Arborist help on a recalcitrant merge?

Question

I've been trying to merge some profiles: Pike-799 and Pike-1366. I've communicated with the profile manager a few times, and left a detailed message on the Pike-799 profile, but to no avail. The profiles have the same name, birthdate, parents and wife, but the manager says there's no evidence that they are the same person. Where do I go from here?

Comments

Brad, this is what is suggested to do: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Merging#Profile_Managers_who_refuse_to_merge

Answer 1

If you feel you have tried everything to communicate with this profile manager and still have not succeeded, you have an option. Under the Help menu at the top of each page there is a heading "Problems w/ Members." Click on that link and follow the directions to report a problem to those who can help you.

Answer 2

I took a look at the two profiles and I cannot see any reason what so ever to not proceed with a merge. Clearly the profiles represent the same person. Ask for an aborist to look at it or go throught the problem with members.

Answer 3

I have removed the rejected merge and proposed a new merge of these profiles. Your posting on  www.wikitree.com/wiki/Pike-799 is totally correct. It is worthy of note that the father, Robert Pike have the same profile & are subject to proposed merge.

One problem to be overcome is one profile is privacy protected (green).

Please draw the attention of the reluctant profile manager to this G2G posting. That may initiate collaboration!

Comments

The privacy protected profile is a bit of a problem, especially because the manager seems to have been inactive for over a year. In these cases I usually just wait-out the 30 days, and proceed with the merge.

Answer 4

In this case the duplicate fathers need to be merged first (if the elder generations are duplicated as well these need to be merged before the younger one, otherwise one of the duplicate fathers will be lost and perhaps become a 'floater'), so because of this I have set them as unmerged match for now, after the duplicate fathers are merged, the duplicate Williams can be merged. And yes as Ruben says, in the meanwhile these steps  can be taken 

Comments

As an Arborist this is news to me!

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Working a lot for the NNS and other projects where there were a whole lot of duplicated families imported in the past, we learned that this is the best way to prevent problems and bad merges, starting from the top down will prevent floaters - duplicate ancestors get lost - disconnected from all the descendants.

I have merged the duplicate fathers now, this hopefully also shows more clearly to the manager, they really are duplicates and need to be merged , now it's much more obvious there now are two duplicate WiIliam Henry's and a second brother named only Henry.. Hope it helps.. Will look if there are perhaps more duplicates..one never knows eeh..

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As you know, I removed your postponed merge  as I do not agree that an elder generation should be merged first & then further re proposed it with a comment, before your last answer.

I have to say that I trust members continue to submit there duplicated profiles, wherever they arise!

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I noticed ;) It's how I was taught it should be done, so I don't know a different way and I think it's also standard procedure, because if for example both managers had approved for this merge and you would try to merge the sons first, you would see a warning like, ''the duplicate fathers need to be compared and or merged before you can proceed with this merge'', or something, so it's not really something new I think ?

But well I trust this one will be solved, if in 30 days no one responds or tried to merge them (if you try in between to merge them it starts counting all over and you will have to wait 30 more days again) .

Now it shows more clear who are the duplicates and why,  I of course hope the manager will agree and just approve of the merge now as well,  to have this family corrected and without duplicates again. :)

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My understanding of merges is the same as Bea, start at the top to prevent unconnected profiles.

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I can see why that's a really good general rule, in order to avoid detached profiles, once the parents of a merged profile have been edited. Although, if the older generations are in proposed merges, they're not going to fall through the cracks. They'll still get dealt with (unless someone removes the merge request).

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You're right about if the merges are all proposed or set as unmerged matches they probably won't fall trough the cracks, but indeed if for whatever reason, someone that doesn't understand why profiles are set as unmerged match, or why a merge was proposed, decides to just reject or remove all connections between the elder generations or just a few of them, it will or could be...

In this case the merge was proposed for the father, and only the father was duplicated so it wasn't a major issue, but still, even if the merge for the younger ones was approved, there automatically would pop up a warning if you would try to merge them, that would say the duplicate fathers need to be compared and or merged before you can proceed and merge the sons.

Well hope it all wil be solved soon now, good luck and thanks !

Answer 5

You can't trust the data on unsourced profiles.

I think Cynthia is saying she's got the full set of William's kids, and there's no evidence that Elizabeth is one of them.

Which could mean that Elizabeth's father's profile is supposed to be somebody else, but the wrong details have been put on it.

But in this case it looks like all is well, because Elizabeth looks like the same person as Mary Elizabeth.  Same DoB and same husband (named in bio).

Comments

Great point. The profile manager of Elizabeth has been completely unresponsive, and the profiles aren't open, so I haven't yet tried to resolve whether Elizabeth and Mary Elizabeth are the same person. I'll do that next.

ed: since both Mary Elizabeth and Elizabeth have the same birthday, and both were married to a Patrick O'Neil: yes, they seem to be the same person.

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Hi Brad, the profile manager contacted me yesterday, I think it's just not so clear to her what a merge exactly is and what's happening during or after a merge, so I tried to explain it a bit more to her and think and hope she probably will be fine now with the merge.

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Ah good! I wasn't sure exactly how to handle her, because she is clearly approaching her profiles with good intentions, but seemed inexplicably hostile to the idea of a (to me) transparently sensible merge. I've tried to add sources and document my suggestions, but she wasn't buying it. G2G was kind of my last resort, after a couple of months.

THANKS guys!

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She really has the best intentions and already approved of the merge, but now someone from the trusted list or the manager of the other (green privacy level) profile has to approve.

Good luck and thank you for asking for some help, sometimes a merge, if you're not so familiar with how everything works around here or have never proposed or performed one, can be a pretty scary thing, so sometimes all we need to do is explain things a bit more.

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I've contacted the other profile manager, both by public and personal message. She hasn't been active on WikiTree for well over a year, so if she doesn't get back to me I'll file an "unresponsive profile manager" request.

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That's ok Brad and the only thing we can do, I have requested to be added to the trusted list as well, so I hope she's ok and able to or have some time to respond. I'll let you know if she responded of course :)