Making Changes: As a member of a tree, you can add and change information, pictures, and documents, and other people in the tree benefit from your work, just as you benefit from the work done by others. My only request is that you do not delete profiles, especially just to make changes, because it loses more than just the information in the profile, it loses links to and from the profile. The person whose profile was deleted might lose the ability to make changes to that profile, and may even lost the ability to see it. Merging redundant profiles and sharing manager responsibilities is the preferred approach. If you are having trouble making a change, please ask for help. There are many options for collaboration.
Timelines: One of the most interesting ways to learn about a person is to view their timeline. That will show important events like birth, marriage, having children, and death, immigration and naturalization, and so on. I like to attach documents to events, birth and marriage records, naturalization files, and gravestones (large, heavy documents).
Documenting Sources: Sources are documents that support facts of birth, marriage, death, etc. In Geni.com, documents differ from photos or other media because only documents can be used as sources. Some people choose to include a photograph of a person's gravestone as a photograph of the person. The result is that the gravestone becomes the person's profile picture, and none of the information on the stone can be used as a source. A gravestone is a document, a large, heavy, durable document with names, dates, and other information on it. A photograph of a document, or a scan of a document, is still a document. Once you have a document associated with a person, you can document what information is based on that document. Many documents can be sources for the same fact, and many documents will disagree on the facts. Many incorrect facts are recorded by people, remembered by family, and etched in stone.
Printing Trees: I also like to print family trees. One is a family tree chart, an option in the Family menu at the top of the screen, which shows the children and ancestors of a couple. But for a wide tree with hundreds of people, there is an option in the lower right of the screen (but only when you are viewing the graphical tree). That tree uses your Preferences, also at the bottom of the screen, and can take its own options. Once printed, you need to crop the pages and attach the pages (I use tape). It's quite tricky, but the result is the favourite of my clients. To Print a Geni Tree:
Collaborating: Maybe the best feature of Geni is that lots of people use it, and it's possible to find what other people have done, in part because Geni is searchable via Google. I've started trees and found hundreds of relatives for people in just a few minutes. In one case, I found 2000 relatives going back 250 years after just a few hours of work.
Lots More: Statistics, Maps, Birthday and anniversary reminders, and Messages, are some things worth exploring.
Too Much Mail? You might like to know how to stop Geni from sending you so much email: In the top right, the menu under your name has an option for Account Settings, in which you can control Notifications. The screen is HUGE, but at the bottom is a checkbox to unsubscribe from all Geni emails, and then you can check the first option on the page to get a weekly summary.
Should You Join Geni Pro? No. But Geni Keeps Suggesting I Join! Wait until you really need it, which is probably never.
gary perlman site:geni.com(No space between site: and geni.com) You can use the same trick on MyHeritage.com and Ancestry.com.
Google also indexes the online help and user forums on Geni, so if you have a question, you can "ask Google" and limit the results to Geni.com:
delete a profile
print pretty family tree
become profile manager