Did you notice merge and match changes?

Question

Hi WikiTreers,

We just released a round of subtle but significant improvements to facilitate conversations on merging and matching profiles.

An explanation is now required in all cases when creating a Proposed Merge or Unmerged Match, or when rejecting or removing a merge proposal or match. These are posted as profile comments. If there was a previous merge proposal or match, the comment explaining the change is posted as a reply on the previous comment. All these comments are linked from activity feed items for both profiles.

You have control over your involvement in a given merge discussion through the "Email me if someone replies" checkbox.

We've also made some other small changes to make processes smoother. For example, you can now convert an Unmerged Match or Rejected Match to a Proposed Merge without first removing the Unmerged Match or a Rejected Match, i.e. there is one less step in the process.

This required a fair amount of changes, so it's possible there are bugs or unintended consequences. And there is always room for future improvements. So, please post here if you spot problems or have questions or suggestions. (Please post an answer or start a new thread if it's a significant suggestion. Comments at the top here will be hidden after they are read once.)

Thanks!

Chris and the WikiTree Team

Answer 1

THANK YOU for all of this.  I was just wishing again this weekend for the conversion capability when an unmerged match has been verified as good.  The required comments will be so helpful too.

Comments

It has always been my understanding that an unmerged match is almost certainly the same person, but there are details that do not agree. This is perfect so now if the parents conflict we can say which we think is correct and why, for example.

Answer 2

Great news! Thanks to all who made this happen.

Comments

Adding my voice. I am thoroughly thrilled with this much needed improvement. THANK YOU.

Answer 3

These sounds like great improvements. I can't wait to see how they play out.

Answer 4

Thank you  Chris and Team!  I think this will be very helpful and I'm looking forward to this.

Answer 5

I like this, but have two questions.

1) Will the required explanation comments be posted to both profiles, or just to one of them?  (still only being added to just the one profile FYI)

2) Could this required explanation criteria also be applied to the removal of PMs after merges?

Comments

John, I would suggest you start a new thread on that subject to give it the attention it deserves....

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John, why would PMs be removed after merges?  Seems like an arbitrary action.

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That was the reason for the question Danielle. Sometimes, not infrequently, the PM who either completes the merge or the first to visit the profile after a merge will, without any explanation or contact with the other PM(s), remove them.

It'd seem nice if a required explanation comment like what is now required to submit a merge request could also be included for PM removals.

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indeed, I have occasionally seen PMs being removed by another PM for no valid reason, not just after a merge.  That would probably need to be addressed in policy, seems extremely rude to me.

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@Danielle, here is the policy...  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Profile_Manager#Can_you_remove_other_profile_managers.3F

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I usually remove myself after a merge.

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ah, thanks Robin.  There probably should be something more about this issue, as the ones I mention went whole hog and removed people from TL as well.

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If one of the profiles in a merge has PPP status, only the manager of that one will be the manager after the merge. The merged manager does remain on the Trusted List. This can be a good thing when a newbie is creating dozens of duplicates willy-nilly, with no sources, misspelled or all upper or lowercase names and merging into well-researched and fleshed-out profiles.

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Agreed, but that is only the case in a relatively small percentage of merges. Even then an explanatory note would be nice, not all members know about the PPP effect.

The reason I brought this up is about a month ago a merge was completed between a profile I'd created back in 2020 with a duplicate that'd been created by a newer member earlier this year. I had approved the merge request as soon as I saw it, and it was completed by the person who put in the request after the auto approve time had passed.

The other PM immediately removed me as PM and from the trusted list. Not normally a concern as it was an open profile, but then the other PM disconnected the profile from his spouse, and then started disconnecting members of the spouse's family from one another. All of the profiles were very well documented and there was no doubt that they were connected to their proper family members.

I attempted to contact the other PM multiple times to see why she was disconnecting the profiles and see if we could collaborate and figure out the confusion, I got no response. I finally suggested that if she would not communicate I would submit a mentor intervention request about the situation. Three days later she closed her account . . . NOT the outcome I wanted!

I've fixed the disconnected profiles, and re-adopted the profile she had removed me as manager from after it was orphaned when she closed her account, so I guess as far as that goes it all ended well. 

I just wonder if there had been a requirement for an explanation before removing other PMs it might have opened some dialog. Maybe before a conflict started.

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Stephanie, since when?  Haven't seen that effect from merges into PPP, and I am coordinator of projects that have all profiles under PPP (Filles du Roi for one).

John, if you ever see that happen again, alert the crew at the WikiTree info e-mail, that is outright destructive.  Don't wait.

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To everyone on this thread/answer.....remember our our Discussion Rules https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Discussion_Rules#1

As this is important, please, as I stated earlier start a new discussion.

