When creating a new profile, possible existing names appear. I cannot select all that are not a match

Question

I am creating new profile pages. As I complete the new page, possible existing name matches appear for my review and possible merge option. Instruction are to select those that do not match to avoid confusion in future matches. The problem is that as soon as I select the very first name of the  name multiple list, the entire list disappears. Am I doing something wrong or is this a glitch?

Comments

I just experimented

If you click on the "name" or the word "view", it opens a new tab and puts you on that tab so you can look at the profile. And yes it appears as though the list disappeared, but the original screen is still there but it is now in the tab to the left.

Is this what's happening perhaps?

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Also, when it says "select", it means tick the tickbox at the left.

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Happens every time for me also - either a glitch or a design flaw.  When I get a list of several potential matches, I would like to look at each one to see if it is/isn't a match, but  indeed you only get to look at one of those profiles and the list is gone.

Only option seems to be, to abort the profile creation and go hunting for those possible duplicates that were on the list.  The process would be much simpler and possibly fewer duplicate profiles created, if we could open each of those profiles from that list.

Answer 1

When you create a profile and the list comes up, you should pick the one that IS a match. If there is no match, you should proceed to create a new profile.

Answer 2

That's a very good observation. I will pay attention to the next profile page I create and see if this indeed is what is happening. I am usually working with so many open tabs that I may have not noticed that a new tab was opened. Thanks for the insight and suggestion.

Answer 3

I try looking through the whole list of possible matches when they first appear (normally when you enter a birth date)  Look for ones which have a birth place which is compatible with what you know of the family.You might want to check those, but if you don't see anything likely enter the death date.  At least in my experience so far, all or almost all of the possible matches disappear at this point and if there are still a few possibilities, most of them can be eliminated quickly.  Eventually, if you're working back a line, you likely will find a clear match and then you just need to enter the WikiTree ID at the top and you're done.  It's the rare case where you can't tell if you have a match or not and have to try contacting the PM if there is one. In my experience it's less than 1% of the time and if it does happen, it's a sigh that it's time to switch to a new line while you're waiting.