Public profiles are now editable by all Pro users.

Peter Rohel (c)
Yes, those fields are unavailable for now because they cannot be tracked and rolled back, but we will be rolling out the ability to edit them as soon as we can.

Funny you should ask that Fay!

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I'll take the part of the 'dummy'.

WHERE is the AKA field?
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It's called the "nickname" field currently.

1. Edit Profile
2. PERSONAL tab
3. Nicknames field

You can type in names - I've forgotten how long the text string can be; separate with commas.

Then it will show on the main profile page under

Personal
Nicknames

@FayElizabethBaldwin

The 'Nicknames' field is under the Personal Tab when editing a profile...

May I request that the information we enter into this field be displayed where it can be seen every time a profile is viewed? Perhaps underneath the profile pic? I have many ancestors who never used their full birthnames and it makes it excruciatingly difficult to try to carry all those aliases in my head! ;)

Jennifer

GMTA - enhancement has been requested.

In the meantime try and write them in the "overview" (narrative - under "about.")

An example I use:

He was also known as Timothy O'Rourk.

(with the alternate name in italics).

You people are hopelessly off topic. (If you will recall, the topic is "Public profiles are editable by all Pro users.") Meaningful dialog is impossible. End of discussion.

I hope so....
Join us again when we get 'back on topic'....I believe we were talking about the items which are and are NOT editable under the new enhanced "you aren't a Pro but here's what you can do when you become one" screen capabilities....

Someone make a note to let Joe know when we get back to talking about not only what, but where....

Oh, by the way...you can't, on the profiles we see with LOCKS' on them add any documents or pictures...the 'media' button clicks "ON' and it POPS UP but there are NO document or photos places that normally follow and which are used to download documents or photos.....

Joe...we are trying to explore ALL the options normally available to see if THEY are still working or LOCKED or just (like docs and pics) just missing altogether....

You cant EDIT what you can't ACCESS, no matter what the enhancement is called.

Fay Elizabeth Dyer
Nothing should have changed with adding images and documents. You should be able to add them just as before. Can you give a little more detail about what you are trying to do that isn't working?

Ebenezer Reed

Can't get to relationships, locks on cause of death and place of burial and cannoot get into 'media'

I have LDS birth record and marriage that I would have input if the area was available...

Fay Elizabeth Dyer
I think that is a bug. I am checking with the team. In the meantime, you can hold onto the documents until it is fixed or work with a manager of the profile to get them uploaded.

Fay said, "You cant EDIT what you can't ACCESS, no matter what the enhancement is called."

@MichelleKempner and @FayElizabethBaldwin -I've noticed the same thing. I wanted to upload a doc to a file I don't manage last night, but ran into the same difficulty Fay described above.

FWIW, I just made sure to view Fay's profile and Michelle's just before trying to write this note, but tagging them still didn't work.

Sorry, Joe, if it frustrates you that we're OT, but the thing is - convos ebb and flo. It can be just as intrusive to say, "Hey, I just posted a new question, can everyone here please go over there to answer?" LOL

Erica Howton Thanks, Erica, I'll do it that way for now. I appreciate the tip!

The screenshot from the blog post shows the view of how pros will see profiles that they can edit - http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee318/geniteam/Screenshot2011-06...
You can see that place of burial and cause of death are locked there as well. For living profiles, current location will be locked.

Here is the blog post, in case anyone missed it - http://www.geni.com/blog/public-editing-for-pros-355081.html

Thanks Michelle that is great, now we all can see what the discussion was abou.

See the comments on the Blog - especially that by Ken Tregear of 1 day ago, plus the more recent ones.

Whoa....living profiles are SHOWN?????

@MichelleKempner - I'm sure you didn't mean to imply that the privacy protections for living profiles have changed. Can you please confirm that, if a living profile was private before the change, it is still private? Thanks!

Michelle Elena Kempner

Now it says (on the blog) that ONLY PUBLIC, UNCLAIMED profiles are editable.....

Which answers the question of private living people.....BUT unclaimed???
I hate to sound dense...but since I'm getting responses...they don't seem all that abandoned to me....need clarification.

Just WHAT are now available to regular/now temp Pros that was not before and what difference to the OLD PROS (from Dover) is made by the enhancement...

I've noticed that since the option to edit public profiles is given to Pro's, there are more curated MP and therefore they are locked for editing
Is this the legitimate way of preventing Pro's from editing?

Yaacov Curators have been MPing and locking profiles for a long while now.

