Knights of the Garter and click "View all" next to the word "Profiles"
2. Run my paths to people of interest
3. Go to the Charlemagne project and do the same

I would not take all 1,041 profiles in the Knights of the Garter project and all 1,349 profiles in the Charlemagne project and load them into one, two, or three additional projects. (A huge percentage of the profiles in Martina's projects were in multiple, not just one.)

What would've made more sense would've been for Martina's projects to only list others projects, along with links (which she did do a nice job of on the project overview), and then let people go run the paths using the lists already existing in those other projects. But re-adding all of those thousands of profiles into her projects was not necessary, and to Erica's point, was creating a lot of extra work for all the other users who were constantly having to approve all of those requests to add profiles.

If Martina's projects return -- and I'm not confident that they would, since to be honest, I think the whole "finding connections between profile lists in different projects" mission can also be met simply by using the Projects page -- I think that can work only if two things happen:

1. Link to the existing projects but not add the profiles, since as I described above, it's just not necessary and creates so much extra work for other Geni users
2. The name is changed to not say "ancestors", since -- to Erica's point -- this was a common bone of contention that resulted in a lot of complaints from other users, and Martina had been unwilling to change the language previously despite approximately a dozen curators attempting meditation over a lengthy period of time

This seems to echo what Erica said above, except she suggests indexing profiles. I think that would be an enormous task to undertake, but that would be up to you all.

I can't find it now to quote, but someone said something to the effect of "I can only see these 'Ancestors of' projects being a problem if they're taking up a ton of space on profiles."

That's actually exactly what's been starting to happen, especially over the past year or so. In addition to curators being bombarded with requests to add locked profiles to these projects, we now have profiles where out of maybe 20 projects, 6-7 of them are things like "John's Ancestors" and "My Notable Connections" and whatnot. It's really becoming an issue and users are complaining to us and to staff about it. (If you're personally not seeing many of those projects on profiles, that means curators are doing our jobs well and helping suppress the problem...though keep in mind, that means we're spending a lot of time on it that we could be spending on other issues.)

They're also inherently unstable projects since paths change all the time -- which is one of the reasons why pedigree projects aren't an issue, since those are based on documented sources (lineage books, etc.), whereas these projects tend to just be "I hit a pushpin and this week it says I'm a descendant of _____."

My guess -- purely a guess! -- is that we're eventually, sooner rather than later, going to get some form of guidance saying that those projects are not endorsed by Geni.

The tradition on Geni for 15+ years had been to put links to your favorite notable ancestors and connections in your own profile's "About" if you wanted to showcase them. I would personally like to see us return to that instead of using projects, especially since that does not involve having to put labor onto other users in the form of asking them to approve your requests.

"This is helpful to know. I thought if a curator was listed, they would be the one to approve the request. I did not realize curators did not also automatically function as a profile manager."

We do for some things, we don't for others.

If it's a locked profile, the curator of record is the only person who can approve a request to add a profile to a project. So these project requests tend to become a decent part of our workload.

A majority of the time, project requests are great ones (because our fellow users are great!), but when the projects are more of the "vanity project" sort or don't seem to have much genealogical value, most curators de-prioritize those requests as less urgent to process than others. And a lot of curators outright reject vanity project requests due to the number of complaints received about such projects.

It would be interesting to get an "approve this new project and collaborate on it" form going, yes. I could see that being helpful.

I've been known to create duplicate projects inadvertently, for example, because my search didn't work right. If another pair of eyes had checked on it, they might have caught it.

An "approver / collaborator" could suggest a better name, resources, related projects, profiles. Actually, I recently added a Catholic Order project, and wanted to get someone more familiar with Catholicism to make sure I got the basics right. A form approval would have aske that question automatically, whereas a collaborator may not look into it in the same way.

We have single manager "abandoned?" projects. If a collaborator / project approver is added at project inception, there's automatic legacy.

I like this idea.

"Neither is wrong, just different. That's basically what I was trying to communicate."

No, I understand, and I genuinely do appreciate your thoughtful input and explanation. I wasn't directing my whole message at you, more thinking aloud, and explaining my thought process as to why going through the process Martina was going through of re-adding all those profiles to three new projects wouldn't make a lot of sense for me.

