I want to leave a duplicate person as he forms the bridge between his parents and his siblings who are new.

Question

Up-loading "GEDCOM 64338": one person forms a bridge between parts of the new material. The automated process apparently won't let me add a person who is already in WikiTree,

Comments

Thanks for your response, Keith. I know that duplicates are not allowed in the final form: I did not want to make a duplicate, I wanted to keep it to hold the parts together until I could manually merge the duplicates. For a typist, manual entry may be as quick, but for those of us who did not learn typing (or keyboarding) it is MUCH slower particularly if ones fingers won't hit the right key ;-) Every time I come to that stage of adding a GEDCOM, I am confused by the instructions.

Answer 1

Welcome to WikiTree, Gil!  We are so glad for your contributions.  

Merges of duplicates are not optional. They must be completed if two profiles exist for the same person.  Skipping a GedCom match minimizes the production of duplicates and saves work in the long run for everyone.  Anytime you skip a match, you will need to manually connect the new and the previous profiles.  You will also need to edit each and every profile that you import to make them more readable, to clean up personal notes and add or fix sources.  Gedcoms are pretty much the same amount of work as manual entry for new profiles, but it is worth it to grow your twig on the worldwide family tree.

Answer 2

Well, it shouldn't be that difficult to have the duplicate profile skipped and then join the parents and children by hand.  All you'll have to do is note the WikiTree ID of the existing Wikitree profile.  It's not hard to attach to an existing profile by simply using that ID when you click on the "father or mother of" or "child of."  The spot to enter the ID is at the top center of the page and appropriately described.  Unless you're dealing with a protected profile, you shouldn't have any problem.

Comments

Thanks for your response, Dave. This is not the first GEDCOM I have added, so I know the theory that no duplicates are allowed. I was not  trying to create a "permanent" duplicate, just one for the process of joining the GEDCOM people to the tree that is already there. Cheers, Gil