Collaboration Pool

No, I haven't gone through the list fully, it's very time-consuming! Especially when trying to check the Activity tab as well.

Henn, I think I speak for all of us when I say we appreciate your time consuming hard work! It does seem that putting it in the project would make it so you wouldn't have to keep rebuilding it.

Jason..Concur with your recommendation for a collaboration pool. I have run into the same problem..and some others! These are:

1. Many folks are "afraid" to collaborate because they have had bad experiences..what those bad experiences are..I do not know, but bottom line is, they do not want to collaborate!
2. Many participants in the "Big Tree" do not respond to requests for edit or source verification.. I personally would like to see some "obvious" data element added to all profiles that "source" can be added for verification of data in the profiles...obviously, for some profiles (particularly much older ones) sourcing may be impossible....if this is the case, I think a statement of no sourcing available is appropriate.
3. Some participants are "not active", or have not been active for a significant period of time and there may be many reasons for this, but that forces others to request assistance from Curators...this is probably appropriate, but with only 24 curators..and over 5 million participants..and growing, the workload on curators must be almost unmanageable..and getting worse! I do not know the solution to this, but it might be worthy of discussion!
4. There is a lack of guidance thru the Help feature of GENI on "Do's and Don'ts" ... we seem to have to learn thru experience..and sometimes cause problems unintentionally by doing so..a good example for me is the Relationship portion of the profile edit feature! I do not use it anymore because it seems to cause disconnects to the tree..which I do not understand. It might be useful to have a collaborative discussion to develop a Do's and Dont's list which might reduce problems for the system and the Curators!

Hope my comments are of some value!

Bear in mind that there is no training qualification to be a collaborator, and someone who takes geneology seriously may be reluctant to let any Tom, Dick, or Jane come barging in and merge profiles left and right. Right now for example, there's a bit of a mess in the Oliver Cromwell (Lord Protector) tree.
Is there something I'm not aware of that provides protection against this?

@Sandra L. Hart McKee

James Hutchison

This is a wonderful post.

I wonder if you wouldn't mind "spinning it off" into a new discussion?

You can just copy & paste it as new thread with a good title.

Private User

As a curator not quite as enjoyable a post to read. :)

Just same request as to James above.

Would you mind copying & pasting into a separate discussion? I "specialize" more in Colonial American family research (notice: I am careful *not* to use the word "genealogy") ... but I am very familiar with the geni application. So perhaps genealogical knowledge and application knowledge can converge. Just a thought.

@james hutchisin
James, I would like to collaborate with you but can not send a request because your profile is private.Since mine is public, you can send one to me if you would like to.

@ James Hutchison

As a "newbie" -- it is SO exciting to see matches that could be new leads after hours and hours of fruitless research; I've been impulsive. I've learned so much, but have found myself wanting to take back that one 'click' that led to the compromised integrity of years of interviews and reading.
I would volunteer to be your poster child, if I weren't so middle aged!

Private User

In private messaging, James Hutchison has confirmed to me that he did want to join the collaboration pool and to collaborate with us all.

There was an issue with others not being able to request to collaborate with James, which may have been a Geni bug which has now been resolved.

Eldon and others: you should now be able to request to collaborate with James - if you have not already done so.

David, thanks. I tried everything I could think of but never found a link.

@Douglas Whitney

Eldon - The link should have returned to James' profile page in the usual place on the right of the photo place holder and text.

Is it there now and working?

David, yes it is and collaboration is on.

mandy pedersen

im not sure i have done this right lol :) mandypedersen

Mandy... If you get collaboration requests, you did it right, whether you did it "right" or not!

You are supposed to be able to "tag" someone by typing the @ sign in front of their name...that creates the link. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

@Martin Cayford
I'm game. I only have a few thousand names on my tree here, but the connections are there like the Throckmortons. I have 33,000 names put into my Reunion file and ever expanding. Quite fun.

@Marianne Lyons

Can people please STOP joining through this discussion, and instead just join the Collaboration-Pool project instead? You join, by following this link, pressing the Actions link in the top-right corner, and then "Join Project".

http://www.geni.com/projects/Collaboration-Pool

I haven't received a single request to collaborate from the Project. The only way I request collaboration is when I'm notified by geni that a new person had joined this discussion. Why is it so horrible to keep using this venue? If it's so annoying to TPTB, remove the discussion so we CAN'T respond to it.

In principle, the project is a great idea, because it easily tracks who is and is not currently a Pool member, and you can easily see which you are already collaborating with and which not.

But there is an integrity issue with the project, as others can add you without your authority. An existing project collaborator always has to add newcomers.

I don't see what is wrong with using this discussion. It worked for months before projects existed, so why should it stop working now?

Should it be much better to cancel the system of managers for profiles outside the familygroup, so everuone can edit and merge these profiles. The system of masterprofiles and curator protecting can allways protect abuse of good profiles !

Marsha Gail Veazey, have you changed your notification settings not to send you an email when someone sends you a request (in http://www.geni.com/account_settings/notifications)? As far as I know all collaborators of a project get an email when someone wants to join.

Liivi

I do get an email when someone sends me a request - but I don't seem to get an email when someone requests to join a project where I am a collaborator.

I can see when someone has joined the project through update of a project I am following - but have to go to that project to see the detail of how the project was updated: be it discussion or someone joining or text description update, etc.

Private User

David, I used to have my notifications for requests turned off (why get an email when I could see it in Geni anyway). I turned them back on of recent and have been getting an email every time someone wants to join the project. Perhaps "turning it off and on again" makes Geni send emails about the people wanting to join projects ;)

I agree with Marsha. I get collaboration requests from this discussion, not the project. I'd prefer to keep this discussion going.