Question

Why are my ID Numbers not in order?   Example:  There is no Wisking-1 to 5, and there are large gaps after Wisking-7.

Comments

I'd reckon there no definitive answer to this question. To my knowledge its somewhat computer generated and random

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I am interested in the answer to the numbering question. If we need to merge the newer into the older profile it seems to me the assigned numbers should be sequential.

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Thank you.  This does make it very confusing when trying to follow the family.   I guess I must have an OCD as I hate this and wish I could re number them.

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Yes, Kristina Adams!   And not just for merging purposes either.   Since when merging you would be creating a "gap" as it were.

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I don't think this is from merging. Merging is at least supposed to create a redirect on the old in case something links there. The ids listed generate a dead end page.

I wonder if they were a user and his/her family. I have often seen users who were the first to use their surname on Wikitree. If they closed their account their privacy protected profiles would be deleted rather than redirected.

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Which begs the question of who else is studying the name of Wisking?   There are only 37 names in my Study, all from a Gedcom upload in March 2014.  I am going through my paperwork to see if I messed up somewhere.   If I have, and they should all be correctly renumbered, how does one go about that?

Answer 1

When we create a profile on WikiTree, the profile ID is based on the last name at birth and the next available ID number.

So if you are creating a profile for John Smith and the last Smith profile had the ID of Smith-935, then your new profile would be Smith-936.

Now, lots can happen once a profile is created, the LNAB can be changed, it can be merged, merged and merged again. The profile IDs do not go away as far as the database is concerned, but what we see might be very different.

So there is no definitive answer, but most likely, Wisking-1 - Wisking-5 were merged or changed in such a way that they are "broken" and no longer exist. It does happen.

To prevent these types of broken profiles, we all have to be careful about creating and merging profiles and follow the guides so that in a ideal situation, Wisking-1, for example, would never have disappeared as it would have been the earliest profile and any duplicates would be merged and redirected to it.

Comments

And this is what mystifies me.  So far as I know, I am the only person creating/adding Wisking family members.  Therefore, my first or oldest entry should (if done logically) be Wisking-1.   There have been no merges nor any changes of a Wisking from LNAB Wisking to something else.   Only the names that have been added when and as married.   This does not change the LNAB.  So did these unused numbers disappear?  Do I need to go to each profile for the family and look for changes?

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It would be pretty tough to find where Wisking-1 through 5 went to. I can speculate, but it would be idle speculation, unfortunately. Without having someone in a technical role get into the guts of the databases, there's no way to be sure.

But for example, if someone entered their family, and their LNAB was "WISHING", and they accidentally put their entries in as "WISKING" - then they merged these with 5 others out there, the original WISKING-1 through 5 would disappear and would become "WISHING-43, 47, 49, 56 and 62" (again, for example). So all I can guess is that someone merged these entries away at some point in the past. Note that Wisking-6 appears to be the first created and still existing WISKING profile, and it was created on 1 March 2014 (by a member who is no longer on WikiTree, unfortunately). :)

And because it was done with a GEDCOM import and the file no longer exists, there's not an easy way to see what profiles were imported first or last in the change log. Not sure if any of this is any help...

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Hmm... and I see above that a redirect should be in place. I wonder if that redirect existed in the early days of merging... so hard to tell, as the technical teams around here make improvements behind the scenes often enough that I would need a historical reference that I don't have. Oh well - it was worth a shot.

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The only other thought would be that if a Red Privacy profile is created, and then abandoned, then in the system, they eliminate that profile if no one has edit access to it and they can't unlock it due to privacy reasons. Perhaps the person who did the first GEDCOM upload in 2014 created their profile (Wisking-1), added their family (Spouse and children - Wisking-2,3,4, and 5) and then GEDCOM imported the rest... then abandoned ship. The Red Profiles were deleted when the user never came back, and the rest would be history... plausible?

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In theory, sounds good, but since I created the original gedcom that was uploaded in march 2014 and am still the manager of these profiles, this does not fully explain it away.   I am not a Wisking (only by marriage) so was not Wisking-1.  I am going through my original print-outs to see where I went wrong.

I am going to go through the variant/similar names to see if it was merely a spelling mistake.  With only 37 Wisking names in my tree, it is not such an onerous task.   Also, the variants are few and also have limited entries.

At the end of the day, I may be making much ado about nothing and it could be, as has been suggested, computer generated and randomized issuance of numbers.