Hi Craig, I am probably the PM on a lot of those Smiths. Separating and sorting Smith families is kind of my thing. Yes, the lists are way too long for a common Smith first name, but I usually try to add one of the less common names in a family first to see if the family is already there. If a family has a John, Mary, Sarah, Joseph and Harold, I look for the Harold first. It isn't foolproof, but it does catch a lot of duplicates before they happen.
But no matter the methods and precautions, there are going to be duplicates. When I create a duplicate in error, I state that I created it in error, sorry, please merge into the earlier profile.
When I run into any duplicates on the WikiTree, I initiate a merge request.