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Better Timeline

賈元春(一)

August 23, 2011 22:28

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A couple of suggestions:

1. Currently, if an event is without date, it is put at the end of the timeline. What really bothered me is the birth, which clearly should be at the top in all conceivable situations. Geni could be smarter by putting birth and death (and burial) at the top and bottom, and other events (with or without dates) in the middle. Marriage should, as the default, appear before the birth of the children. The order of children's births should agree with the birth order, if available. It would be even better to have an "event order" just the way birth order and marriage order are handled.

2. Allow merging of events. What I can think of include death of multiple people in a single event, death of the mother in childbirth, birth of twins, siblings or cousins going to the same school in the same years, etc. Adding people inside an event does not really resolve the problem.

3. View other family's timeline. It's good for both relatives (in-laws) and historical profiles. And a list of families (i.e. family names)

4. I would prefer to have months in short form, or in numerals. And, make it translatable through tr8n.

I also dream of a different layout for timeline, one that you see in books. A horizontal line correctly depicts the time scale, with boxed texts above and/or below. Some kind of hovercards would be cool too. Maybe color coded for different types of events. Family timeline can have other fancy features like showing the lifespan of each individual, though an obvious problem is that there are easily too many people.

4 comments

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  Yao Liu May 06, 2015 03:44

  Can't believe it's been this long! (I was the one who posted this request. While the Geni account has since been merged with my main account, it seems that Geni help registers users separately.)

  I recently had a chance to make a couple of events, which by the way is one of the best features of Geni but somehow is being largely neglected. I'd like to add a few more "requests" regarding timeline and events.

  I was kind of using events like projects, adding many more people than would typically be in a birth/marriage/death event. Maybe others have been using events for reunions, but I'm thinking more of historical event: an expedition, a circumnavigation, etc. It works pretty well: people are given more prominent position than in projects, and the best part is they show up in timelines (projects don't). One drawback I see is that the "description" is necessarily a general description of the entire event (which sometimes may span months or even years, in which case I give a brief event timeline --- works great), but I would like to have a place to record a few words about each person's role or experience in it, which should appear alongside (not in place of) the general description in that person's timeline. Also it'd be great to access, at a click away from the event page, all the individuals' stories. (And please alphabetize names, instead of in the order they were added. Much needed for projects too!)

  Some embellishments: it'd be awesome to have the age of each person at the time of the event (if known) appear after his name. That "add me" seems even more absurd if event is to serve "historical" events. Instead, put "add people" and "see more". I personally prefer to keep my name (as Created By) off from the top few lines in the event page, like in projects. Also, there's kind of a bug as a result of the introduction of "between/before/after" dates, because events already are between dates (by default?). If I enter a start and end date, the start date itself goes to "between" mode. While fixing that bug, the "Date" display can be made "smarter" when, say, the start and end dates are the same year (with different dates, or no dates at all).

  Anyway, could be far down in the mysterious "to do" list :)

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  Muammar Ghadafi ISHAK May 12, 2015 14:10

  I'm also having an issue on timeline which still haven't been solved yet until today. Some of the events doesn't even show up at all. The ticket is still in open state for years. So sad :(

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  Yao Liu January 06, 2016 20:26

  More thoughts (which I probably said elsewhere, but I don't remember where):

  BE ABLE TO ADD (user-created) EVENTS TO A PROJECT! In the project page, not only is there a list of profiles modules on the right, we could imagine a timeline, either on the very page or a click away. That way, events become fully public and collaborative, and may even function as a type of subproject.) Not sure how private profiles would be treated. The possibilities are endless.

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  Kimberly Kelley-Lawrence March 10, 2019 17:21

  All of the ages at their deaths are incorrect on my timeline.  Does anyone know anything about that?