Geni - Rant Alert

[Lensmeister]

Last year in a fit of stupidity I joined Geni and uploaded a basic tree. What a mistake.

They are linked to My Heritage  which gives me more incorrect "smart" matches than any other site. It's nice to know I have my own DOB wrong and that I don't know where my father was born !

Anyways I had a notification pop up and the "curators" have merged my tree with other peoples and that's allowed them to make edits on my tree. None of this I have consented to in any way, shape or form.

In their own One World Tree info they state:
If a merge involves a profile in a standalone tree, the merge will be pending until it is approved by a manager or collaborator in the other tree.
In their community help they have a thread called Please help complete my merge request.

Any Tom, Dick or Harry (I do wonder who those three were sometimes) can pick a name and request a merge. Then if it is either ignored or not agreed (i.e. like me, did not do it) the Curator just pops in and forces it through.

This allows people to EDIT YOUR TREE ! 

Yes we all collaborate with one another, and this site is brilliant for that, but An** and FindMyPast do not forces you to merge trees, allow others to edit your tree.

Rant Over.

[chris_49]

Oh dear. I looked at Geni and saw that merging without consent was a possibility. But I wanted to see if I had missed any early ancestors (they say they have lots). So I created a very basic tree with just my own immediate ancestors and no-one else, to see if any matches came up. None so far after a few years.

I would advise anyone else to enter no more than that. and yes, MyHeritage Smart Matches are pretty awful. I have an old tree there and they keep offering me matches that are way out (wrong continent, wrong YoB, surname only approximate). I wouldn't bother with them.

[Rena]

Commisserations.
I don't usually check "My Heritage" smart matches, until I received one of their letters worded in such a way that I felt guilty not checking that somebody's ancestor was a match to somebody in my tree.

I agreed that one smart match was a definite match and was both annoyed and bewildered to see hundreds of anonymous names had attached themselves to my one very neatly pruned tree.

 

[Lensmeister]

Geni and My Heritage are one and the same company (kept separately allegedly LOL )

Strange how all the tips on Geni point to My Heritage and tell me I need to pay to look at them.
There are a few on my tree that I have researched and know. They are asking me to pay up and look at my own research on My Heritage.

What a lovely little earner that is !

[Rena]

If rootschatters haven't seen who owns the "myheritage" site and what the future holds for facial recognition, it's here on wikipedia:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyHeritage

[Lensmeister]

I removed my entire tree from My Heritage and deleted as many as I could from Geni (no easy task as you have to do one at a time until I found out to removed the Gedcom).

Today I checked in to see they had not restored it and I get at the top a message that "My edit permissions had been restricted. Please contact misconduct "at" geni.com for assistance"

I have ... I'm waiting for them to tell me how naughty I am for not letting them rip off my research and charge me for looking at it.

My Advice NEVER USE GENI OR MY HERITAGE EVER

[Lensmeister]

LMAO

Well all, geni emailed me back telling me off for removing my researching calling it vandalism.

What a crock of ...

Anyways I pointed out their own conditions to them and their guidelines. Strangely they desputed it and have changed it.

And as another act of their childishness they appear to have blocked me (well my home IP address and one of my work ones but not the other) so I checked  on the second IP address and I can get on their site.