Discussions about the Collaboration Pool

Just a cut and paste of one of my explanations about the Collaboration Pool:
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Our latest initiative is the Collaboration Pool where we invite people to help each other with merges and especially sharing access to collaborators, independent of which profiles you manage yourself.

Our primary goal at the moment is to try to get rid of as many as possible of the duplicates. It is much easier to fix errors and fine-adjust the profiles when most of the duplicates are gone.

Please accept that the profiles is not perfect in this middle stage. It really takes time to merge profiles and we appreciate the help from everyone, even if it temporary might be some bad merges.

It is much easier to fix errors on a completely merged profiles.

@ (Henri (V)) Raúl Angenscheidt Baridon
I AGREE

I think the collaboration pool could use a little more chlorine....just sayin....

If you see deleted posts in the Collaboration Pool by me, it's because I am trying to clean up the discussion thread. Usin' a little bleach....

My big question is, How do I know If someone wanting to collaborate is really in my tree, if I haven't gotten that far. Is it to much to ask that when you ask to collaborate you let us know whose branch you are on?

Linda, so far, Geni cannot find a familial relationship between you and I, so we do not have a common branch, so far. Does this mean you want to hold off on collaborating with me until there is a familial relationship between us?

As I see it, "the pool" and its members are all somehow connected, but they do not necessarily have to be in your tree or with a direct path. I like to think that we all try to act as one and anthers secretaries, and resolve simple tasks as merging duplicates, giving guidance to others if they run into a problem, and in general helping out within "Safe tasks" that do not demand detailed knowledge of the profiles. By assisting with these tasks, i hope to free time for those with complicated research and merge questions. All this of cause within the time I can afford to spend with "Community Services".
Michael

Linda,

I get that question alot when I request to collaborate. I normally work only with profiles that are 12-20 generations back so there is a high probability that we have a common ancestor in that range. When I am merging profiles in that group, the duplicates in a set that has not yet been touched can be in the hundreds and your ancestor is just one of those. When I request to collaborate, I am asking to work with your ancestors that you have linked with when you reached the cloud. I am generally not going to be concerned with your nearby ancestors. The goal here is to combine the many slightly different profiles that represent the same individual. When you volunteer to collaborate, it allows the users working in the cloud to clean up mistakes and mis-generations. The bottom line is that those people are very unlikely to be someone you would consider even a distant relative. So, basically it comes down to a personal choice of how you want to assist in the project. When push comes to shove, the tree is the one that contains homo sapiens.

Rick

Michael said it much better and more tactfully.

Rick

Might be interesting for collaborative people: since today 500 limit is gone from both - friends and family group

Henn

John Hoffman@hoff

Hello all,
I have collaborated with others. I guess with my vacation I do not understand what limits are lifted. In the past when I tried to resolve some duplicates it came with a error that I was not authorized to make the changes. Even a collaboration with one member or another did not give access to final changes that made a timeline look appropriate. I personally do not like finding duplicates or merging when the that person has the list of 54 children under one woman. (not possible) Who is going to decide the birthdays with I hope common sense to make a more reasonable list?? I gave up on this once. Feel free to make changes that sound fair and true to a timeline. Sarah

A reminder to mention the pool in you collaboration requests:

I have been rejecting a lot of collaboration requests. They might be the collaboration pool, they might not, and I have no idea, which is exactly the problem.

If I've rejected you, send another request and mention the pool this time.

If you want to leave the pool thats is choice. However this should and can not result in other members of the pool, can not request merges or send questions to the person in question. It only means that you are not committed to helping out outside of your own tree and relatives. If you want to isolate yourself from requests and from joining your tree and relatives to other related, you must leave Geni and abandon public profiles to others. Geni is not a solo or egocentric program. It is collective venture, where its members have the opportunity to find distant relatives and family information. If a member decides to go solo, this member ruins several other members, who have relations within the tree or who are dependent on the information that is managed. So either you are all in or you are out. There are lots of free genealogy programs for those that are not interested in going outside what they themselves know, and outside their immediate branch.

