The 'Last login' on people's portrait does not seem to show up anymore - at least not regularly. This is a great pity! From the 'Last login' followed by a date one can see if a person is still active or may have abandoned GENI or lost interest or changed his/her email address without notifying (and thus does not receive messages anymore) or may have even died. One may wait for a response to a merger proposal for ever! If one sees the last login date and if such is, say, over two years ago, one can notify GENI that this person has abandoned and request that mergers can be made without approval. Please re-introduce 'Last login' ALWAYS on every portrait!
15 comments
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Liivi Murumets Or at least it could be on by default (like users being searchable by Google) and have the ability in settings to turn it off.
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Eldon Clark (Geni volunteer curator) Livi, why would want to turn it off? It is the best way to know if a tree is abandoned. Now you have to look for recent activity, and who knows what Geni defines as recent. As for me If no recent activity is shown, I just report and let Geni sort it out.
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Bjørn P. Brox Georges
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Bjørn P. Brox Only curators and Geni staff are allowed to see the last login date
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Liivi Murumets Eldon, when did I say I want to turn it off?
Previously all users could see last login. Currently it is shown for collaborators and curators. A user may want to be able to show their last login (to family members but are unable to even when they want to without collaborating first.
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Georges M Teitler With all due respect, what Bjorn says is an absolute nonsence! I am NOT a Curator and I'm not Geni staff and if "Last Login date" were only permissible to those two categories, how would I have known about this feature? And why would I have lodged a complaint that it has disappeared? It used to be there for everyone, but so were email addresses which have disappeared too and a lot of other features. Geni is not improving this system and its service - the contrary is true! Fact is, that GENI becomes more and more an exclusive institution and even PRO-members (like me) are not handled anymore asit used to be. Questions for help go unanswered; suggestions for better handling of 'private' and 'public' portraits (regarding fourth cousins as 'private' is nonsense!) end up in GENI's huge wastepaper basket, reports about managers who have abandoned and disappeared with dozens of undealt with merger requests find no response by GENI staff and so on... I have been involved for over four years and have added approx. 5'000 names and nearly 1'000 photos and I am about to transfer the lot to another system if the GENI Management does not "pull up their socks". I have the impression that GENI is read by less and less people because messages to other Geni members don't get answered and whilst I used to receive queries to entriesI have made (by peopple who found links to their own relatives) this is hardly happening anymore. Subjects like members changing their email address and hence not receiving messages from GENI and/or other members is not dealt with; neither is the problem of abandoned managers (e.g. anyone who is listed as 'living' and has logged in, should receive an email every two years to check if the are still active or not and if not, their status as'manager' to other portraits should be cancelled and undealt merger requests agreed to by the management). IF GENI MANAGEMENT DOES NOT ADDRESS THE QUESTION OF ABANDONED OR DECEASED MEMBERS OR THOSE WHO CHANGED THEIR EMAIL ADDRESS WITHOUT NOTIFICATION, GENI WILL RAPIDLY BECOME A GRAVEYARD !!!
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Bjørn P. Brox Georges
I agree, - that information among a lo of other info should be available for other Geni users, but...
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Eldon Clark (Geni volunteer curator) Livi, This is what I was referring to.
"and have the ability in settings to turn it off." I don't think it should be turned off. That defeats the purpose of having it although a large number of Geni users do not even know about settings. Geni, in what I think is an unnecessary concern for privacy, has used an axe instead of a pruning tool on the tree. I wonder if seeing only curators pictures in this discussion is part of the privacy thing also.
Georges, I agree with most of what you are saying but would not consider removing my file from Geni. Instead I will argue with them when I believe they have made a mistake!
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Liivi Murumets Eldon, when posting in Zendesk only Geni profile name is displayed automatically, not picture. A profile picture in the help desk can be added by editing the profile here.
I had nothing against all last login dates being shown previously. However, there may be some people who would rather not let everyone have access to their last login. The same way some people don't want their details to be found by search engines. By default user profiles are indexable by Google and their list view is accessible to everyone. Users have a choice to make it private. Currently there is no choice about last login data.
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Georges M Teitler Livii: If you represent the thinking and philosophy of GENI when you say "there may be some people who rather not let everyone have access to their last login" and you feel that this attitude is justifyable, then it is time to wind up GENI and we all go to another site! Honestly! How silly can one get! Why should it be a secret when people were last time in GENI? (*) So one may conclude from this if they had an extra-martial affair or not? There are only overwhelming reasons to show it so one can then conclude (for example) if there is any sense in sending a person a reminder-message that some merger requests are still pending - or if it is a waste of time (if one sees they haven't logged in for a long time). And how should one be able to report someone has abandoned GENI (not that anything is done about it by the management even when onedoes repors it!) if the last login is not shwon? There are no abandoned cases if the last login is unknown. But maybe - and I suspect this more and more - you people don't really want it to be known that GENI is gradually becoming a cemetery! That's why, Eldon, it is time to get off the ship. After all, I'm not - contrary to Livii - one of the captains that has stay to the bitter end!
(*) people can hide their last login anyhow by declaring their portrait as 'private'. Better still - they should not get involved in GENI in the first instance. Imagine how much fun this system would be if every entry were private. You could look at your own portrait and nothing else!
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Liivi Murumets Georges, my suggestion was to make it visible to everyone by default with an option to turn it off.
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Ashley Odell My concern with this is, of course, privacy. Most websites are now shying away from making "last on" details public because of so many unpleasant incidents involving stalking, employee tracking, and so on. I've been a paid employee of two large social networking sites, and both got rid of these features for liability and privacy reasons.
Since it looks like many others support this, however, I would just say that it should be opt-in than opt-out, at least for existing users who would be blindsided by the change. Any time you're opening users up to their private details being given away, they should know about their options beforehand and be able to make their own decisions. It would also be best to have multiple security levels -- for example, being allowed to show only registered users or only your Family Group/collaborators your last login. That might be a good compromise.
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Liivi Murumets When other users and potential collaborators (or your stalker or your boss!) view your profile, they don't really need to know the exact date of your last login - a time frame would do.
How about a colour coded Last Online? For example:
Red - more than 9 months ago - feel free to report as an abandoned tree.
Orange - within 1-9 months - send your requests but don't hold your breath.
Green - less than a month ago - possible Geni-addict ;-)
I made this into a separate feature request:
http://help.geni.com/entries/20192616-last-online-colour-coded-time-frame
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Edward Caplan Regardless of "last login" or not, what does the Geni staff recommend we do to find out if a tree or account has been abandoned? And how can we request that the management of profiles / trees be moved to someone who has not abandoned Geni?
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Eirik Løvland Manheim I think it should be voluntary to show when you're online or not. Please add this choice!