Is this *THE* Oscar Wilde?

Question

While on ranger watch this morning, I spotted a merge of duplicate profiles for Oscar Wilde and what a sorry state that profile is in!  If this is *THE* Oscar Wilde, it should probably be taking into the Notables project, so that it will receive the attention to create a biography befitting his greatness.

Comments

That is his birth date so it must be.

Answer 1

Yes, with only the birth date as data, it IS Oscar Wilde. They are in a proposed merge.  The correct one is PPP and is a lower number.  It is a reasonable profile.

Comments

THANX, Tom.  That merge was proposed after the one that I made a note of this morning.  That's kind of upsetting, though - the ones that were merged this morning should have each been merged into the PPP one.  I see so many multiple merges taking place in the wrong order.  I wish there were some way to help people understand what the order should be and why it matters when they do multiple merges.

---

Probably the main problem is that the 'bot that finds merges doesn't look for the earliest number, just finds two alike and proposes them  Anyone can merge those without knowing there may be more. I know I don't usually check for earlier Nos.

---

Nobody checks for lower numbers before doing a merge.

They even get an email that says in effect "if these two are the same person, go ahead and do the merge".  Doesn't say anything about checking for lower numbers to merge into.

The Pending Merges page just says "You can complete this merge after a final comparison".  Nothing about checking for lower numbers.

Nothing on the comparison page.  Nothing on the completion page.

The Final ID rule may as well not exist, because WikiTree doesn't take it seriously.