Incorrect information. Please undo.

Private User
If you go to your mother's profile and click on the Revisions tab can you see who did the changes?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/peex2zjccnzhvxp/Screenshot%202015-06-11%2...

Is the correct information showing on 12/29/2014?

If so it can be reverted

Private User
Can Smart Copy be undone like Charmaine requested or do we just do it in Revisions?

I know who did the smartcopy, the point is Smartcopy should be done with CAUTION. I can edit the profile because I know all the correct information. The problem is it will stay incorrect on My Heritage so howmany times will I need to fix my mothers profile?

Angus Wood-Salomon the Smartcopy was done yesterday, so before that the information is correct.

Also if the person checked the sources on my mothers profile before doing the smartcopy he would have seen the information is incorrect.

Private User
As a pro you can go into the Revisions of the profile of your mother click on 'view' of """Johanna Magrietha Gertrude Marian Labuschagne's profile was updated by John Sparkman. about me, first name, gender and 4 others
7 hours ago · view""

You will see this https://www.dropbox.com/s/6evtfdidea9dpg6/Screenshot%202015-06-11%2...

Click on the correct values and then click on "Use Selected Values" this will revert them back

Angus Wood-Salomon As I said, The information will stay incorrect on MyHeritage because I can't contact Thomas Labuschagne who got it wrong there. It is inevitable that somebody else WILL do this Smartcopy again. Howmany times will I need to fix my mothers profile?

Private User, if the information to your mother is now correct, I can be the curator and lock the fields in question to protect them. Future Smartcopies should not change the locked fields.
Jim

Already done Jim...great minds think alike...lol

Problem is now it's locked with incorrect information.
Should be:
DOB 22 June 1936
Johannesburg

DOD 15 August 2014
Caledon

Great Angus! I hate to see Geni users get frustrated by losing their work when they know it is correct! Jim

Ok go ahead and fix it then let us know, one of us would Master it again

Thank you Angus Wood-Salomon My moms profile is now correct.

I do think the Smartcopy feature needs some revision though. The profile manager should have to approve the copy.

How many other profiles are being messed up that we don't pick up? I only picked this one up so fast because it's my mom. There may be others further down the line that I still need to discover. This means I'm going to have to check my entire tree.

Angus, SmartCopy does not have an undo function as Geni already has a built in revision history and the ability to revert the changed data.

SmartCopy is just a tool to help speed the data entry that someone would do manually. Like anyone copying data from one online tree to another, it should be done with caution, particularly if the data differs.

Private User

Bearing in mind i've not used Smartcopy myself:

Why does Smartcopy over-write existing profiles rather than creating a duplicate which then needs to be manually merged?

If a large portion of the MH tree being imported is duplicates then what's the point of importing it? If there are just a few dupes created then surely merging them manually is a small price to pay for the convenience of importing all the new profiles?

Or have i completely misunderstood Charmaine's issue?

Alex Moes somebody I don't know (Thomas Labuschagne) got my family all mixed up on MyHeritage. I can't contact him or correct the mistake because I don't have a subscription to MyHeritage. This incorrect profile information was copied to my mothers Geni profile by an irresponsible user. Because of this one mistake on MyHeritage my entire family could potentially be copied incorrectly and the information changed.

Alex, normally, the only profile set to "Update" is the focused "match". And the only things that are checked are those defined by MyHeritage as "new data" (what you would normally see when it says "Adds a birth date" - so I would auto-check birth date). All siblings, partners, and children default to an "Add" and again are only pre-selected if MyHeritage says "Adds a spouse". Parents default to Add unless Geni already has an existing set of parents for the focus profile, in which case it will switch to Update (nothing pre-checked).

So normally, updating a profile other than the focus profile is a very explicit and manual choice by the user to update the data in the profile. They have to change it from Add to Update and select the Geni profile to update, then check all the data fields they wish to update. I expect what might have happened here is that MyHeritage listed that the SmartMatch on Charmaine "Adds: father and mother". SmartCopy would then pre-check the parents. However, SmartCopy queried Geni and determined that Charmain already has parents, so it change the Add to an Update.

Thanks Jeff, i think i followed right up to the last sentence.

Are you saying that the "Update" of Charmaine's mother happened automatically because Smartcopy could see she already had parents in Geni or did whoever was running this particular import have to approve the Update?

