Are you creating Data Error 811: Uncleaned profile after merge?

Question

As part of Spring Clean-a-thon I see a lot of people completing merges to get rid of an error.  Did you realize that if you do not clean up the profile after the merge, you just created a new 811 error.   Net gain of "0".

Comments

and making this Team 811 member want to cry

---

I cleaned all the ones I found to try to help, Debi.....

---

Thanks Robin. We'll keep plugging.

---

Good question Robin! Just yesterday, I received a notice that a merge I'd proposed had been done by someone about 4 hours before. I went to the profile and sure enough, no cleanup had been done. It was simple to do. I believe that people who perform the merge, believe that is all they need to do, that the one who proposed the merge is the one to do the cleanup. Do we need a "YES YOU, IT MEANS YOU" on the warning message you get when you do a merge? lol  At least I get notified right? Carry on we must!

Answer 1

Yes, I always look after making a merge to see if it has been cleaned.  I know that there are still probably some on my error list which others have made the merge and didn't clean afterwards. 

One also has to be careful when more than two profiles have been merged to check if prior merges have been cleaned up.  The 811 error on the error report sheet usually says the number of duplicates: 2, 3, 4, etc. that need to be cleaned up.

Comments

David, I'll confess to having looked at more than one this weekend and closed the profile, not even starting. I know they'll have to be done and will try harder ones occasionally but not this weekend. Those take a fresh mind and time to study the nuances.

---

I studied Nuance 101.  The subtle differences were killer ! ;-)

Answer 2

Even if I get an email that someone else has completed one of the merges I initiated, I always check to see if they merged the biography/sources. Sadly, about 50% of the time they did not even though the computer gives a big message in red at the top of the page after a merge asking them to do so.

Comments

Same here. And the 811 team deserve a big shout-out. LOTS of profiles have been through five or six merges without ever being cleaned.

Answer 3

In the past I did a cleanup on a few 15x merges. It takes over an hour to do that unless you delete everything.

I will try to make some tool to automatically merge them. I am putting it on my todo list. My idea

== Biography ==
Text1a
== Sources ==
<references/>
Source1a
Source2a
----
== Biography ==
Text1b
== Sources ==
<references/>
*Source1b
*Source2b

This is most common appearance of 811 error. I would reformat this so it would be easyer to cleanup

== Biography ==
=== Bio A ===
Text1a
=== Bio B ===
Text1b
== Sources ==
<references/>
*Source1a
*Source2a
*Source1b
*Source2b

 

I would compare sources between themselves and automatically remove duplicated ones. Also I would sort them to put same sources together.This would be then easyer to correct and delete bad bios and leave the best one. I could also automatically remove some GEDCOM junk, that shouldn't be in the Bio.

Comments

From my experience clearing a lot of multiple merge profiles, I like to see the linkage of Bios with Sources as part of the cleanup process.  For example, sometimes the sources are only listed at end of the Bio, with no in-line citations, so keeping Sources with Bio helps me figure out what is sourced.  Also, often sources are Ancestry type with lots of duplicates of the same original source that need to be changed into one citation; I find this is easier when they are near their bio. Usually the redistribution into a single source set is the *last* step I take in the cleanup.

Presumably this tool would be available as an option to cleaners, but not automatically applied.

I suspect this would be most useful for small merges, which may be the bulk of the 811 errors now.  Perhaps it could even be a default option when you do a merge?

---

I have to agree with Paul, especially those with Ancestry citations. As much as I love your automagic tools, Aleš, I'm very hesitant about applying them to merges.

---

Merging is done on Wikitree, so I can't change anything there. Also this logic would work only on simple profiles. As soon as there are more sections, it might do more damage than good. I will play with this in following weeks.