Answer 6

Thank you. 

It appears that "remove" and "reject" a unmerged match both result in the same reject-like comment, which does not seem quite right. I did notice that the comment in the case where I removed the unmerged match only went to one of the two profiles - the one that appeared second (as in an intended target of the merge), but not necessarily so in this case (reference Bouman-507 and Bowman-3575 removed merge).

Answer 7

When a unmerged match is created - not as a result of changing a pending merge to an unmerged match - it seems to me that the unmerged match comment ought to go to both profiles. In many cases it is due to the LNABs being different between the two, and the merge direction is really unknown. As a result, it makes sense to post to both profiles. Example: Van Allen and Van Halen unmerged match

Comments

Hi S.,

The activity feed item on both profiles points to the same conversation. If there were two parallel comments on the two profiles, replies would either have to go to both places or the conversation would be disjointed.

Chris

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When the message is placed on one of the proposed profiles being merged and a reply is made on that profile, does the PM of both profiles get the message or only the PM of the profile where the message is?  

In normal circumstances, only the PM / Trusted List of that profile, as well as the person that started the conversation, ie person that proposed the merge or set it to unmerged status, would receive the message.  Therefore, the person that has the duplicated profile where the message does not exist, may not be receiving messages about the merge status, other than the merge being completed.

Answer 8

This is going to make such a huge difference!! Thanks so much!!

Answer 9

I made a merge a couple days ago and it went thru immediately.  Shocked me.

Answer 10

YEAH!  This will save so much time on merging profiles, so often a merge got proposed and only one profile got the comments, resulting in wrong direction merges often.  Bravo!  

Answer 11

Yes, I did notice these changes, and excellent job by all! Thank you for doing this!

Comments

Thank you, Eric. Nice of you to say.

Answer 12

Chris: Thank you for all of the changes. Your team is constantly trying to improve things. That is one of the reasons that I enjoy WikiTree so much.

Today, I automatically received two emails about a merge. One notified me about the proposed merge itself and one notified me that there had been action in the activity feed.

I do not want to de-activiate the "Email me if someone replies" checkbox. Is there anything else I can do to avoid getting two emails for each proposed merge of a profile that I help to manage?

Anne

Answer 13

. Just did my first merge proposals since these changes and LOVE how the rejected match now navigates to the proposal screen without going through those extra clicks to undo the rejection.  Thank you!!!

Answer 14

Thank you so much Chris and all for this modification to Merging! Very useful and very much appreciated!

Answer 15

Thank you!

Any little thing you can do to reduce the aggravation involved in dealing with the pile of New England GEDcom detritus is much appreciated.

Answer 16

Looks good!  Thanks for all the work!

Answer 17

I think I ran into a bug. There were two profiles, Margaret Davies (the name of her first husband) and Margaret Unknown, married to Herbert Boyer - Boyer-1418. I adopted Margaret Davies and changed the LNAB to Winstanley. I then orphaned the profile. I then went to the orphan Unknown profile, initiated a merge, and merged it to Winstanley (notice that this would make 2 orphan profiles I was merging). At the end of the merge, Margaret Winstanley (Winstanley-484) had a profile manager -- it looks like someone from her trusted list automatically became the manager after I merged the previously orphaned profiles.

Comments

I think a comment was made in Discord about what happened when PMs had accounts closed that profiles would now get a PM from someone on the Trusted List, if any existed.

Answer 18

Bug?: For a Rejected Match (not sure about the others), a comment is not required. You can simply leave the text box blank.

Answer 19

Thanks Chris and team! This is an excellent set of improvements!

A suggestion for future consideration is to look at the facility for rejecting duplicates at the time a profile is being created, by ticking the box beside the profile to be rejected so the two profiles won't be confused in future. It would be great if this could be done as a separate step after the new profile has been created. From my experience working on unmerged matches, it seems that sometimes an inexperienced member ticks the box, thinking that they are actually using the profile that they've ticked the box for (and which they've identified as being the same person as the one they are creating), rather than taking the advice to add the existing profile instead to their family. This can perpetuate a series of duplicates once that duplicate has been created.

Also, when matches are rejected at the time a profile is created, there is no record on the change log of either profile that a rejected match was created, or opportunity to add a comment.

Thanks again for the latest improvements. All these tweaks mean that WikiTree is getting better and better all the time!!

Answer 20

 - hi Chris , et al - - -

 - I have logged a merge for = 12:14: You proposed a merge of Joseph Dooley (bef.1860-aft.1910) and Joseph Dooley (1860-).

 - and  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Dooley-1879 has NO comment , but  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Dooley-1878 does have the comment - - - Comments (new)

 - - thank you - - - john.a