Who controls a tree if you merge one Surname with Another ie two different trees?

+10 votes
494 views
I've gotten a couple of messages about merging a Thomas Taber in my Justin tree with another Thomas Tabor/Taber in someone else's tree.

What does this do to my Justin tree?

Who controls Thomas Taber?
in Genealogy Help by Bill Justin G2G2 (2.4k points)
edited by Abby Glann

4 Answers

+22 votes
 
Best answer

Hi, Bill. You've been here a long time, but this situation makes me want to say "Welcome to WikiTree." I say that because the proposed merges for your Taber ancestors are a great example of how collaborative genealogy can work here. You developed profiles for your Taber line, and other contributors (who probably share this ancestor) created profiles for the same Tabers, plus some earlier ancestors you didn't make profiles for. By merging the duplicates, you will get a large instantaneous addition to your family tree -- and I hope you will work together with the other Taber descendants on adding sources to the profiles, finding more relatives, etc.

And other members can also edit these profiles. I noticed that neither of the Thomas Taber profiles had any sources (harumph!) and that they had different spellings for the last name, so I did a bit of research to find records to see how the name was spelled at birth. I edited the profiles to add the information found (a birth record and a marriage record). Both records spell the name as Taber, which indicates that this should be the LNAB -- and Tabor-536 should be merged into Taber-1042.

by Ellen Smith G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)
selected by James Collins
+17 votes
Both Profile Managers can influence the profile. no one owns it.

Your Thomas  Taber will be connected to a larger family, perhaps the One Tree.

After all we're all related, somehow.
by Tom Bredehoft G2G6 Pilot (208k points)
+17 votes
In the case that the merge is into a protected profile, the management of the new profile is retained by the manager of the protected profile. If neither profile is protected, all managers of both profiles are retained as managers of the new profile.
by Doug Lockwood G2G Astronaut (2.6m points)
This should be the best answer. I work in the aviation industry, and using the CRM (Crew Resource Management, plus Threat and Error Management principles) the "Best answer" delves  into other subjects and really doesn't answer the question.  My 2 cents worth!
+4 votes
Why isnt it up to the two profile managers?  I am seeing non family members, non cousins, go nuts on my family.  Meanwhile anything I say about it is either not answered or dismissed with idiot conclusions. There are now 4 family members  who are sick of this person and some have deleted their accounts and I probably will do so as well because there are other places we can go.Meanwhile, researching a merge and doing it correctly means we are too slow for the impatient outsider. So, my family members are all quitting.     I probably dont do merges correctly. My cousins (fellow profile managers) want to check all the details prior to a merge, as do I.   Is there a tool that shows before and after detail so we can test a merge, or, if we do it wrong, can we stop it before committing?  The last one I did, a useless merge, did not come out right.  I feel like I am being chased off wikitree by a harrasser I am not related to who just will not explain why he is doing this. Im going to stop responding and just print or record the state of the profile and  later on after the proposer has done the merge work it can be fixed correctly when I have time.    My cousins are angry. Nobody has time for this.  I will never again add new data to wikitree because it is a waste of time.
by David Clounch G2G2 (2.3k points)
Managers of profiles have up to 30 days to assess a proposed merge, and accept or reject it.
30 days is considered sufficiently long enough a time to assess the merge as proposed.  The built-in compare function allows one to see a side-by-side view of each profile.

If neither profile's manager does anything within those 30 days, the merge is approved by default, and any signer of the Honor Code can complete it.
If you wish to be in control of how a merge is completed, then you need to asses it within those 30 days, and be clear on why you think it is NOT a duplicated profile if you are rejecting it.

(Please note: managers of profiles do not own them, they are caretakers, and one of the functions is to merge duplicated profiles.)
When you get a proposed merge you can view both profiles side by side to compare the information on both sides and during the merge you can decide which information to select from either profile.

Afterwards I think, the profile managers are from both profiles if there are two. At least I’ve ended up being a joint manager on profiles.

And you can do any further tidying that’s needed.

if the persons being merged have parents or children then they also need to be merged separately.

I’ve gained new relatives by merging.
No need to keep answering an old question from nearly six years ago.
These most recent comments were in response to a new answer that seemed to be more of a question than anything else.
I felt the concerns needed to be addressed.
Hey David, 14th cousin Kevin here, twice removed of coarse. I "shared" your frustration before I watched some tutorials, got some feedback on g2g and looked at the overall picture of Wikitree. Not understanding the merge function, I tried to merge my profile to my GG grandfather thinking that's how I connected to the tree. I was "schooled" on how to. I see your admission that "you probably don't merge correctly". In order to "connect", files must be merged. When I connected, I learned I had multiple GG uncles who had families I never knew of. That was on my Smith aka (Smyth) side. Maternal side is Dalton aka (Daltan) potentially 10's of thousands of cousins- I've spoken to one, a descendant of my GG grandfather's brother. I have seen profiles for other cousins (I don't know) who are also contributing to their tree, my tree the tree. W/o the help of other Tree'ers I would know little more than I did before I started. Some are truly altruistic; others are just adding info (pieces) to the puzzle as it continues to grow. I doubt if anyone is trying to get you to quit Wiki Tree. However, what we do effects untold others IF what we do is incorrect. One thing passed on by my ancestors is, don't take anything too serious, life itself is only temporary!

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