A curator recently merged a profile with one on our family tree. Problem is that the merge was incorrect. I have contacted the curator who say she does not know how to unmerge!
Can anyone else help with this as i cannot simply delete the incorrect data as that would mess up another's family tree.
David
Yes David, please let me know who the Curator is and I'll instruct them on how to unmerge. If you want to tell me which profile, I can unmerge it.
Hi Jeff,
Thank you for the prompt reply.
I'd rather you handle things as the reply from the curator was essentially do it yourself and then block me! I had a note on their comment page as well regarding the error and it was removed.
The profile that was merged is as follows -
This profile and her husband is correct for our side - https://www.geni.com/people/Sarah-Wilson/6000000024307279571?from_flash=1&fsession_id=1489856628426&through=6000000030427475361
We had 3 children listed under theirs, George, William, and Archie Wilson.
That is the only 3 children that this couple had, now due to the merge, there are several more.
George and William's profiles have had wives and children added, which are all incorrect for our tree. Archie and his spouse, Ann are unaltered.
Does this make sense?
The curator who did this is Malini Keshavaprasad
Ok, please take a look. That was a lot harder than it should have been as there were actually two merges for each. One was a legit merge and the other into your tree. You'll probably need to remove the picture from William if that's not his family. I don't have the ability to remove that, but you should. Also, some of the management of the other managers remained on some of those profiles. It shouldn't effect anything, but if you want to try to remove it, there is a "manager options" selection in the Actions menu. If you're able to, you will hopefully see a little [x] next to the names of the managers that shouldn't be there. I'm not sure how it's going to handle it because at one time, those profiles were in their family group, so it may still consider them in their family group, even though they are now disconnected.
Let me know if there are any errors and I'll be happy to help clear it up. Sorry Malini was not able to help resolve it.
Hi Jeff, - It was a complete balls up to be honest! Not sure which one was considered a legit merge as family members sprung up from all over the place.
That is def not his photo, and that photo was also used on George's profile.
We have removed it now, and changed permissions as per your instructions.
We will check the others now too.
With regards to Malina, it was not that she was unable to help, she was unwilling.
Thank you very much for your help! :)
Sorry David. I have been doing merges like crazy and never learnt to undo. That particular day I realized that I must have goofed after it was done and hoped I would get a feedback, but I knew I did not know how to correct that mistake, so I told you to take help of geni team. Also, as you appeared to be very upset which is fair, I suggested that you should block me. Michael Alan Stangel has been kind enough to send me instruction on how to undo actions. He also sent me this link. Hope your tree has been corrected.
I hesitate to enter it again and make any more mistakes, that is another reason for requesting to block me.
Peace.
I accidentally put my own address into another profile (error of cut and paste) and GENI merged our profiles. How can I undo this? My profile (Steven C. Vogel) should NOT be merged with James Meekhof. https://www.geni.com/people/James-Meekhof/5565435523180055110
Can a curator help
I have also had Malini Keshavaprasad doing merges in my family tree. When I contacted her telling her not to touch my family tree her answer was change your privacy settings. She does not seem to realise that will not make a difference as curators can access any profile. Despite being asked politely not to touch my tree she was uncivil in her reply and unwilling to change her attitude. I have pointed out that her actions may have negative consequences that she appears not to have considered. She seems to think that being a curator gives her the right to do anything she wants in other people's trees without considering the consequences of her actions. Please remove her as a curator before she causes harm to someone.
Also how do I ensure curators do not touch my family tree ?
Vani, the "my tree" concept is a vague one within a shared collaborative tree. What we have is family groups with privacy around living people. But this is not an isolated tree like you would see on MyHeritage. Curators are tasked by Geni to merged duplicates and maintain the world tree. In addition to merging duplicates, in a shared environment, there are norms and guidelines that we try to apply to profiles that connect into the world tree. So it depends on what your issues are. For example, if duplicate profiles were merged into your existing branch, that is consistent with what Geni has tasked us to do.
Certainly, curators are here to be a helpful force and improve the tree for everyone. Sometimes the act of removing duplication can bring conflicts and errors by other family members and the best people to work out those conflicts are those close to it. It's the double edge sword of a shared environment but we think that over time it results in more complete and accurate trees. Hopefully we're getting the correct information resolved and having accurate information for all connected. Curators are volunteers spending free time here to help other users and improve the site and it's a difficult task where we often have to consider various consequences against the overall goals and purpose of the site.
I explain this as sometimes users misunderstand the role of the Curator. That may not be the case here, since I don't know the specific action taken or the conversation, but I thought I would give that perspective. As for the question "how do I ensure curators do not touch my family tree?" - that's not an option.
Jeff, would you kindly undo all the merges relating to my immediate family tree. They are causing all kinds of conflicts within the family and please leave a curator's note to leave the tree alone.
Thanking you,
Vani
How do I undo merges myself? I am unable to do so through the link sent by Geni.
Also according to Geni rules all edits require the permission of the people in the tree and are done only at the request of the people in the family tree. Malini is being a pest and causing problems despite being requested to stay out of my family tree. Is there any way to remove my tree totally from Geni. I DO NOT WANT CURATORS MAKING CHANGES TO MY FAMILY TREE.
