Geni has stopped collaborators from seeing each others trees?!

Why not, - I don't see any reason why collaboration, which is meant to be for public profiles, should give access to view my family.

You cannot merge private family profiles to a collaborator anyhow, so I don't understand your merge argument.

I agree with Bjørn.

When you viewed a collaborator's profile, there used to be a View Tree option. If you used it, you generally saw your collaborator's profile in a sea of white private profiles.

Now that View Tree option is no longer there, what is lost?

This should not prevent merges of public profiles, which is what collaboration is all about.

There is generally no need for collaborators to have family group access.

Yep, Lauri, what are you after - you are not member of the Order of Lilac C and you are not supposed to see that ...

Private User
I can't see any profiles in your tree now - even the public ones.
Together with tree is gone the "View Nearby Merge Issues"
and this I don't like at all!

For PRO's it was very good to initiate merges in collaborators trees...

could anyone remind me what does the collaboration do besides seeing each-others trees?

Mart Collaborators can edit (and merge) each other's PUBLIC profiles.

Public profiles are all profiles, outside the Family-Group, i.e. further away than 4th cousin or 3rd great-grandparent, or profiles that the manager(s) manually made public.

Smul-Aron - where's the sense if I can not see the tree?

Interesting - is that the case I could ask my money back? I have paid for Pro account lately but what I get today is not what I got when I paid for it ...

Lauri and Märt, you still can see trees. You just have to find a public profile from which to launch into tree view.

Lauri
Here's what you can do to view nearby merge issues for your collaborator.

1. Go to http://www.geni.com/list

2. Type in your collaborator as Focus Person. Leave the Group as Family Group and click Update List.

3. Look for the nearest public profile. When I put in you as my Focus Person, your nearest public profile is your father-in-law or a grandparent.

4. Open that profile. You can then View Tree or View Nearby Merge Issues for that person. This will bring you pretty much to your collaborator's nearby merge issues.

Why you would want to do this, I am not quite sure. But this should get you what you were looking for.

Mart,
if you want to see the private part of someone's tree, ... and they agree, then just join their Family-Group. I probably have some 300 added "relatives".

Private User
Thanks.
I already worked it out myself.

P.S. Playing with command line (the same command used for advanced search) it is possible to get similar listing for any Geni user...

I'd come back to Lauri's initial question: what's the purpose of this change?

It would be essential to see how the people are connected with the profiles i'm working on - and to know my collaborators' family trees when we are studying (closely and manyfold interrelated) people from the same region. I could see that gread-grandparents of my collaborator lived in this or that village or neighbourhood and ask for additional information or jointly solving the problems.
The changes are probably OK for the genists who are digging in the historical part of tree but not for them who have still retained some connection with the "real" part of the tree. Big part of my collaborators (with whom we initially shared only the same geographical area to study) turned out to be my 5th to 10th cousins.

Both - the tree-view and the how-many-profiles data block data block (lost by now) - would be useful to estimate the quality of the data a collaborator has inserted.

Besides, I see no point for this change. Everyone could still have their private part of the tree almost unseen i.e. gray for collaborators.

So, why?

Private User P.S. when doing such advanced search the
target shall be his/her Managed Profiles. (the Family Group can be mostly private and can not be "enough good" list for Collaborators).

I maybe can accept such "hiding the tree" etc profile privacy changes...

BUT I can not understand why it is needed now to hide First Names of Collaborators in incoming mail messages and why it is now impossible to go to senders (Collaborators) profile via the link in mail "header"?
(Mails from Family Group members remained unchanged).

Lauri

There are all kinds of inconsistencies in the way Geni has implemented privacy. For example, take a private profile such as Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Prime Minister of Canada

This one was mentioned in a public discussion earlier today.

Go to the profile and the year of birth is not shown - presumably that is private and confidential.

But go to the search engine http://www.geni.com/search?names=Henri+Charles+Wilfred+Laurier and the year of birth IS shown. Not so private and confidential after all???!!!

One inconsistency of several ....

According to Estonian Law (and most of European countries Law) - such data which is usually found at gravestones (i.e. names and dates) is not the private one. As soon you will list somewhere in open form illnesses, reasons of death etc health and especially hereditary diseases etc. - kind of info which is in interest of Insurance and Banking - then you are against the law...

P.S. for living persons (especially for children) the Law can be much strict.