It is too confusing that collaborators cannot really collaborate because they do not have access to the private portion of the tree and cannot even click on "view tree" from the profile page of their collaborators.
Date
Votes
7 comments
-
Lo Absolutely not!! The word "collaborator" may not be the best term for geni to be using, since by it geni just means collaborating on each other's Public Profiles. What term would you suggest for folks working on one another's Public Profiles? Definitely "collaborators" should not have access to the Private portion of the trees. That would be a major invasion of privacy.
-
Eldon Clark (Geni volunteer curator) Absolutely Yes. When you request collaboration You are asking to share everything
-
Lo Eldon - No, that is not how Geni has defined the term "Collaborator". When you request collaboration you are just requesting to work on each other's Public Profiles. Read Geni's explanation of the term.
Moreover, if you want to invite all your "collaborators" to be part of your "Family Group" as well, you can do so
- tho I would not be comfortable with those in my Max Extended Family doing so and thus allowing folks they were working with on ancient history to see all the current generations, change them, etc. Geni promised us privacy within our family, and this would massively destroy it. Many folks have hundreds of Collaborators, and I don't need hundreds of folks going thru changing the Private Profiles in my Max Extended Family.
-
Lo The link to Geni's definition of what a Collaborator is: http://help.geni.com/entries/461228-who-are-collaborators ( Posted Feb. 23, 2011, updated Aug. 11, 2011)
Clearly states: "Collaborators can view, edit and merge each other's public profiles"
When they introduced the term, they did not have Public Profiles, so yes, they have changed what they mean by the term. And yes, I agree it is probably a poorly chosen/misleading term for the limited meaning they give it.
-
Ashley Odell I firmly believe in keeping collaboration and family group requests separate. However, it would be nice if there could be a checkbox on the collaboration request that says "Also invite to family group" or something similar.
-
Eric Randol Schoenberg, Geni Curator The problem is that if you really want to "collaborate" you need to use "family group," and no ordinary person could possibly be expected to know or understand that. That is the issue. On Geni, a collaborator cannot see or merge the private nodes on a tree. Since the default for new trees seems to be set on private, that means that every new user cannot get help from a collaborator. I cannot even click on "view tree" for my collaborator. That makes no sense to me, nor should it make sense to anyone. Which is why it must be changed. The type of collaboration that keeps your private tree private must be called something else, and the word "collaborate" needs to mean that you are letting the other person see and edit your tree.
-
Michael Kuntzman As of Nov 2012, anyone can merge and edit public profiles, apparently, so the Collaborators feature doesn't seem to add much anymore. Maybe it's time to retire it entirely, and add a separate feature specifically designed to help merge private profiles. If that's what the Family Group feature is for, it needs clarification.
Please sign in to leave a comment.