The "genius" of Geni.com is in its ability to track the relatively "complete" ancestry of a person.
At present, creating a complete ancestors' list is impossible in Geni.com because of the report limit of 5,000 profiles in an ancestry listing. I understand that the limit is imposed for purpose of increasing the performance of the program. My suggestions:
- include a check box on the search options for a "complete list"
- accompany checking that box with a "warning" message that the search could take a long time (and I assume you can offer an outside estimate--an hour, several hours, a day--whatever is closest to accurate). I do not, of course, know what kind of stress it would put on the server for such a search to be underway for many Geni.com users simultaneously. Perhaps a "We'll notify you/send you a copy/spreadsheet/whatever" message is a way around it, so that such reports could be generated during lower-usage periods.
- if possible, allow users a couple of formatting/sorting options once the report has been compiled
NOTE: One Geni.com help desk person suggested I could go back further than the 21 generations my report produced by selecting someone further down the tree and searching from their. The obvious drawback of this approach is that it would only produce one branch of ancestors further back.