Warning , To people about to be involved. I started this to find out about my family, after 2 mergesI can't even attempt to find what I started this for. If you are into this to connect the whole world then Collaborate and merge all you want, AS long as you are at PRO level I guess you can do that. AS for me All I was looking for is a way to connect my family together , without spending a lot of money. then when I complained about what happen to me, with those I let merge,all I got was "Sorry about That" Well from Now on leave me out and don't ask for merges,

Linda, you may choose to be "left out" but you'll always have "duplicates" in your tree because you won't accept merges, because once you've merged a few profiles you've attached yourself to other trees and are now sharing a tree with others. That's what sucks about Geni...I am at pro level and I went Pro in order to "fix" my tree, however I have to have 600+ collaborators in order to help me or I can't do it, and even then that's not enough because some people completely either abandoned their tree or don't accept merges or collaborator requests.

WARNING AND SUGGESTION FOR CONCERTED ACTION

I have just been informed by a collaborator, that Bjørn P. Brox, who is member of the collaboration pool, who also works for Geni Inc, who administer more than 140.000 profiles, and who have large number of collaborators, and who therefore each day receive a large number of requests for mergers, while he is on holiday, using a new feature in Geni , automatically agree to all request for megers (i.e. whether a requested merger is justified or not, even if it will create total confusion by merging profiles 10 generations apart, as I have just seen in the Danish branch of the Big Tree).

The new feature in general will significantly contribute to increase the mess on the Big Tree. However, it will undoubtedly for newcomers to Geni, who in good faith have spent hours to put their family tree on Geni, establish some bogus links (to Barack Obama, QEII, Caesar, Muhamed, Jesus to whom I recently have seen some of my collaborators linked, and to God knews who) which may induce them to pay to become Pro members. This may contribute to satisfy Geni's short term profit target, but is definitely not in our interest, and probably not in the company's long term interest either.

This is American business at its worst!

May I ask for your suggestions for how we limit the damage of this new feature to our work, and for suggestions for a text to send to Geni and to publish at appropriate fora to persuade the company to discontinue this facility immediately. Shaming the company seem to be the only measure we can take, unfortunately we cannot as for the banks hope for Barack Obama to introduces a proposal in the US congress for regulation to protect us against and this other abuse by Geni Inc.

A merger of two profiles should in general only be undertaken if it contributes a well documented new link to the Tree (in most cases additional information about a profile can be added with little effort without creating a new profile for the same person). Furthermore merge issues created in the two branches being merged as a result of the merger of two profiles should be solved without delay.

I hope all members of this Collaboration Pool (hopefully after reflection including Bjørn Borx) subscribe to this essential code of conduct.

Best regards,

Knud Munk

What makes you believe that Bjørn P. Brox works for Geni?

I don't think Bjorn works for geni. He is a programmer, though, so he has a lot of insight into the geni database and how it works. He's been a big help.

On the one hand, the auto-merge thing is awesome for times when someone is on vacation and the rest of us are working on the tree (feverishly sometimes!). On the other hand, I've seen people who are really good about precision and correct data send me requests that I don't think I should merge because of some question on the data. And it's hardly like I've never made a mistake merging. LOL! I depend on others to back me up, too.

So I don't know how this will shake out in the end but I have to say that if it takes a little longer to unmerge and remerge or to clean up data, so be it. At least we'll have a tree we can play with and have fun with. I am having a blast and learning a whole bunch of history by researching merges I'm not sure of.

Something else. Bjørn has so big computer so he can work with a whole familyline at one time. 20 window at once not as we with a normale computer 2 or 3 windows. Therefore you also will get a merge request at 10 or more peoples in a family at one time from him (If you have so many main management of a profile.

If you have became a member of the big tree you in reality only have 4 choices.

1) collaborate to others and help fixing merging issues and correct wrong connected people. Completing informations if you can and want to.
2) familygroup and collaborating and help fixing merging issues also at living people and correct wrong connected people. Complete informations if you can and want to
3)collaborate to others and make your closest family private and let the others do the work.
4) leave the Big Tree and make a new tree that noone else can join or see.

TO EVERYONE TAKE SECURITYCOPY OF YOUR TREE AND SAVE IT ON ANOTHER PROGRAM FOR FREE. If GENI brake down it does not help you to have your security copy at GENI. There are plenty of other free program.

