Partnership Applications - Geni.com

[Conat]

I just noticed this button:
https://www.familytreedna.com/my/partner-applications

The Geni.com blog suggests this has gone live in the last 24 hours or so:
https://www.geni.com/blog/geni-adds-...ee-394127.html

The press release is only a few hours old:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/hom...ld-Family-Tree

DNA Explained have checked over the T&C and seem to approve summing it up as:

At this point, I don’t see any reason to NOT participate – and the lure of finding individuals that have already Y and mtDNA tested on a specific line is very exciting.

I hear it now, brick walls are gonna fall!!!

https://dna-explained.com/2016/07/01...with-geni-com/

I've transferred mine and it isn't very exciting yet, just one 4th to Remote Cousin who is on here, but it does appear to have a lot of potential which might make the FTDNA/Geni partnership look competitive with Ancestry's.

It also might make the family trees on here a little redundant.

Anyone else try it?

[gatty]

It's useless without the ability to import a gedcom.

[hamad]

having difficulties, i press the application button, click on connect me, i log in to geni, nothing is happening, tried yesterday and today.

[betadams]

Partnership Applications - Geni.com

Is the parent co MyHeritage ?

[Parameswara]

having difficulties, i press the application button, click on connect me, i log in to geni, nothing is happening, tried yesterday and today.

You have to log in to Geni.com before you click on "connect" from FTDNA page.

[KATM]

Maybe not so fast. . .

Read the comment section to Roberta Estes' report "Family Tree DNA Partners with Geni.com," as there seems to have been many people who have had issues with Geni.com in the past. Also, one comment so far addresses the privacy/terms of service topic. One other issue is that Geni.com does not take GEDCOM uploads; apparently you have to add ancestors one at a time.

IMHO, it's best to wait and see with this kind of thing, before jumping in right off the bat.

[Conat]

It's useless without the ability to import a gedcom.

It annoyed me but they say it created a big mess. Luckily, I've spent a few years noodling away on it and made a big push a few months ago to get my family tree in.

Geni.com would argue it usually isn't necessary because if you add a number of generations in you will meet part of the World Family Tree and be able to join with them (you need a paid-for account to do this, but what I did was save these up and use the free 14 trial to link everything up. I've also found that if you join a few projects you'll meet Curators who can help with merges and tidying up trees so I haven't had to actual pay them and probably won't do in the future). In practice, I haven't found this too be a fact although I have had bigger trees merged in which, for example, provide cousins with the other half of their family tree so some of them don't have to do much beyond adding a few extra details to the parts of the tree closest to them (so this certainly works for them). So your best approach is to work up the lines of your ancestors and see if you can hook into another tree, then work back later adding their descendants.

That said, you do get quicker at adding profiles - if you go to the Flash tree view it gives you arrows around the box for each profile so you can easily add parents, siblings and spouses. Using the auto-fill for places, you should be able to get dozens of profiles in over an hour or so.

[MoberlyDrake]

I was trying to find out something about Geni and came across this among other things:

https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.geni.com

I know FTDNA has partnered with My Heritage, who owns Geni, for a few years. Based upon what I've heard about them, I don't think I'd ever want anything to do with them.

[wkauffman]

I have joined Geni for only for the PRO trail period to clear up two specific records for colonial period immigrants which are propagating incorrect relationships. I'm working on getting a curator to permanently split the records based upon yDNA results since 2004 and putting very bold disclaimers in place about not merging to specific records based upon yDNA evidence showing 2 unrelated lineages. I'm also working on getting the two same individuals cleaned up in WikiTree. Not sure how to clear the trash out of myHeritage or Ancestry which contain the same misinformation and I'm not going to pay subscription fees to all of the firms just to clean two records.

Geni is ok. I created a fairly linear ancestral line back to the records I want to apply my haplogroup results to.

For mtDNA Geni appears to be using FTDNA's haplogroup designation and NOT updating it to the current release of Phylotree. There is no mention of how Geni will handle haplogroup assignments coming from different versions of Phylotree.

[Conat]

I have joined Geni for only for the PRO trail period to clear up two specific records for colonial period immigrants which are propagating incorrect relationships. I'm working on getting a curator to permanently split the records based upon yDNA results since 2004 and putting very bold disclaimers in place about not merging to specific records based upon yDNA evidence showing 2 unrelated lineages.

It is an interesting problem - if the paper trail says one thing and the DNA says another. It is probably not too emotive at a distance of a few centuries (although the time it has taken you to fix this might suggest otherwise), but would/should you cut a beloved grandparent loose from your lineage? I suppose you could represent it like an adoption as your beloved grandparent effectively adopted your parent even if he didn't know about it.

Not sure how to clear the trash out of myHeritage or Ancestry which contain the same misinformation and I'm not going to pay subscription fees to all of the firms just to clean two records.

