Disturbing merges made by someone new to Wikitree

Question

My genealogy feed has shown some very disturbing merges made by a new member of Wiki tree.

This person, presumably with malice intended, has merged people with 'unadopted profiles' at random.

They appear to have been picked up somehow, and are in the process of being corrected.  The said person's account has been terminated.

What can be done to stop this sort of thing from happening?, very little, I think, with the open nature of Wikitree.  Why anyone would go to the bother of doing it, I'm not sure.

Please be vigilant, I'm not sure how it was picked up in the first place, presumably/ possibly by someone else reporting something unusual in their feed.

Margaret

Answer 1

Bad merges happen all of the time with the lack of restrictions on new mwmbers and the ease of becoming a member, both of which are the very reasons for the success of this site. The best defence for this is to be a vigilant and ACTIVE manager. I check my email first everymorning for any merge requests and then several times during the day.  I also check the pending merges both waiting for action by me and proposed by me right after checking my email. This should stop any bad merges of profiles managed by me.  If you also check the family activity feed at that time you should be able to catch and fix any other bad changes to Open profiles that are managed by you in a reasonable time.

Comments

Dale, These merges were on unadopted profiles, not any which I manage.  I entered a few pertinent surnames for my genealogy feed, and noted a change on a name which might have been relevant to me (turned out to be totally unconnected).

When I clicked on the profile 'Bad Merge' category had been applied.

Further investigation showed what appeared to be a completely random merge, by someone who had merged 337 profiles in a very short pace of time.  This wouldn't show up in anyone's merge requests, as they were unadopted profiles.

So, not only be vigilant with profiles which you manage, keep an eye on some in your feed as well.

Margaret

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I am retired and with a watchlist of over 3000 profiles I do not have time to watch orphant profiles. What you mention is a result of the "point system' that rewards people for doing merges more than adding sources or editing biographys. I try to keep my monthly badges off of my profile because I am not doing this for the credit.

 

The best fix would be to give more points to people who do edits and less for merges.

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Thanks, Margaret and Dale.

This damage was done by a determined vandal. A very disturbed person. Thankfully, there have been only two vandals like this in the history of WikiTree. But they can do a lot of damage.

We now have a special feed to keep an eye on merge activity: http://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:NetworkFeed&merge=1