Talk:Geni.com

Redlinks

Very well. However, redlinks are useless. What do they do, except prove something has no article?--MonkeyTimeBoy 22:42, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

They show that an article should be created and, if done properly, they will show which articles should be/need to be created based on the number of backlinks. It also encourages participation in Wikipedia. I was mainly just pointing out that "Per Wikipedia procedures - create the wiki article before linking to a non-existent wiki article. Redlinks are supposed to be removed from all wiki articles." is incorrect. Redlinks, while not exactly ideal, are not "supposed to be removed from all wiki articles". You are right that the article should be created, but just because I'm making the redlink doesn't mean that the obligation is on me to create the article. I'd certainly like to, but to be honest I probably don't know enough about the company to do it justice. That said, all this only applies to NOTABLE articles that deserve to be in Wikipedia in the first place. Removing non-notable or recently deleted redlinks is a good idea and is outlined on WP:RED. Paul^C/_T+ 02:37, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:GeniBeta.jpg

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BetacommandBot 10:11, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Criticism

I added the following texts, but it was removed due to suspected "original research". That is understandable. Much of it was found in various discussion forums, some of it I formulated myself, and I have not found any published source. Can anyone contribute with sources? Most of this criticism is valid to many online family tree services, not only Geni.com.

Information reliability

Open genealogical databases have a tendency to bring fairytale kings back into genealogy, and to revive mythical family trees that once occurred in old books but today are considered unconfirmed and unreliable.

It is hard to evaluate the reliability of the information given at geni.com, since references to cited sources are rather uncommon. This is an effect of that geni.com is lacking a footnote mechanism, a reference field, web links, or an indication of dubious relations. Users are not instructed to state their sources in a special format, or to indicate guesses and unconfirmed information.

Geni.com is not like a wiki, a content management system or a version control system, where users easily can subscribe on changes, compare versions and roll back the version history in case of mistakes or vandalism. New users can not see what consensus agreements that were made in earlier discussions about a certain piece of information, but may make the same mistake again.

A large amount of duplicate posts of the same person exists, since connecting to other family trees or merging duplicates requires payment of a subscription fee. Many of the detected duplicated matches are incorrect, and many duplicates are not discoved by the automatic match detection, since many users do not enter birth year, and since the match detection feature is very sensitive to spelling mistakes of the persons name but not that sensitive to wrong parent names.

No localization

In 2008 Geni launched a campaign on a special wiki-site, which made possible for users to translate the original interface into languages other than English, but soon when almost all the translations were completed Geni conductors refused to implement these translations to the site, perhaps because of the license problems. Many users thought that the developers were just afraid of increasing of the popularity of Geni which cannot be compensated by their revenues.

And still, as of early 2010, nothing changed and Geni is still available only in English. Using automatic translators such as google toolbar or google translate browser extensions does not solve the main problems. For example, the lack of localization causes inconsistent formatting of geographical information, or missing geographical information. There is no field for parish, which has been the standard geographical registration unit in most European countries. Modern address information including national ZIP codes are offered, but these have changed many times during history, and are not used in other genealogical databases. Also, there is not fast way of entering dates in the format of the country, without using the slow menu based user interface. In the discussion groups, time of editing is presented in eastern pacific time rather than national time.

193.10.250.187 (talk) 23:16, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

• I'm moving some more "criticism" here for the same reason. Although this is all well-written and seems true, without reliable sourcing, it's WP:OR, and no independent way to review whether it's relevant, important, a fact of all social networks or open databases, etc. Maybe someone has written about it. If not, maybe Wikipedia isn't the best place to start... a blog perhaps, or some other forum. - Wikidemon (talk) 00:07, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
  • Agree that the unsourced material should be removed. It's also out of date, giving a false impression of the current service. Morphh ^(talk) 21:20, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
  • The locatization situation is in 10 years changed from no locatization to the fact that Finnish is now the second used language on Geni.com Carsrac (talk) 00:55, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Reduction of services

Geni.com has restricted the visibility of family trees, citing privacy as a concern. On February 14, 2008, Geni.com announced that users' abilities to view the tree they are in would be restricted to themselves, their spouse/partner, and the blood relatives of themselves and their spouse/partner. On February 5, 2009, Geni reduced the default Family Group from fifth to third cousins. This reduced the size of family tree that many users could see, resulting in criticism on web forums.[1]. Later in February, 2009, Geni expanded viewing capability to include fourth cousins.

Well i clicked that "grumblings" link and it was useless. Nothing has been updated there since 2011, and it certainly does not describe the state of Geni at the present time. It's just a slam or hater site, as best i can see. Meanwhile, the site remains popular and continues to grow. I for one find it easier to use than any other genealogy site, and the collaborative work is generally of an excellent quality. Photos upload easily, there is room for comments of all types, there is a messaging system (ala Facebook) and a public discussion system as well. New projects (profiles collected by similarities) are being devised daily, and all seems to be moving right along. I am not saying it's perfect, but i am saying that Wikipedia is not an appropriate venue to post hater-links. 75.101.104.17 (talk) 12:51, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Limited localization

In June 2010 Geni was released in over 24 different languages. Before that it was available only in English. However, still limited localization causes inconsistent formatting of geographical information, or missing geographical information. For example, there is no separate field for parish, which is the standard geographical registration unit in most European countries. The national ZIP codes used in Geni are not used in other genealogical databases.