"Prior to this discussion I did not think about Projects creating extra work or stress for volunteer curators."

To be super clear, projects are the single greatest thing about Geni in my mind, and most of the work is worthwhile. It's the superfluous work that I think can be a burden -- and not just to curators. Again, those requests to add MPs to projects get processed by a mix of users (curators and non-curators alike); it's only locked MPs that only curators can process.

Personally, I first became aware of Martina's projects when non-curators started complaining about them. Other curators had similar experiences. Curators made suggestions about ways to change things. There were numerous discussion threads, both connected to the projects and on the general discussion board, and some of them became heated enough that posts got deleted for violating the Code of Conduct.

I know that there were some fans of the projects, and I respect that, but there were enough detractors that Martina even wrote "Message to My Detractors" posts on the projects. These complaints went on in public and in private for many months, with an array of curators and other users trying to mediate.

"And/or an approval process? Like 'fill this out, we will get back to you in ___ amount of time/'"

That would actually eat up way more curator time, plus it would mean gatekeepers patrolling which projects get created. I would argue that's an overly aggressive solution, since 99.999% of projects go on without any issues.

"People might not like it, but I think it would be better to have a Project denied outright vs working on things for weeks, months, year, etc and then having it disappear."

I agree certain types of projects should be clearly stated as not being supported, which is a big part of why I feel like Geni might reach a point of saying they don't endorse "my ancestors/my connections" projects, since those are the ones that generate the most complaints from other users and have the worst labor : reward ratio.

To be clear, I envision the "approve this new project" circulating to any geni member. The point is another pair of eyes and an initial collaborator, not policing.

A "lock" to "no profiles." Yes, we've asked for that before, it would be good to ask again. The "country portals" are locked by Geni to "no profiles" so they can automatically add users to those portals based on login IP address.

I think we need a feature request on the "help platform" and who would do the locking?

But I would think approval for "any" project (by any member) so someone can point out that the project already exist in French (an example of what happened to me recently; I wish I had had an approver ... ) would be a different issue.

Still would be a significant overcorrection to me, Erica, especially since people tend to work in small teams as it is and would likely just keep approving each other's projects automatically without checking them over. (Automatic, thoughtless approval would also happen if it went into a queue anyone could respond to...compulsive clicking and whatnot.)

And, we also have people who have legitimate reasons for not wanting any other collaborators -- it's rare, but it happens -- and I wouldn't want us to force it.

Maybe it's something we need to mull over separately, in a different thread to come.

"if with little programming effort Geni could make it so a Project might be either able to have Profiles uploaded to it or not"

I'm nearly positive that came up as a feature request once and got turned down because it would be so rarely needed as to not be worth Geni's time. But I'd be fine with re-exploring that.

Please comment / add thumbs up / down to this feature request:

Ability to lock a project to "no profiles allowed"
https://help.geni.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/28962633188887-Abili...

I'm nearly positive that came up as a feature request once and got turned down because it would be so rarely needed as to not be worth Geni's time.

It's needed all the time. I added a couple of portals just this week.

Erica, I'm saying that was the response we got, not that it's true. ;)

Curators can add themselves to projects. And we have a member who has sought out abandoned projects and requested to be added as a collaborator, for the sole purpose of approving / rejecting project add requests. We did a bulk add via a ticket request to Geni, and now I add her as she requests to me by mail.

Erica, I'm saying that was the response we got, not that it's true. ;)

:) :) So we'll show it by votes for the "Feature Request," I hope. Vote now!

Glad to see the good ideas coming out of this discussion.

Re: That someone can prevent profiles from being removed from a Project or can decide a Project that has Profiles is not to have any more - ...

You are misunderstanding the feature request. It would be for use by the project creator for "portal" or "completed" projects. It would not be used to police a project.

There are simple procedures to use if a project is problematic.

• Report as "inappropriate" (there's a link on every project page). This cycles to Geni Customer Support only.
• Any PRO member can open a ticket with Geni Customer Support to engage with them about members, projects, policies, procedures, and actions taken. Discussions would not be the place to do so.