Dear Michael Trevor Lancaster,
I am sorry to say so, as it undoubtedly will cause resentment, the advice you are getting from Susanna Engberg Barnevik is totally misguided. There is to my knowledge no authoritative and independent source which advice you adopt this type of behaviour (even not source recommended by Geni Inc which has an incentive to encourage such behavior as it likely to increase the company’s short term profit). Unfortunately it seems that a few people in the Collaboration Pool, who administer large number of profiles, undertake mergers behaving in the way. They seem in many cases to create a profile with little, undocumented and often unreliable information for the same person as has been introduced by a newcomer, then ask for collaboration and after a merger (because being manager of greater number of profiles than the newcomer) become the main responsible for the profile which the newcomer carefully have put on Geni. These people also have many collaborators and without the newcomer realizing what is going on open up the floodgate for more and often arbitrary mergers by people with very little knowledge about how Geni function, but who seem to take pleasure in undertaking mergers to leave their mark in what they wrongly may think is a useful activity. That may add to the large number of profiles these very experience people already administer, and they may for that reason receive a prize from Geni Inc as this activity is the company’s short term profit interest, but it serves no useful purpose with respect to improving the quality of the Big Tree as a source of reliable information about family links, on the opposite as I shall argue in the sequel. In the interest of Geni providing reliable family information, nobody should administer more profiles than he/she have time, expertise and motivation to maintain, making sure that the information in the profiles and their links are correct at any time and incorporate new well documented information made available. It is unlikely that anybody, even those who seem to spend most of their time awake on Geni, will be able to manager more than a couple of thousand of profiles, and in the case of profiles for well-known individuals, who attract a lot of attention, far less. Collaboration on Geni should be about facilitating more or less senseless mergers adding bogus links, but about expanding the tree with well documented links aggregating and documenting dispersed information and deleting bogus link however painful for those who thus loose a royal linerage.
You should not merge two profiles if the merger does not contribute a well documented new link. A profile with information, which is at odds with external sourced information (detailed in “About me”) in a profile for what seems to be the same person, is often part of a tree with numerous errors in terms of false data and false links which is worse because it much more difficult to correct. Merging with such a profile will create additional unresolved merge issues and thus add to the mess. If in addition somebody "solve" these merge issues by merging with profiles which are locked, the mess become almost impossible to clear up. Thus never ask for a merger with a profile which is locked, ask instead the manager in question to make the profile “Public” (add an explanation for how it is done, as the manager in question may not know how it is done. If the manager does not respond within a reasonable period of time, consider cutting the profile loose from the tree and then reconnect all valid public profiles to this new profile. However, realize that this is very time consuming and may upset some people who like to maintain bogus links to “Gorm den Gamle” or what have you. Be prepared to reestablish links you have cut if somebody present even unreliable documentation for the link; Geni is after all not science, however if links are added arbitrarily being linked to somebody important in the Big Tree fails to be interesting and the whole thing becomes not more relevant and less entertain the social computer games at the internet like Civilisation.
Inspection of the Danish branch of the Big Tree at Geni reveals that a large number profiles with no or little information has been created in 2007 and 2008 and subsequently merged indiscriminately, often by Geni Members, who are not Danes and therefore presumably less knowable about and interested in Danish family history than Danish Geni Members who joined at a later stages, Data on a large part of the branches of the Danish Tree from 1000- 1600, and in the case of historical well known figures even more recent, and often contain inconsistent information ( several different parents, and impossible large number of partners and children, grandparents born before their grandchildren etc) is far less reliable than stand alone family databases which are electronically available on the Internet, where Geni due to the collaboration of many people with access to different sources of information, like Wekipedia has the potential to be more reliable.
A profile should only managed by a few people interested and knowledgeable about the profile and approachable to deal suggestions for adding new information. In general what best serves the objective of improving the quality of the Big Tree as a source of reliable information about family links is that a profile is only managed by one person. A profile being associated with numerous managers as the result of indiscriminate merger of the type you are recommended to undertake, results in nobody feeling responsible, not those who administer more than 10.000 profiles or in some absurd cases more than 100.000 profiles because whatever their good intentions, it is not human possible, and not those frustrated less experienced users who have created the profiles in the first place and then naively agreed to collaborate with the cowboys already managing the big herds losing control over their family tree by mergers which have resulted in their data being overwritten and the creation against the law of nature of an absurd number of relatives.
When you close to you in your family tree own have a moderately famous family member which you care sufficiently about be willing to make an effort to have correctly represented as part of your branch of the Bi Tree, and therefore resent to see having several parents, a large number of partners and an impossible number of children, use the procedure available to de-link the parents maintaining only the best documented set of parents, and then offer your collaboration to the managers of the profiles of partners and children to document these links (with reference to written sources, preferably published and even better sources which are available at the Internet). If the manager in question seems not to know anything about the person in question, ask to be the main administrator. Now link up with your own documented profiles and those which are already there which are also well documented (if ask the managers of the relevant profiles to provide documentation in “About me”). If things are really messed up with numerous links to lock profiles with unresolved merge issues, you may consider creating a new profile to bypass the mess; but in general avoid creating new profiles when you can add your new links to existing profiles. Additional information can in general easily be added to existing profiles and if you think you are the best placed to look after a profile, ask for it to be transferred to you.
In the Danish branch of the Big Tree the profiles of very famous people from 1000-1600 such as that of “Gorm den Gamle” seem to be beyond salvation. Don’t waste your time to clean up here. The mess reappears almost immediately after you have established a bit of order due to the addition of unreliable profiles and indiscriminate mergers.
Best regards,
Knud Munk
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