Private User I always think , who are my right on my profiles
i' m 100% with Knud Jørgen Munk
this is joy , knowledge, hystory, an events that my family in a infinitimal part of the world hystory effects and consequences.
""May I ask for your suggestions for how we limit the damage of this new feature to our work, and for suggestions for a text to send to Geni and to publish at appropriate fora to persuade the company to discontinue this facility immediately. Shaming the company seem to be the only measure we can take, unfortunately we cannot as for the banks hope for Barack Obama to introduces a proposal in the US congress for regulation to protect us against and this other abuse by Geni Inc.""
Enrique Angenscheidt

I saw my first reply to Knud Munk somehow dissapeard.

Bjørn is not a member of the GENI Staff, but one of the oldest members of GENI and one of the starters of this BIG TREE. He therefore also is one of the persons with most collaborators and full familygroup probably collaborating to around 1500 or more. Since he is and have been one of the persons with most collaborators he also have been the person that have been given management at more than 120000 profiles by GENI at left profiles of his earlier collaborators. In fact I do not think he ordinary had added more than around 10000 profiles himself.

The proplem was before that only one person could be manager of a profile and when someone left GENI or closed his profiles whole lines broke down even though others had merged their profiles into those profiles. So GENI gave those profile to the closest related familiy or collaborator as they often still do. Therefore Bjørn has that many profiles because it is easier for many to see/and merge with a manager that is willing to share and cooperate to others.

Since he is working with edb and is one of the oldest members at GENI and a lot of profiles he also have knowlegde of the GENI programs and contacts with the staff. And he have been asking fore issues at GENI that could help us working a lot at GENI to do the work easier.

Bjorn is one of the nicest people I have ever met online and in real life, so even if he is working for Geni; which I doubt he is; it doesn't really matter for me since he is always very helpful and explain things very clearly and politely. I think we all need to be a little bit like him, with our way of working on Geni. Also if Bjorn and other members are setting an automatic acceptance of requests that also means that they are in some way trusting us with those requests. After all it's also our (requestors) responsibility to check out merges before sending them to others to complete.

Could somone explain what is the topic about?
what is the new feature what have to be dicontinued?

and most of all - what bad or wring Bjørn is done?

Ony new feature I know implemented with last update is autoconfirm SOME SPECIFIC collaborator merge requests. For example - If i know that i can trust Shmuel requests (i know 100% he have sended only correct merges) - I can tell that all Shmuel requests will autoconfirmed.

I never think that I have time to switch ALL my collaborators to autoconform? and i never think that Bjørn have made something like?

what is the source of current topic and what damage have be done on tree? and what new feature is capable to produce damages? Exept uesrs?

Henn

I totally agree with Ofir Friedman! :))

Stupid discussion. Stop worrying and make your tree grow instead of being so critical...

I joined one month after Bjørn. He has been nothing but kind and helpful for three years. I'm glad to call him a friend. (And, because of Geni, discovered that he's family, as well!)

I could not care less if Bjørn is working for Geni. I strongly resent roumors and accusations against other users, and i believe that most of us prefer to be without "Gossip" like this. However i am concerned about auto merge. I don't believe that any of us willfully implants wrong or incorrect information. I have however recently had a merge request, witch seemed wrong. Going back through profiles it became clear that it was siblings with the same names, except for a middlename. Often i feel uncomfortable wit a pair of profiles, then i leave them alone, some day they will be resolved. I would prefer that automerge was taken out, but if I am really unhappy with Geni, I am free to leave, and so should anyone who dislikes this software they voluntarily have bought the right to use for a period.

And, you don't have to enable automerge. You have to choose to set requests from your collaborators to automerge. The default is NOT. (Which I think is good, i'm not using that feature currently).

Well if there is an 'Auto-Merge FOR ALL., IT DEFINITELY IS NOT WORKING..

I have some outstanding merges that was sent to Bjorn and I am still waiting.

So I agree that this Auto-Merge feature must have been setup between two or more Collaborators who trust each other.

Knud you said "''''using a new feature in Geni , automatically agree to all request for megers (i.e. whether a requested merger is justified or not, even if it will create total confusion by merging profiles 10 generations apart,"""

Just a suggestion, rather than quoting what you were told by "another Collaborator" wouldn't be better to ask someone at Geni if this feature is now in effect and to get them to explain how it works.

If we 'assume' how something works and then state it in a forum like this it BECOMES A STATEMENT OF FACT'

Please ask Geni to clarify this feature for all of us.