I think the Acadians Project has grown complacent about duplicates. It's understandable; a couple of years ago, we had a dozen profiles for every Acadian pioneer. Once they were cleaned up, it was easy to feel like the bulk of the work was done.
But lately I've been running into a lot of duplicates imported in the last year or so, mostly with non-standard spellings of last names, and little info in the profiles. I think it's time we came up with a plan to tackle these once and for all!
My idea is to use the Familles Acadiennes page as our guide. That page lists the standard spelling of each name that the project has chosen to use for all of the early Acadians, along with the common alternate spellings. Here's my plan:
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Open the surname page for the correct last name, and sort by date of birth.
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Open the surname page for one of the alternate spellings, and sort by date of birth.
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For each profile in the alternate spelling list, check if there's a profile for the same person that's correctly spelled. With both lists sorted by DOB this is fairly easy (with names that aren't super common).
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Merge away. (Remember to lock the correct ID if this hasn't already been done, or if you aren't a WikiTree Leader ask a Leader to do it!)
I've been doing this with the Thériot family, finding a tonne of profiles spelled Terriot. Almost all of them can be merged into Thériot profiles.
Note: It's important to remember that this is only for the early Acadians, ie. up until the early to mid 18th century. These standards should not be applied to, in particular, Cajun profiles! Families often changed the spelling of their names once they moved away from Acadia.
So, who's with me? Should we all pick a surname or two and get started? Good idea? No? Thoughts? :)