• In 10 years this situation still is not changed. Carsrac (talk) 00:57, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Reliability

It is hard to evaluate the reliability of the given information since references to cited sources are rather uncommon. This is an effect of that Geni.com does not provide a footnote mechanism, a reference field or web links, or a mechanism for marking a relation or a date as less reliable. Open genealogical databases generally have a tendency to bring fairytail kings back into geneaology and revive family trees that have occured in old books but today are considered unconformed and unreliable, and that goes for geni.com as well.

Pattern matching

Many users do not provide date and place information, resulting in that the pattern matching gives a large amount of false hits. Also when date and place information is provided, the pattern matching feature gives a large amount of hits that apparently dp not refer to the same person.

Privacy issues

GENI.com is known for privacy issues. Names of living persons in private trees can be even found through google. More distant family members within private trees are automatically converted into public profiles. It is also possible for non-related persons to gain administration rights of parts of private trees of others. Many users complain that it is virtually impossible to delete the data they had once entered or uploaded. Though GENI offers localized services, it does not respect privacy rules of most countries. 93.204.118.33 (talk) 20:23, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Free accounts cannot export in-law trees

What is an in-law tree? (fotoguzzi) 76.105.160.69 (talk) 09:12, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

The ancestors of someone you marry. Real genealogists should stay clear of Geni; it is a parlour game website, and perfectly good for that purpose. Before I left I was offered the connections between President Obama and myself - 18th cousins - for a fee. Some people are fascinated by that sort of thing.86.42.199.120 (talk) 09:09, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

For a fee? Really? That sounds unlikely. Is this just some random slam or do you have evidence of such a thing being offered by Geni ... or are you a disgruntled ex-user complaining about Geni Pro (the paid version of the service, with more features) in some obscure way by referring to that as a "fee"? 75.101.104.17 (talk) 12:43, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

importing GEDCOM was blocked for several years, but free or not free account (a pro account) was not an issue. I must say in 8 years Geni.com has become more and more seriously. It is not a parlour game website as far as I know of. I must say you like it or you dislike it. A real genealogists use proof and search for the proof. But you have to say that some are very fascinated in finding out the family connections between President Obama and President Trump. And if you are related to one of them. It is a nice free extra. And a part of the Geni website if you like it or not. You can also ignore that feature. But yes there are some features that are funny and look like a game. Carsrac (talk) 04:34, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Similar websites and companies

This does not appear to be an appropriate section for this article. This site is about Geni.com, not these other sites. I could see perhaps adding them as bullets in a See also section, but that's about it.. at least in this article. A section on the general genealogy article could discuss online genealogy sites and include these. Morphh ^(talk) 21:12, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I reordered it a little bit, but I"m still not sure about parts of it. Morphh ^(talk) 21:15, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

External links modified

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There are more deadlinks in this article especially the links to the help.geni.com website. And some are not fixable by a bot. Carsrac (talk) 11:53, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

License and ownership of data?

Who owns the data? who has rights to the data? 67.198.37.16 (talk) 04:30, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

It is a good question and at the moment there is internal discussion between the Geni staff, the lawyers of MyHeritage and the Curators about this point. If there is a clear answer then we will tell that. But for now the honest answer is Geni.com does not own the data on Geni.com. Geni.com does only own the website and the software interface. It is a web 2.0 service. Carsrac (talk) 21:07, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

rewriting the article

I wil start with rewriting this article and my source is https://www.scribd.com/document/71769942/Collaborative-Knowledge-Building-Ethnographic-Insights-from-Geni-com-May-2011 writen by a Curator and native english speaker. Carsrac (talk) 21:07, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

I think it is good to focus on the fact what Geni.com as a company or as a webservice make unic. I think the fact that it support multilanguages and it has a global bigtree is unic. Other websites like wikitree and familysearch has also a global tree. And other websites like myheritage has multilanguage support, but some things are unic and some facts are common with other webservices. Carsrac (talk) 11:51, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

Information glut

I feel like this article is suffering from information glut, especially about technical features. For example, it's abnormal for a Wikipedia article to detail how a specific site's notifications work. Is that necessary information for a Wikipedia reader? Does it tell us something unique and important about the topic? Same with exporting, importing, and third-party tools -- while that information is important for Geni users, is it important for people reading about Geni? Or is a lot of this information more suited for Geni's own user documentation? I appreciate the work people have put into this page, but I wonder if it's in the appropriate place. Beginning (talk) 19:56, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Family tree of Ramachandran Iyer from Nedumangad , trivandrum

Would like to know the ancestors of Mr Ramachandra Iyer and Mrs Lakshmi ammal who resided in nedumangad , Trivandrum , Kerala between early 1900 to 1950 I am Ram Natesan , living in chennai and his grandson Ramnedumangadu (talk) 13:15, 4 June 2021 (UTC)