Should the merges be rejected or set as unmerged matches [closed]

Question

I guess I have never seen a project take the approach described in the notes on this profile and just wondering if this is a standard process.   Certainly many of the proposed merges were similar except for dates or completeness of the data.  Stone-1182 and Stone-8466 is my example, I would love to hear how other projects are accomplishing this task.

The arborist project needs to understand so as to not step on toes.

Robin Lee

Comments

Sorry, I was logged on as the project instead of myself....

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Ah, I see it was my frustrated Comments that caused the stir. You can probably ignore it. It was explained to me that the profiles are greatly conflated, and so the project is working to disambiguate.

But to your specific queston, ordinarily, I would say that Rejected Match should ONLY be used when the profile DEFINITELY represents a different person. Otherwise, rejecting the match just creates mass confusion.

If there is simple lack of clarity about the match, then it should remain an Unmerged Match, which is a temporary state. Several days to several months is appropriate for Unmerged Match, in most difficult project work.

However, I can see where if a project is concentrating on disambiguation, keeping profiles as rejected which will properly ultimately remain rejected because they are truly different people is a workable strategy. As long as the disambiguation work continues, to make their difference more clear.

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Hi all, Not only am I a PM on William Stone-1182 profile I am his 8th Great Granddaughter;  My Direct line below. 

1. Cheryl is the daughter of [private father] [confident]
2. [Private] is the son of Charles Spencer Stone [confident]
3. Charles is the son of Francis Marion Stone [confident]
4. Francis is the son of Lewis Daniel Stone [confident]
5. Lewis is the son of Francis Epperson Stone [confident]
6. Francis is the son of Dudley Lewis Stone [confident]
7. Dudley is the son of Benjamin Stone [confident]
8. Benjamin is the son of Joshua Stone [confident]
9. Joshua is the son of Joshua Stone [confident]
10. Joshua is the son of William Stone [confident

I have spent years trying to find undisputed proof of his parents and cannot find any.  I have compared so many family trees and found them wanting for solid proof, and many online sites Ancestory.conm and Geni for example have many of the mixed up version.  The Stone Association is one of the few sources that states William's parentage as unknown.

I want accuracy and do not want a pseudo family tree because someone decided that cause they have same first and last name and close in time period they are the same person and merge wrong family lines together. 

I would Love any and all help in finding information leading to William's ancestors  Wish that we had not lost so much valuable information during the war's and some through fire.

Thank You Paula for stepping in and helping to keep this line from getting meshed into a false line and to Lynden who also descends from this line.

Respectfully,

Cheryl Stone Caudill

 

 

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Thank you so much for explaining that so clearly, Cheryl!!

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I'd like to commend you all for the work you are doing on this profile and your dedication to reality. Bravo!  Thank you very much.

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I share Cheryl's relationship to William Stone and her duty as profile manager on this profile.  I have looked too, and come up empty.  I support her statements completely.

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It looks like there are a number of living male Stone descendants of this William Stone. Have any of them taken yDNA tests from Family Tree DNA? There is a Stone surname project on FTDNA that might be able to help you sort out who is/is not related.

Answer 1

This is the message I left on the above named profile: 

"Some merges are being forestalled on the Stone lines until there is a complete review made by the US Southern Colonies Project leaders."

The project needs time to review this and other Stone profiles in the line. The profile in question is hotly contested, because it is often confused with another person, same name, similar circumstance, and other sources are being sought to clarify the issue. Please bear with the project leaders until this is clarified. In the meantime, any merges are being placed as unmerged matches. 

Comments

The problem here is that there are many William Stones in that area around that time. We have been researching trying to separate out the lines rather than make bad merges. There are a lot lf bad internet trees that have already confused this line. We have spent a lot of time on it. You probably recall the work we did with another Stone profile. This is part of that same research effort.

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I have actually read that there were at least 13 different William Stone's during this time period.  Different ages, some close in age, but each an individual.  I have come across many in research and thought at one time that I had the right one to match up, but found out when you did the math dates and researched the parents viable sources nothing added up.

William Stone is my brick wall or should I say stone wall.

Cheryl

Answer 2

The plan was to set these as unmerges matches. I see what you mean. They should not be set as rejected if there is evidence to indicate they may be the same person. That disrupts the matching system that prevents duplicates. Or at least it seems like it would. I will set them back.

Please do not re-propose the merges.  I will be responsible for meeting them and will do that as soon as we get this untangled.

Comments

I am reviewing all of the rejected merges and some are currently not a match.  I will leave notes re: each one.

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So far I don't see any that are even close. Is there one that is of particular concern?

Answer 3

Merges have to be treated with utmost caution because when they're not done right they can't be undone and create messes that take hours and hours to resolve.

A "comedy of tears" scenario is when there are no parents shown for the parents of "George".  The bio may say that extensive research shows no information about parents, but who reads bios?  So someone sees "George" and thinks, "I know about George, his parents are William and Anne.  I would have thought they'd be added.  I'll go ahead an add them."

If they'd checked, there actually is a different George whose parents are William and Anne.  Now with the addition of the parents, we have a William and Anne with two sons named George.  Obvious target for a merge, right!  Merge is proposed, no response, completed in 30 days.   "George"s profile manager is on vacation for 6 weeks and comes back to discover that the two Georges have been merged, and heaven help him if he doesn't have original records offline to help in sorting the two Georges back out..  

I just approved a merge where the person proposing the merge said that "Jane" and "Joan" were obvious duplicates.  Well, they weren't.  I only approved the merge after looking at the profiles and ascertaining that the mother, also named Joan, was known to use the nickname "Jane" -- and that though they had different dates of birth, one profile was sourced by ancestry and the other by Richardson.  Murphy's Law still says that when the merge is done, someone will choose the ancestry date of birth for the data field rather than the Richardson date of birth.

I would tend to use "unmerged match" only if I'm almost but not quite 100% sure they are really the same person.  Otherwise my default is "rejected match."  Because such bad things can happen with bad merges.  And when I've done the research to know that two files really should be merged, a rejected match can be undone in exactly the same number of keystrokes as an unmerged match.

I don't mean to denigrate the excellent work done by arborists.  But from my scanning of lists of names trying to find someone, there are enough totally obvious duplicate profiles with exactly the same data out there to focus on them rather than profiles which are "close."

Comments

You really had to see the list when this first occurred a year ago...the Southern Colonies Project has done a great job over the past year.