I must say that I am appalled by the fact that this discussion has taken on the tone that it .
I specifically refer to the cryptic comment "I know who did the smart copy"

It is significant that I had been extensively consulted by Private User to assist her which I willingly did - especially with merges as witnessed by this extract from one of her messages to me.
____________________________
Dear Richard,
Charmaine Carstens tagged you in the project discussion "Please help complete my merge request"
________________________________________
Thank you John Sparkman there's 4 more on the previous page please.
______________________________

In assisting her with her merge requests and the subsequent data clean up post merge, obviously I got it wrong.
Pity that I was not contacted about her concerns and I am grateful that so many people as well as fellow Curators have made meaningful contributions to solving her concern that a smart copy and data cleanup would again distort her data.
Naturally the My Heritage data can only be modified by the MH Manager.
Regards
John

John Sparkman I asked in a general group for assistance with 7 specific merges (not immediately related to this profile) to be completed, you completed 3 after which I mentioned the other 4 on the previous page, which you also completed, thank you.
It was not a cryptic note, I did not feel the need to mention your name as anybody could see it if they wanted to and I did contact you in a discussion on my mothers profile before adding it to Smartcopy.
Lastly, if you checked the sources on my mothers profile you would've known the match is incorrect.

Charmaine Carstens (Labuschagne) PRO

Today at 1:43 AM
Report

Richard John Sparkman I noticed a couple of days ago that in Thomas Labuschagne's tree on MyHeritage he's got information about my family incorrect. I asked on Facebook for help to contact this person to correct the mistake. Please undo all the changes. My father was married to two women. Their names are now combined and the children from the two mothers will be incorrect.

Richard John Sparkman C

Today at 7:48 AM
Report | Delete

Charmaine,
I am sorry that you had to resort to opening a public discussion about smart copy and the fact that after me assisting you numerous times you were dissatisfied with what you say was a distortion of your family tree data.
Consequently I am not comfortable about working on any of your profiles in case I inadvertently cause you more problems.

You will recall that you repeatedly requested a succession of merges and various Curators including myself rallied to your assistance.
Regards
John

Mistakes happen, I agree and as I said before, this is a problem and "the point is Smartcopy should be done with CAUTION" and "I do think the Smartcopy feature needs some revision though. The profile manager should have to approve the copy."

Well in the message you shared is thee one I sent to you after you did the smartcopy. On Facebook I also said that the information is INCORRECT!

This discussion in Smartcopy is not about you. It is to point out that there are loopholes that could affect peoples trees and profiles in a negative way and to find a solution to this problem as I suggested.

Charmaine thank you for this discussion. In my Heritage somebody has copied my tree info from correct to being- My husband is my father and my daughter is my mother.
And then somebody SmartCopied it here but that was easy to correct as I new all people.
I am very ashame to say this, but luckily I can's get SmartCopy done. Not so PC literate.
John I was impressed with you doing it. There was one on my line as well but it was correct. Just had to do conflicting details due to the different way of doing.
Juds

This is a specific example of a more general Geni issue that is never going to change:

How does one prevent incorrect information which exists elsewhere on the Internet from being used to update Geni profiles?

Generally, one has no control over what may be found 'out in the wild'.

At the present time there is only one method to preserve the Geni information, and that is to have it set as a Master Profile and to have the individual "Basic" fields locked as appropriate.

It is really NOT a SmartCopy issue.

SmartCopy is simply a tool which removes the tedious and error-prone process of manually typing in information from another source into Geni profiles. That's all it does -- automate the transfer of information from some non-Geni webpage(s) into Geni profiles (updating existing or creating new profiles).

SmartCopy just makes it so much easier to mess up a whole branch of a tree. It's just a click away.

Alex, SmartCopy didn't update it automatically. What it did was preselect the parents as something to update based on the MyHeritage Match saying the data "Adds: father and mother". Often you have to check a box or data field for each person you want to Add or Update. But in the case of MyHeritage matches, I try to pre-select check boxes based on what MyHeritage says is new data that can be added to Geni. But we also have another rule that says if the Geni profile already has parents, instead of defaulting to an "Add" operation, which would create two more parents, default to "Update". So in the SmartCopy tool, the Parents were pre-checked (based on MyHeritage) and it was defaulted to "Update" (based on Geni). So when John clicked submit, it updated the existing profiles on Geni with the Parent data from MyHeritage.

Charmaine, I'm sorry about the situation and I'm glad we were able to get it resolved quickly. Indeed, the purpose of SmartCopy is to make adding and updating easier and faster, so it can be a double-edged sword. We certainly advise caution when copying data from online trees, particularly with a tool that makes that process easier. As for revising the tool, there is no way, that I'm aware, to have an update, which the user has authority to perform, request approval from the manager to perform it.

One thing that I'll do, that might have prevented this particular instance, is to have pre-selection of parents only occur if it is an "Add" operation.

Thank you Private User, I'm glad that we all learned something from my "bad" experience and that the changes you'll make may just prevent something like this happening again. In that case I've achieved my goal by posting this situation in a public discussion.

A huge thank you to all the curators who jumped in to assist me so quickly.