As far as I am concerned it is a breach of my privacy and also a breach of privacy laws.
I am sorry for pestering you. Is there a way to directly contact Geni administrators by phone and I can take this up with them?
Vani, the role of Curators is defined in the Privacy Policy for the site and we sign an NDA with Geni. There is no breach of privacy or law. It is part of your agreement with Geni for using the site. We don't go around looking for people to mess with - there are over 100 million profiles in the world tree and 200 volunteer Curators. I don't even have time to work on my own tree - we have enough work without looking for it. If a Curator is looking at your tree, it's most likely due to a request of someone within your family group, a merge request from a family member that a Curator is approving, a merge from higher in the tree that propagated down, or Geni's list of profiles they want us to review for merge.
I reviewed the merges in your immediate family and they look like legit duplicates of profiles added by Aruna and Saiteja. It doesn't appear there were many. Your son had two separate small trees (in one tree he had placed the birth date in the birth name field). For privacy, management, and collaboration, we want the family to have control off all copies of themselves.
What seems to be the issue you're having? I can certainly help to fix it. I don't see that it would be helpful to disconnect your son from the family's tree as you seem to be suggesting by unmerging or leave multiple copies of you in Geni for which you have no control. I see there are other oddities, where relationships might not be correct in the branches Aruna build, such as Hemalata being her own aunt.
As for contacting Geni, they do not have a phone number. If you're a pro member, you can put in a help ticket.
I'm "listening" into this conversation as I 'suddenly' have a similar problem and I'm convinced that someone is hacking my tree and pretending to be a relative that currently does not have access to my tree. My question is: If I am not a pro member (and don't intend to be one), how do I get to the help ticket. There must be a way.
Lara, I can say that none of the cases here involved hacking or pretending. It is normal for duplicate profiles to be merged into a single tree. That is part of the collaborative shared nature of Geni. When profiles are merged, new managers are added as two profiles become one. In David's case, while good intentioned, one of these merges was inaccurate and we had to undo that merge. Curators often assist in this process and do have permissions and access to every tree on Geni.
If you would like me to look at your tree, I can review it. If I feel another user is impersonating someone else and using that to gain improper access to your family group or in some way deliberately trying to vandalize your tree, then I can take actions to disable their account and report the user to Geni Customer Service.
Jeff, if you're still there, seems like you have some sense of how merges happen and how they can be undone and as such I would also like to know if you, or someone else, can undo a recent merge in my tree that created quite a mess. I intended to print my tree and suddenly there is a bunch of additions and duplicates and mismatches. Please advise. Thank you.
Andy, the best thing to do would be to finish removing all the duplicates and complete the tree merging. If you want to point to an area where you need assistance, I can take a look.
Jeff, can you look at and remove the merged entries between Richard Foster (b 1619) and Barbara Loving (Foster)(b 1692). Looks like siblings and duplicates of Robert Foster (b 1650). Thanks!!
Jeff, were you able to look at my tree?
My apologies for forgetting about this Andy - I'm looking at it now. I'm a bit confused on what you're trying to do. It seems you created a lot of duplicates. I'm happy to merge them into the tree as they should be, but you've made them private, which is bizarre. That's not an obstacle for me as we're encouraged to make profiles like these public. They're not suppose to be private, except for living family members and maybe a couple generations for privacy. Geni is a shared collaborative tree and this causes a lot of headaches.
If you're thinking you want your own private tree, that's unlikely to happen for very long on Geni. I'd suggest our parent company, MyHeritage, for building a solo tree.
If you want to just view your direct ancestors, you can do so via the tree preferences at the bottom.
Thanks for taking a look, Jeff. If I mistakenly merged entries I couldn't find how to undo them and I couldn't deleted people managed by a different person. I started making entries private to try to avoid the same thing happening again, or at least until I could try to print my tree.
After the tree is cleaned up I'll go back and undo the privacy for the ancestors.
Thanks for the tip about direct ancestor only view, very useful (though it eliminates immediate family).
Geni's not that great for printing. I started to merge them.. but not sure if that's going to help you or cause more problems for your printing. It would be easier to maybe unmerge one or two and then just disconnect. That or finish merging it.
Thanks?? Two more general questions; what do the different color connections between people represent? By disconnect do you mean quit and delete the tree?
The colors are just used to indicate another marriage. By disconnect, I mean just breaking the parent connection on your Margaret Loving profile for example and you rebuild it from there. But my first choice would be to finish merging the tree so there are no duplicates there.
Jeff,
I wish to undue a few incorrect merges. Can you please advise the procedure so that i may correct now, and if i make mistake in the future?
profile-1477801 & profile-2563646 for Mary Ann Williams
profile-1477801 & profile-8117466 for Mary Ann Williams
profile-1477801 & profile-38772386 for Mary Ann Williams
profile-1477801 & profile-46923279 for Mary Ann Williams
profile-1477801 & profile-84822329 for Mary Ann Williams
profile-1477801 & profile-108706217 for Mary Ann Williams
profile-1477801 & profile-108736069 for Mary Ann Williams
profile-1477801 & profile-109783074 for Mary Ann Williams
I'd suggest posting in this thread for help. https://www.geni.com/discussions/192543