Merging issues

Here, here! Thank you for bringing that up. What a mess! I have had so many of these unwanted additions to my tree (and I've no idea who is even doing this) that I gave up trying to fix them (for want of time), and have stopped accepting requests for that very reason.

Me too. Does anyone know how to delete a tree. I would like to re-load,

only (normal) way to delete tree is closing account uploaded / created the tree. And ONLY in case there is NO MERGES against this tree.

This is by my knowledge

I wish. I tried a few months ago but after reading the forum I discovered there wasn't so am just trying to play the game.

The only thing you can do is close your account and your profiles will get transferred to your closest relative. If they are not collaborating with anyone then there will still be merge issues and problems for them and the people already connected in the tree. If you haven't invited anyone than I think it would be safe but I would delete close relative information first and clean up your own profile. I ended up with someone's profiles and I think he might have been a 9th or 10th cousin. Apparently he didn't invite any family. Also, if you plan on starting a new tree you need to open a Pro account to upload a GEDCOM. If you get a new account change settings so profiles don't show up in searches, hopefully they won't show up in hot matches either, to keep people from putting in requests.

I wouldn't stop accepting requests because they might have merge issue in the tree. Before accepting a request go to the profile and view tree and make sure it is already part of the tree... i.e. duplicates, etc. I wish there was a way to tell when a merge request is put in if it was already connected or someone pulling someone new in.

Personally, I'm considering just ditching Geni altogether. I thought it was a great site when I found it, but that was before they changed things. Back then I coudl view similar profiles, upload a gedcom, etc for free without having to pay for Geni Pro. There's no way I'm going to pay for that. I'd pay for an Ancestry.com subscription long before I'd pay for Geni Pro and I haven't done that yet, either.

I agree. I am in a similar situation. The main benefit I see from Geni is when others have info that I can copy in my main off line database. LOL

There are quite a number of pros and cons on this subject.

The main Pro is - adding the names of your ancestors which you have not had time to look up yourself.

The main Con is - do you want to add all of your ancestor's siblings and their of spring ad-infernitum

There is a lot of information out there on the web and it is full of errors.
What makes it worse is the fact the people are continuing to assume that any and all the info is correct and do not bother to check he dates and locations to see if they go together.

I have fond a number of entries where a European is shown as having a birth or death in the USA before 1400.

In some cases corrections have been posted highlighting errors but this only reaches a small number of readers.

It is all to easy to add a child to the father with the correct name albeit the wrong person.

What we need is a method of connecting only the names one can choose and discard the rest.

I have read a discussion where one member stated that she (i think it was a she) stated that they would only use the married names for wifes/mothers - This is not practical as i have found that a number of my female ancestors and married twice or even three times.

Adelizia de Louvain is an ancestor she was the 2nd queen of Henry I, who then married William d'Aubigny

Isabella de Taillefer the queen of King John - after his death she married Hugh X de Lusignan. She is an ancestor through the children of both marriages.

This debate will never end. Gegi is not he best place on the web and i find it restrictive - as i am finding that as i go bach in time the branches a coming together and the number of duplicated lines is growing at quite a rate.

Like some of you, I have a much larger web presence on my own site and ancestry. I find this site becoming much more difficult to maintain and am really tired of the constant emails about people I really have no interest in. It started out as a good connection to others, but now seems to be just out of hand.
John

I totally agree with many of these comments. We had a jewel here that has gotten out of control.

Does anyone have a "free" replacement for Geni ?

If someone starts merging and collaborate and then stops "palying along" that is blocking the whole tree with neverending pending merges. If everybody took care of their merges and gave main-managemet away if one don't have time or its' a tricky historical profile, it would be much better.
@Laura - if you want more controle of the merges of your profiles, check your settings, you can collaborate and still get requests. Maybe that would be a great solution for you? I had no idea that you did not want your profiles merged - and we have a lot of profiles in common... or did I misunderstand?

What Laura pinpoints is that you should double-check to avoid merge request on profiles that are not connected, and I agree, - we have already enough duplicates and don't want to drag new gedcom uploads into the big tree.

Personally I usually write in the request that the profiles are already connected into a pending when I send out merge requests. and pinpoint that the accept will just finalize and clean up the merge.

Susannah.. I do want my profiles merged and I appreciate all the help from everyone and I am willing to help everyone.

It is just when collaborators find a hot match on a profile I manage (and they are not a joint manager) and then merge them with someone who is not already connected. They rarely accept requests from me when I try to resolve duplicates, etc. I, like many others, have a lot of people upset with me now because I'm just trying to resolve merge issues and I was not the one who merged the two trees together in the first place.

I never seem to get things across clearly :)

I have family group members and collaborators and they do a lot of merging of duplicates and resolving conflicts while they are working in our shared tree and I LOVE that. I wish everyone would. I've only had problems when it was not a shared family line. When Pros see their merge issues list they see all the merge issues for their collaborators too unless they uncheck the "Include collaborators" box. A small few just go through all the merge issues and take care of them without checking, or it's a family line that is not in common with theirs. I don't know how to explain it very well but when they do that in can some times cause big problems. That is why I want to take care of my "Merge Issues" list myself. I go through it and spend several hours a day and post things I need help with on the board.

I have no problem being a manager or not being a manager. I accept requests, invites, etc. (Although for Pro members I am working on mutual collaboration and no family group as my profiles outside 4th generation are set to shared.)

If unconnected people are brought in they need to understand that there will be several people who will need to collaborate or family group permissions. Either that or be willing to accept merge requests several times a day.

@Laura. Aha! I understand what you mean. I would never do sometihing like that.
I think there might be a way to know if it is a so called hot matches merge - it just strikes me.... you know the little info on the right in the merge, saying "merged by". When that is missing, then perhaps it is beacuse it is not a result of a merge! But a match!!!
Sounds possible, doesn't it?

Regarding the other things I wrote, what I mean is:
please everybode, stay and merge don't give up and if you don't want to give your profiles to someone who can take care of them or at least set them as shared (you can make all your profiles shared with one click at settings).

@Susannah ... Possibly... That would be great. I am going to have to go to the merge issues and check this out now