Not good: New connections can still be created between a merged-away profile and other family members

Question

Earlier this evening, I noticed that Briggs-397, the profile of John Briggs, born 1609, which has no parents, was connected to Jonathan Briggs and his wife Experience (Unknown) Briggs, born 1635 and about 1639. Their  profiles showed the connection to a child named John Briggs with profile ID Briggs-1221, but when I clicked on the link to that "son," the link redirects me to Briggs-397.

What seems to have happened:

1. The edit history of Briggs-1221 shows that it was merged into Briggs-397 back in 2013. (That same merge is also in the history of Briggs-397.)
2. That edit history for Briggs-1221 also shows that I edited it yesterday to add Jonathan and Experience as parents. As near as I can determine, that happened when I was adding children for Experience Briggs (because the mother had been removed from those children a few days ago). Apparently Briggs-1221 was originally created to be their son John (it was part of the sequence of numbers for this family), and I mistakenly entered that number in place of one of the profile numbers I was trying to add, with the result that my typo connected the merged-away profile to this family.

I couldn't edit Briggs-1221, but I fixed the situation by removing the child connection from the parents. And now I've come here to say It shouldn't be possible to connect to a merged-away profile.

I suspect this has something to do with the fact that old ID numbers are still valid as redirects. Is there any way to keep the redirect function, while preventing new data connections from being made?

Comments

I forgot to say that the profile for John Briggs showed no parents and no siblings, at the same time that he was listed as a child on the profiles for Jonathan and Experience, and as a sibling on all of their children's profiles.

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I am hoping the formatting is clear enough to use on these - this is the sourcing from American Ancestors.

Marriage 1

John BRIGGS

 

Spouse ____, Sarah CORNELL

Later Residences Warwick, RI, Portsmouth, RI

1642

Newport, Newport, Rhode Island, United States

BRIGGS, John (1609-1690) & 1/wf ____/?Sarah CORNELL?; by 1642; Newport/Warwick, RI/Portsmouth, RI {Austin's Dict. 25; *Briggs (1880) 123, 139; Briggs of NY 7; Crapo 206+, 851; Howland (1919) 30; McIntire Anc. 90; Briggs (1953) 11}

Marriage 2

John BRIGGS

 

Spouse Constant [Mitchell] FOBES

Later Residences Portsmouth, RI

1662

Bridgewater, Plymouth, Massachusetts, United States

BRIGGS, John (-1690) & 2/wf? Constant (MITCHELL) [FOBES]/ [FORBES], w John 1660; 1662; Bridgewater/Portsmouth, RI {Bridgewater 159; Small (ed. 2) 511; Granberry 216; Bartlett-Jenkins 72; Briggs (1953) 12}

Mar

Marriage 3

John BRIGGS Spouse Frances UNIDENTIFIED

1662

Kingstown, Washington, Rhode Island, United States

BRIGGS, John (-1697+, 1708) & Frances ____ (-1697+); ca 1662?; Kingstown, RI {Austin's Dict. 25, 438; Briggs-DeGroff 292}

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - NOTE DIFFERENCE IN YEAR! - - - - - - - -

John BRIGGS

 

Spouse Hannah FISHER

Later Residences Tiverton, RI

1665

Portsmouth, Newport, Rhode Island, United States

BRIGGS, John (1642-1713) & Hannah [FISHER] (-1727+); ca 1664, by 19 Sep 1665; Portsmouth, RI/Tiverton, RI {Austin's Dict. 25, 79, 423; Briggs (1878) 13, 14; Sv. 1:251; Briggs (1880) 108, 125, 126, 140; Briggs of NY 14; Crapo 21; Briggs (1953) 12; Putnam's

Marriage

 - - - - -
Citation Information
Torrey’s New England Marriages Prior to 1700. (Online database. AmericanAncestors.org. New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2008.) Originally published as: New England Marriages Prior to 1700. Boston, Mass.: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2015.

Answer 1

Hi Ellen,

You're right, you shouldn't be able to add a merged-away profile as a family member. Perhaps the reason it's rare (and hadn't been noticed until now) is that you need to be on the Trusted List of a private profile to add them as a family member and merged-away profiles have empty Trusted Lists. But we have the exceptions for Open profiles.

We'll get this fixed.

Thanks,

Chris

Comments

Chris,
Is there a "happy medium" below a PPP and above Trusted list that would trigger 'Stop, Do not go, Do not Collect $200" when you try to add someone with a name that has a profile that is in PPP, a Special Project, or there has been a great deal of work done to untangle/resolve merges?  My apologies for such a horribly written sentence; I hope the concept of what I am asking comes through.  The nutshell is even if people leave data out is there any way to force a review with some extra things to answer to rule in/out a match for an existing profile before a new one is created to cut down on the duplicates.

One thing that might help (if possible) is a check box for Project/PPP Profiles that someone wants to add as a parent something like "Send request to be added to project" and "Send request to add NNN as child of YYY profile".  It isn't intuitive like some of the other things are (I suspect particularly for younger WikiTree'ers" to help facilitate linking correctly and cutting down on duplicates.