What do I do when someone sets a pair as an "unmerged match?"

Question

There are times when I think a pair should be merged and the result cleaned up later.  Apparently others set pairs as unmatched merges.  When should I use "unmerged match" and when should I do the merge and then clean up?

Vic

Answer 1

I use unmerged matches in 2 situations:

1) I'm merging other people's stuff (ie. I'm not that interested/knowledgable in the family) and if I kept merging, I'd be going back in time up the tree forever. So at some point, I just mark the parents as matches instead of merging them.

2) There are two profiles that seem to be the same person but have different parents. So I mark them as matches until I or someone else can investigate which are the correct parents.

Answer 2

There are different situations. If another sets an unmerged match, check for the same birth, death and wedding dates, cheack for parents. If they all match, go ahead and merge them.  Others may not have the same parents, in which more study is needed.  I try to verify as many points as I can before performing a merge.