Is there no protocol for merges to remove comments, etc. ?

Question

Often it seems that people suggest merges by making posting a comment. The merge is also proposed in the 'normal' manner and potentially goes through... I am assuming that the merge process looks at combining the best of the two records (after all they should not be too far apart, or else they would not require merging).

The main thrust of my question is the following: Is there a protocol

• to wipe clean any requests to merge in comments etc.
• to insert a note (at the top of the biography) that indicates that a merge has taken place?

Just asking. But quite serious.

Evan

Answer 1

Evan, Welcome to G2G.

There is no protocol to wipe clean the public comments suggesting why a merge was needed. It's up to the individuals to remove them. There are two thoughts about this. One is that it's part of the profile history and comments should never be removed. The other is that they're redundant, because the merge is recorded in the changes "tab"

As for the note at the top of the biography, this is not strictly needed, because there is an automatic notice in the changes "tab".

If you haven't already discovered the changes tab on profiles, check a few out. It gives the history of what changes are made to a profile and who made them. The nice thing about this, is that if you change your mind, about a change, you can look back and see what was there before. I sometimes delete things, that I decide later should have been there. I'll just copy and paste from the changes section back into the bio section.

The merging process is completed by individuals, not automatic, so whoever completes the merge decides what is the best information.

Answer 2

I have learned that keeping merge comments helps to establish a time line for the merging process. It also holds clues. It is only at a later stage when most of the merges have been done that I would remove the comments. I used to include information in the bio's many moons ago when I was still new to the whole merging thing, but quickly realized the time consuming nature and the futilily of it when the end result would be a merger over time of many profiles all with differing variations in the LNsAB. I prefer to keep the comments for the tiime being anyway. There aren't that many profiles yet in the project that I'm (research)leader of that have reached the 'finished and done' stage yet - there is an agonizingly huge amount of merging and research that still needs to be done on an ever growing pile of profiles.