When looking at Proposed Merges, Why cant I (Newbie) find the reason for the merge? ie. name misspelled.

Question

Good Day, Thank you for this wonderful website...

I have been looking at proposed merges awaiting action by any member..

I have several questions..

1. It seems when a merge is proposed, you list why these 2 profiles should be merged i.e.. unknown-2 and burns-4...  

but if I get smith-3 and smyth-7 with no parent.. how do I know what is the correct or preferred spelling of the profile name?  

When the merge is proposed, they list the why for the merge... could this be listed at the top of the merge page, where you select merge smyth-2 into smith-6...

2.  Silly style question .. When you select the proposed merge link, it lists both smith-11 and smith-6 .. sometimes the computer selects merging the lower number into the higher number profile.. any reason for this? its good the system requires you the select the text to reverse the merge.. just wondered why it would suggest the backwards merge in the first place..

3. Silly Style question.. Could the Names to be merged have different Color Highlight if different spellings?  so Smith-9 and Smyth-88 would stand out more... 

Thank you for all your great work.

Answer 1

1. That 'comment' would be a great idea, since it is only shown on one of the 2 profiles.  Keep in mind that the person that is proposing the merge may not know which is correct, other than the fact that there are other factors which make them be duplicate profiles.

2. Merges are done into the lower sequence of the surname, probably for consistency of order and to keep the lower seq which would be older and could have more references to it.  The biographies of 'both' should be merged and included in the merged biography, so that nothing is lost during the merge.  Clean up should be done to remove all of the duplicate sources and text, which is unfortunately not done on many merged profiles.

3. If you are merging profiles with different surnames, it will require you to enter an additional comment at the top of the merge page, with the reason for why the specific surname was selected. Normally there is a 'default comment', but different surnames requires more information to be entered for the merge to be completed.

Comments

Welcome to Wikitree and those are good questions.

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The issue with #1 is that the merge reason is just posted as a regular comment, the system doesn't store information anywhere that the comment is the merge reason.

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Jamie, I understand it is posted as a comment, but it is the only thing that we have that could be considered a 'merge reason'. I am not saying that the 'comment' should be put into the 'reason' for the merge, but if it was available on the 'merge' and 'compare' page, I think it would be helpful and could help when there are surname differences involved. The merge page is slightly different when the surname is different already, so if the 'comment' could be shown, also, it would be helpful and might prevent merges into the incorrect surname.