Change of Last Name looks like a merge, and it was not

Question

As a mentor, I have received a lot of messages about people who are creating duplicates and merging instead of just changing the last name at birth.   I am here to tell you that they are not creating duplicates, it is the way WikiTree records a change of LNAB.   Take a look at this

08:16: You edited the data for Rebecca (Unknown) Hollingsworth (abt.1770-abt.1836). (Merged ---956 into Unknown-529333: adding name per WikiTree Standards)08:16: You edited the data for Rebecca -- (abt.1770-abt.1836). (Merged ---956 into Unknown-529333)08:16: You created Rebecca (Unknown) Hollingsworth (abt.1770-abt.1836).08:15: You added You as manager for profile of Rebecca -- (abt.1770-abt.1836).This was an orphan profile that I adopted and changed the name from "--" to Unknown.   It makes it look like I created a new profile and then did a merge, which, I did not....I just changed the last name.

Comments

That's correct... under the hood, changing the LNAB is exactly the same as a merge of duplicates.

Answer 1

Thanks for pointing that out Robin. I knew this had been an improvement to make it easier to see/find changes about the profile when it was the previous name (an improvement I greatly appreciated), but it didn't occur to me what it would like like on the contributions list for the person correcting the LNAB!