I'm not sure you can. The trees all belong to individuals, so the best you could do is message the managers of the trees and suggest they change it but they could easily ignore it. The good thing is that Geni.com seems to get ranked higher on Google and so changes you make there might eventually propagate and/or head other people off at the pass.

You'll also want to get on WeRelate and make sure the relationship is valid there and if they people aren't in you can add them and make sure your spin is put on the situation.

[Conat]

It is an interesting problem - if the paper trail says one thing and the DNA says another. It is probably not too emotive at a distance of a few centuries (although the time it has taken you to fix this might suggest otherwise), but would/should you cut a beloved grandparent loose from your lineage? I suppose you could represent it like an adoption as your beloved grandparent effectively adopted your parent even if he didn't know about it.

In fact, isn't that your solution? You don't need to split off the old tree - add the genetic father in and set the relationship to the mother as "partner" and then change the relationship of the paper trail parents to "adoptive".

This means the other relationship is acknowledged and it should prevent people coming along later, thinking it is wrong and changing it back. If you get a curator to then set it as a Master Profile (if it isn't already) that might make it less likely someone will tinker with it in the future.

[peterebay]

After 12 hours still "...currently awaiting your test results."

Geni tells me "...linked your account with Family Tree DNA and we are currently awaiting your test results." The account was linked over 12 hours ago and still the same message. Do I ask Geni for help or FTDNA? Thanks and sincerely, Peter

[Conat]

The Legal Genealogist has looked into this but backed quickly out as they couldn't figure out all subscription structure on Geni.com and MyHeritage:

http://www.legalgenealogist.com/2016...whos-on-first/

It is indeed unnecessarily confusing because they've tried to keep the two sites separate but then linked them. I have solved this problem by not paying either site a penny and it is working out OK for me so far.

It's useless without the ability to import a gedcom.

It annoyed me but they say it created a big mess. Luckily, I've spent a few years noodling away on it and made a big push a few months ago to get my family tree in.

Geni.com would argue it usually isn't necessary because if you add a number of generations in you will meet part of the World Family Tree and be able to join with them (you need a paid-for account to do this, but what I did was save these up and use the free 14 trial to link everything up. I've also found that if you join a few projects you'll meet Curators who can help with merges and tidying up trees so I haven't had to actual pay them and probably won't do in the future). In practice, I haven't found this too be a fact although I have had bigger trees merged in which, for example, provide cousins with the other half of their family tree so some of them don't have to do much beyond adding a few extra details to the parts of the tree closest to them (so this certainly works for them). So your best approach is to work up the lines of your ancestors and see if you can hook into another tree, then work back later adding their descendants.

That said, you do get quicker at adding profiles - if you go to the Flash tree view it gives you arrows around the box for each profile so you can easily add parents, siblings and spouses. Using the auto-fill for places, you should be able to get dozens of profiles in over an hour or so.

Of course, after saying all that I forgot to mention that there is another route - they have a Chrome browser extension called SmartCopy which allows you to copy profiles over from a range of sites and trees:

https://www.geni.com/projects/SmartCopy/18783

It only works if you have a Pro subscription but I assume you can use the 14 day free trial.

You can request the activation of the rights to use SmartCopy in this thread:

https://www.geni.com/discussions/147619

[wkauffman]

In fact, isn't that your solution? You don't need to split off the old tree - add the genetic father in and set the relationship to the mother as "partner" and then change the relationship of the paper trail parents to "adoptive".

This means the other relationship is acknowledged and it should prevent people coming along later, thinking it is wrong and changing it back. If you get a curator to then set it as a Master Profile (if it isn't already) that might make it less likely someone will tinker with it in the future.

No this is more complex. With DNA results one must define a clean delineation between the various options. Three different individuals born 1675, 1678, and 1685 were merged into a single family unit and the paper trails were forced to fit this paradigm when the Kauffman/Coffman book was published in 1940 and updated in 2000. Essentially all of the internet sites and Kauffman/Coffman descendants have this error present in their trees. There is not a single Amish/Mennonite source for the Kauffman family in the US. Thanks to the curators at Geni.com there are now 3 individual profiles and some of the existing trees are being cleaned up to reference the appropriate individual based upon current yDNA results. I'm trying to get some of the FTDNA results added to Geni to support the different paternal lines. That is the primary way to clean up the mess and to limit incorrect future merges. This manual excision is the way one needs to handle conflicting DNA evidence.

Note that since this DNA finding occurred in 2005 there have been another 5 Swiss based Kauffman lineages identified via DNA results. All of them are post colonial and low appearance in the US with Anabaptist church affiliations.

[Russ]

Hey, does this mean that other partnerships may open up in the future? Maybe with WikiTree or Familysearch?