What does "lock"ing a profile do?

Question

Now that profiles only merge one way (into lowest number), is there a reason to lock a profile?  As far as I can figure out, that's the only thing that locking a profile does (prevents it from being merged away).

Thanks,
Liz

Answer 1

Hi Liz,

Check out http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Locked_WikiTree_IDs

You're right that protecting against http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Multiple_merges_and_redirects was the original primary purpose of locking, and when we later prevented profiles from being merged into higher-numbered IDs that purpose became moot. But the higher-number protection doesn't work if the LNAB is different. For example, unless Smith-1 is locked it could be merged into Van_Der_Smith-1001 or whatever.

Chris

Comments

Plus it puts the big pretty historically significant badge on the profile!

---

There's still plenty of havoc you could create by merging - as you mentioned, you can merge it into a different last name; you could also merge it into someone completely different with the same last name but lower number - if someone merged Bush-7 (George H Bush) into Bush-4 (George W Bush) it would be a nightmare.  Or into Bush-1 (A private profile for "Kate Bush") for that matter.

The higher-number protection is a great feature but there's still plenty of reason for locked profiles.