Remember there are only 80 Curators and to do what you are suggesting means we would have had to stop all our work and have all gone on a locking spree..lol.

Angus - I think I was misunderstood, So I'll write it clearly:
I think that there are curators(maybe only few) that MP their public profiles to prevent them from being edited by "common Pro's"
I think that is not the way to reach our goal of world family tree. if Public are PUBLIC then only real MP should be MP

Hi Yaacov. The MPing has been a way of conserving the most accurate info to help us Curators to have a template to defer to after merges, as an ALTERNATIVE to locking profiles. Are you saying you can't edit them as a pro?

Sharon,
What I'm saying is very simple
I saw several new profiles that were added by a curator in the last few days (or at most last week) and they are marked as MP. I suspect (I have no evidence) that the curator that did it, meant to protect his/her public profiles from been edited.
I must say that I had no interest editing those profiles, It's just a thought that came to me.
If I'm mistaken then all curators - please accept my apologies.

Yaacov Glezer - You could email the curator and ask, out of curiosity.

When I add profiles and they are in families where the same name repeats across 10 generations and the family tree is a mess due to incorrect merges across generations, I lock the profiles of those who share the same name, to prevent additional bad mergers.

I also respond to anyone who asks me to merge, to correct data, or to unlock an MP very quickly.

Before you assign a "nefarious" motive to curators who MP and lock profiles, you need to understand how frustrating it is to have the SAME profiles merged incorrectly over and over. It's a waste of curatorial time AND it negatively impacts the Big Tree in several ways. It means that the tree is never stable, that the curator is distracted from adding more profiles or research or improving sources and About Me. It means that relatives and descendants are frustrated due to the messy tree.

In the Colonial American lines, repeated names such as 20 Victory Sikes in 7 generations, many marrying with the same families and even marrying women with the same given name, is common. Also common is two siblings with the same name that are also merged incorrectly.

Hatte is SO right...

If you notice, Yaacov, it's almost as tho people get ito a rut for generations where EVERY one names their son William (or whatever), and the siblings of the main profile also name a son William....so you can get overwhelmed with Williams.....now compound it and 10 Williams married Sarah (different birthnames...but the Geni users change the name to the married name....then you have 10 William Jones' married to 10 Sarah Jones'......

That is what messes things up...people SEE the same names and LINK them...when the people are grandfather/grandson.......cousin/to uncle....etc.....and the Curators get tired of FIXING the same people over and over....so they do what Hatte says....assign an MP to each profile that gets repeatedly messed up....clean it up...and hopefully people take MORE precautions in linking...

Believe me...it is way better than even a few months ago.....

Dear Hatte,
I don't need to be a curator to understand your words.
As some curators know - I'm active on the Biblical tree, the Lithuanian Jews(LITVAKS) project and also "play around" with harry potter - running after every merge to make sure this fantasy tree doesn't connect to real profiles. I know how a simple tree can become unstable in on bad merge.
Maybe I did jump to conclusions too fast.

Yaacov Glezer, Geni's implementation of field locking is a new feature that still are under development and several errors have popped up after the release and they are working on that. Some of the errors is that regular users see lock symbols the curators are not able to see or do anything about.

We have several discussions going on locking and general rules on when to use are not yet established. My general advice is to only use locking on sourced fields or in extreme situations where we have to compromise and just have to stop edit-wars until we get a better solution on for example international known profiles where for example a localized name is needed - stay tuned.

The most needed locking and sourcing is not yet implemented: Connections, and we look forward to get a solution on that because in some lines we have to much vandalism going on.

I don't know if all the eras / cultures are as prone to multiple names. Of course Jewish families are, but at least with Ashkenazi Jewish families, the grandparent is deceased before the name pops up again. Here in Colonial America, the brothers might each name one or even TWO sons by their living father's name. And the name repeats until finally it goes out of fashion altogether, which might be 200 years.

I did see the same thing with my Suwalki relatives. Cousins would all have babies the same year in a little shtetl and name them after a recently deceased grandmother / mother or whatever. But with Colonial American ancestors, there are many more possible descendants and many more common names like "Samuel Allen," "Joseph Williams" so the problem is compounded.

Hatte Rubenstein Blejer said:

"Before you assign a "nefarious" motive to curators who MP and lock profiles, you need to understand how frustrating it is to have the SAME profiles merged incorrectly over and over. It's a waste of curatorial time AND it negatively impacts the Big Tree in several ways."

This is exactly why I don't want run of the mill people editing the profiles I've added, and I don't have the option of MPing the profiles I manage.