GEDCOMpare suggested matches can now be refreshed, and no active reports will be deleted

+28 votes
202 views

Hi WikiTreers,

Today we implemented two improvements for GEDCOMpare.

Originally, our plan for GEDCOMpare "2.0" was to delete files and reports after 30 days. (Under the old system, GEDCOMs were deleted after a month if they weren't imported, but saved permanently if they were imported. Under the new system, no GEDCOMs are "imported," they are used as data for creating and editing individual profiles.)

The rationale for deleting files isn't just about saving space. It's that the suggested matches are made when the file is uploaded. If you go back to those suggested matches a month later, there may have been a lot of changes on WikiTree. Profiles may have been merged, new profiles created, etc.

As of today, you can refresh suggested matches at any time. Look for the link at the bottom of a GEDCOMpare report.

Files will not be deleted after 30 days. They will be deleted after 60 days, but only if the matches have not been refreshed in 60 days and you have not confirmed or rejected a match in 60 days. Any activity on the file resets the clock.

The date the GEDCOM will be deleted appears at the bottom of the report page.

Onward and upward,

Chris

in The Tree House by Chris Whitten G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

2 Answers

+5 votes
Awesome :)
by Charlotte Shockey G2G6 Pilot (977k points)
+6 votes
I'm glad to see that this new feature is in place.

And, seeing that I seem to be all too eager to test things, I refreshed my current Gedcompare to see what would happen. I got about 70 new suggested matches! Only a couple of the new suggestions were new WikiTree profiles -- new unsourced profiles for people with vaguely similar names to someone in my Gedcompare file. The vast majority of the new suggestions were additional suggested matches (up to four per person, I think) for people for whom I had previously reviewed (accepted or rejected) five suggested matches. I think all of these new suggestions were matches to profiles that existed 3 weeks ago when I uploaded the Gedcom. So I wasn't updating the Gedcom to incorporate changes on WikiTree so much as I was digging deeper into the search results list for people with common surnames (or surnames that look somewhat similar to common surnames). That was an annoyance I didn't bargain for when I started the "refresh" process.

One peculiar thing that happened when I refreshed is that I got some suggested matches for a couple of profiles that I had created from this Gedcom. This happened because I had changed the LNAB after I created the new profile (because I remembered or discovered minor spelling differences between the name on the person's birth record and the name I had in the Gedcom). Because the profile now has a different ID number, the Gedcom now shows matches to two profile numbers that resolve to the same profile. There are a couple of other profiles that I  merged recently (after uploading the Gedcom) after proposing a merge 30 days earlier; in these cases, the Gedcompare also now shows a person matching two different profile IDs that both direct to the same destination profile. Would it be possible to revise the refresh process so that it finds the current destination for an ID that is already identified as a match (and doesn't mark it as a new suggested match)?
by Ellen Smith G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)
Thanks, Ellen. You are such a valuable asset to WikiTree.

I don't think it would be worth updating the IDs in the GEDCOMpare database when profiles are merged on WikiTree, unless it becomes really common for people to keep one GEDCOM active for a long time. We have to update a lot when merges are done. Every little link in the chain is something else that can break. I think that updating the GEDCOMpare table would be an especially fragile link.
Makes sense. Thanks for considering this, Chris.

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