I would like a consensus from the majority [closed]

Question

I've been working on the Bruce lines in colonial Virginia. And proposed several merges for https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Bruce-1234

Three of the profiles indicate a birthdate of about 1698/1700. This is likely based on her witnessing land deeds in the early 1720s/1730s.

One profile had a birthdate of 1720 and was completely Unsourced. 

Concerned that a good merge would be rejected based solely on the DOB difference, I changed it to match the others, as Christian married in 1729 and bore her first surviving child a couple years later. 

Someone  unconnected to any of these profiles, or to the project, changed the spurious DOB back to 1720,

My question, when there are multiple profiles with the same data, and good sources and one profile with only a difference , Unsourced, in dates, would you think editing the bad date , to insure a successful merge, to be permissable ? 

We have all, I think , been flabbergasted at needed merges being rejected by someone , who perhaps doesn't read thoroughly the information in the bios, simply because there is a small insignificant variation in data.

Opinions ? 

Thank you for your participation in this discussion.

Answer 1

Well, first off, I think if you have a proposed merge between two people who you think might be the same people, but all the information, such as dates, don't perfectly match, should be an UNMERGED MATCH.  While we are at it, we need a comment box attached to that option to explain why the profiles were not merged.  A REJECTED MATCH should only be for when you are pretty sure they are two different people represented by the profiles.

I also edit the profiles if I have good sources.

Comments

Unmerged matches mean research is needed to prove they're the same. I did the research and documented the lower number profile, with permission from the manager and she recognized that the other profiles were the same.

Too many unmerged matches sit for decades of wikitree time because no one has done the work necessary on them.

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This is a mess. It's not evident that all of these profiles were intended to represent the same person. More research is needed.

And it was a bad idea to try to force the merge by editing  profiles to remove or change content that is inconsistent with your notion that these people are the same person (as in this edit).

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The wife of George Bruce was Margery as evidenced in his will and Her bearing witness to several deeds in Sittingbourne. Her LNAB is uncertain. She was either a Wroe or a Walker who married a Wroe. As with many New Netherlanders people, there is not sufficient documentation to determine which and that's why I have not created a profile for her. This is not an obscure line. Extensive land records for the family exist. And the marriage of Christian to John Young is proven. Their children married into the prominent CATLETT family , and is directly ancestral to President James Madison.

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The PM had agreed to the merges

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/587826/christian-bruce-of-virginia-needs-stuff-done

The sources for Bruce-5830 were already posted on her husband - Yates and Headley.  But they're synthetic.  There's no marriage record as such, the information comes from the father's will, made in 1741.  The will abstract is posted on his profile.  There's nothing to indicate how long the couple might have been married.

But Ancestry have turned the books into databases and made the data fit the fields.

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Somebody else can worry. I've gone off to make cowboy actors  and soldiers.

Making a goodie. Rodeo rider turned actor who was a WW2 and Korean War veteran with a grampa in the Civil War and a ggggrampa in the Revolution.

Answer 2

I quit. I'm not doing this anymore. A deliberately created duplicate of George Bruce has just been made.

I QUIT.