Saturday 23 June 2012

Weekend Website Review & Rating

Well I was gonna wait on this review and see if things would get better for my genealogy friend concerning this website. Todays rating and review is Geni.com

If you are looking to keep your information private on that site, forget it. They have some sort of status for people called curator. A curator can basically do whatever they please on the site including changing dates, names etc of people on your tree without your permission they can also merge profiles in your tree with other profiles without your permission. They can also recreate/restore your entire tree and pictures after you have deleted your tree. Which goes against Geni.com's Terms of Service agreement. Anyone can be a curator. Your neighbour or the strange man down the street can be one and get all of your information. This website is also not registered with TrustE

I do have a friend who has experienced a true horror story concerning this site and I will write about it one of these days soon.

I took a look at this website myself for genealogy purposes. It does have a nice layout, easy on the eyes and easy to navigate. You can also get your own gedcom exported at this website. Unfortunately the fact of the curators on the site going against Terms Of Service and privacy rules, it looks to be a nice site that can draw any genealogist in. I would not trust alot of the stuff that is posted as this site does not have listed census records and such.

I rate this website on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being awesome....a 2!

Sorry folks, when it all comes down to it, you want to work on a trusted website that lists actual facts and good admin to help when needed and not forced. Genealogist do like privacy for the living relatives and this site looks to have a block feature but like I said Curators are above any other user there and can access the private stuff on anyone's tree. Becareful.

3 comments:

  1. Hi,

    I wanted to help dispel some of the misinformation in your blog post concerning Curators. Curators are users just like you. Similar to Wikipedia administrators, Curators are trusted volunteers who are well regarded by the Geni community. They are given extra privileges to help safeguard the data on Geni’s World Family Tree and provide other users with assistance. Each person nominated to be a Curator must be approved by Geni. Only users with a good track record over an extended period of time may be granted these privileges and of course, they can be revoked at anytime if necessary.

    Curators do not have access to private profiles unless they are given permission by someone within that tree. They do not have the ability to restore private profile information as you stated.

    Geni is a collaborative genealogy website. Our goal has always been to create a shared family tree so our users can meet new cousins and discover how they relate to notable figures. In order to help achieve this goal, Curators may edit and merge public profiles connected to the World Family Tree. Again, they do not automatically have access to private profiles or unconnected trees.

    Your profile and those of your close relatives that you manage are private. Profiles within the private part of the tree can only be edited by you and invited close relatives. Your family shares the tree so you can all work together to discover new relatives.

    Geni takes privacy very seriously and our customer service team is always willing to work with anyone who feels their privacy is being violated.

    Amanda
    The Geni Team

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    Replies
    1. my no means was my review here to insult your site, it is just of my opinion and user opinions and I do know how the curator thing works. I also know from people who have attempted to do their tree there just for strangers "curators" to add false dates and change names. I also have a blogger friend who attempted to check out the site just to be suspended the same day for posting how interesting the site was and introducing herself.
      And you might want to look at this link
      http://www.gensoftreviews.com/?p=528#reviews

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