Should children be merged when parents cannot?

Question

When performing merges, you want to start with the earliest born and work through the lineage.   Stated another way, merge the grandparents, then the parents, then the child.

Unfortunately, with the new merging process, the children may be both open profiles, but the parents are not.   So the children could be merged, but the parents cannot be merged.

Should we go ahead and merge the children?

Comments

why can't the parents be merged?

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For example, one of the profiles is Public, not open.

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ah, so its not that they can't be merged, but that they can't be merged by someone not on the Trusted List then.

isn't this still the same merging process we've always had?

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Just a lot more that cannot be merged because if you are not on the trusted list you cannot merge a public profile.

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Dennis, something broke in a recent update.  Even if the manager of the private profile approves the merge, no one else can complete it.  A lot of public/private merges seem to get stuck on this bug these days.

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ok, I was not aware of the bug.

otherwise, if the profile is editable, then it should also be mergable. (too many privacy levels, and I can never remember which ones we can edit and which ones we can't)

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Welllll, it's also not really true that 'no one else can complete it.'  There is always someone with the proper mojo.  I also can't retain where the edit/no edit boundary lies.  I have to open the profile and see if it has an Edit tab.

Answer 1

Absolutely not.  This would result in losing one set of parents.  You would need to do the grandparents-parents-children thing.

Comments

If you proposed a merge for the parents one set would not get lost. Right? So you should propose the merges grandparents, parents, children but once the merges are proposed, do they have to be merged in that order? I agree it’s preferable.

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I think you would still have to *complete* the merges in that order. Because then, once you had done the grandparents, say, there would be no problem in merging the parents, and once you had merged the parents, there would be no problem merging the children.

If you do it in any old order, you're still going to meet 'different fathers' and 'different mothers' along the way.

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I agree with Ros, it is preferable to "You would need to do the grandparents-parents-children thing." but Paula is also correct.

If all the merges are proposed before merging anyone this would work too, but it has a fault.  What happens if someone deletes a proposed merge after the descendants are merged?

Actually nothing all the proposed profiles to be merged are still there, just the documentation of the merge isn't there.  Might be wise to keep a note of all the proposed merges, so you can easily propose a new merge.

I still think that the Arborists or a select group should be empowered to do defaulted merges no matter why that cannot be accomplished and before the long process of Unresponsive Managers occurs.  Lets face it if a Manager hasn't made a contribution in a year or more, they aren't likely to respond now.

Answer 2

In most cases, the parents should be merged before the children.  Sometimes, however the profiles have the wrong parents, which need to be removed.  Don't do that without clear source information!

I agree with many of the comments that those on the "trusted lists" need to do the merging.  If one has uncooperative managers of the public or private parents, then standard wikitree policies may allow one to merge the parents before the children.  Try to communicate the the profile managers and if no proper response, take the appropriate action.

Comments

"In most cases, the parents should be merged before the children."

Exactly, but there are other issues besides clearly erroneous parents.  Sometimes things like birth/death dates/places are way off.  Sometimes this happens because two similarly named people have had their data conflated.

While I would always merge the earliest generation first whenever possible, I wouldn't wait to merge the children when conflicts in parents' records make them not yet ready to merge.  A prominent note can be added to the merged child's biography regarding the issues with the duplicate parents (also linking the "lost" parents' profiles).

Again, starting with the oldest generation is best, but it can't always be done.