GEDCOMS should included the option for including both sets of parents - with a list of all children instead of dropping the father/mother as is being done at present time - PAF, Legacy, My Family Tree and all other programs support this option -
Why should one have to have 2-4 gedcoms just to recover their data as inputted into GENI - this means untold hours importing a file sifting through the file taking out all the "garbage" profiles missing names or labeled with "living" - taking out blank marriage records; re-gedcoming making sure to do it to exclude the sourcing and notes and yet remembering to designate one last gedcom to preserving the notes and sourcing;
then going through a second gedcom guessing the spouses/parents for where they belong with which set of family when a descendants has multiple marriages and put back into the GEDCOM/database
this is absolutely unproductive time spent to make a workable GEDCOM that could be merged into a persons own genealogy data base that they maintain on their computer -
YES GEDCOMS need to be made into a file and all "garbage" is cleaned out before entering into your own or into a program such as Geni - I have learned the hard way by accepting a persons whose research was impeccable with sourcing etc. – only thing it was all online sourcing that had to be paid for by subscription – or defunct websites and obituary links. Besides the multitude of “living’, ‘unknown’ ‘private’ the un-countless number of empty marriage entries with or without dates either attached to a child/children or not even attached to a child – besides the un-countless number of blank profiles or unattached profiles -
I was told by on GENI user that “cleaning up” a gedcom was a useless thing to do, and was un-necessary – but this is where the problem lies because some have even forgot to merge and combine profiles in a gedcom after its been inserted into their own genealogy program –
There need s to be a standard of GEDCOM etiquette – to provide a clean correct untarnished version of your genealogical data and actual sourcing with all facts stated withing the notes for sorucing instead of just links to online resources - QUOTE the material verbatimn and also put the link into our files - and - or if not stating that you are unsure of the contents of the GEDCOM
I have spent several years cleaning up my Hardesty manuscript PAF file because I blindly trusted this one persons gedcom - - he had failed to clean out the garbage - and no value was found in his notes/sourcing as there all lead to an online paid database - or the lead to defunct internet sites such as obits when newspapers merged were lost.