Giles Hopkins - No such person.

Thanks again! Total agreement.

Geni opened its doors in 2007, and Giles left a will, so he's among the better known Great Puritan migration arrivers. And with 10 kids, who had 10 kids (etc) ... Obviously there's been builds to his family tree before.

When a member connects to an existing tree everyone "automatically" becomes part of your tree, no further work needed. I know, too easy, right? But so it is.

It just makes it harder when existing profiles are duplicated. Introduces errors, leads to tree drift, and other Horrors ....

Oh, don't get me started with Ancestry.com. With that web site you have to take EVERYTHING with a grain of salt. It all seems like "trial and error." Someone wanted to be related to this person or that person, gees... where does it end. Oh and don't even try to mention Family Tree Maker, I'm already loosing my hair, I don't need to pull it out too. (Yes, did that already with FTM -I could tell you horror stories about FTM). Now a big fan of Legacy, for my computer program! Enough of that subject.

I think the beauty of Geni is that we work together, we have discussions, and we have a method to curate and protect the tree. The more users get involved and question and correct bad data, the better the tree becomes.

Unfortunately with new users creating duplicate trees and those being merged in, errors creep in. What Erica calls tree drift. Several of us use every tool at our disposal -- Master Profiles, locked data fields, attached sources, the Overview Tab (About), and Curator's Notes. Hopefully we will get relationship locking and be able to cut down on bad merges. And other methods so people don't duplicate historic parts of the tree.

Giles Hopkins died between 5 March 1688/9 (codocil) and 16 April 1690 (probate) in Eastham.

We don't "add the 10 days" onto the written documented dates so the 26 April date is off in two directions. Very few people die on the date their will is probated.

Hatte, Erica, Jeff :

When you merge trees does the merged tree carry over ALL THE stuff written in the Overview (About) section onto the "new" page?

Is it perhaps programmed that way so that nothing that might be accurate or important (or is only seen in that one place in the whole world) won't get left behind?

Is that why some trees have four duplicates of old text copied off old web pages that never was correct or is no longer current/correct?

Thanks. Shirley

I just learned how to spell cod-i-cil.

Shirley,

The information in the About get appended (not sure bottom or top) with a dotted line between them. And yes, that explains the messy About / Overview sections of a lot of the early profiles. We try to clean them up and consolidate and get rid of duplicate and bad information, but it is a huge project with profiles that have many descendants and therefore many duplicates merged in continuously. Luckily there is a history tab for the revisions to the Overview, so I can see what I researched and wrote as the curator or an interested manager and see what changes or additions have been made and by whom. Sometimes it tells me Geni made the change / addition, which is not so helpful.

Good question!

Sometimes people don't understand why Erica and I put so much in the Overview but we're leaving bread crumbs for ourselves to know what we understand the best information to be, along with links to evidence sources. Then when there's a bad merge, we can see which spouses / children / parents have been added due to an erroneous merge or an erroneous choice doing tree conflict or data conflict resolution.

IN THE ABOUT SECTION:
Since Giles' children are already listed toward the top of the text is it necessary to keep the three sets of
"Source: ancestry.com: Giles Hopkins Found 10 Records, 9 Photos and 2,568,965 Family Trees"
errors at the bottom even if one of them is full of [sic] additions?

The top section might might not have all death dates for kids shown but its better than the duplicated 1690 dates and doesn't have Ruth dying at age 140 three times.

Interesting reading from The Pilgrim Hopkins website: Giles In 2 parts:
http://home.pilgrimhopkins.com/images/PHHSFiles/AC_Dec09.pdf
http://home.pilgrimhopkins.com/images/PHHSFiles/AC_Jun10.pdf

Yes, we'll want to remove incorrect information. You can probably even do it yourself if you like. There should be an edit link next to the About that would allow you to delete incorrect information.

I really count on members to reorganize "abouts.". If they're good we can lock to further changes like most other data fields.

For older profiles, I took my best shot years ago, it's time for others to apply their perspectives.

The way I like to organize for easiest readability in all views:

===name===
* birth (date, location)
* death (date, location)
[baptismal / burial data]
* parents
* spouses
Also known as names

===family===

[note: this is usually an original writing but can be a copy & paste; if so, website up front]

Married:
# date, location, name (their vitals), child of, former / later spouses.
# additional spouses with same info

Children (by spouse)

===biographical summary===

(again, attribution up top if copy & paste; footnotes great but not easy)

===sources===
* external link
** their cited sources

For instance, if I use WeRelate, I add their references under, making it clear they are the source of the cite.

But if I find a direct URL anyone can then also look at, I list separately as well.

NB

In addition to editing out incorrect info, I sometimes section:

===old data===

This is particularly useful when there is old info since updated out there; we can more easily track down and explain the source of the mistake by having a reference.

It's annoying to see the same overview duplicated for a mile. We really need to start locking those good overviews -- and encouraging everyone to write them for the thousands of profiles without any!

Good idea using ===old data=== I'll add that to some profiles I have been working on today.