What can be done when a record lists a person that never existed?
Can you possibly train your data entry people to NEVER add "unknown" as a spouse entry in a death record? And since you haven't done so in the past, I'm enclosing a screenshot for the death record of my uncle, who died a few days or hours after his birth. AND the "hint" that sent me to the record. I really like this kind of hint, but I want to deal with a real person, not with this sort of nonsense.
Actually, it might be an excellent idea for you to create some kind of entry that I could link the unknown to--and which could then be used by your developers to clean out bad records.
I'm sorry, but I have no idea what else might be done to fix this problem. I mean, when it's a nonexistent spouse of someone who HAS a spouse, or a non-existent sibling of a real person, it's no big problem to do a merge and get rid of the "unknown", or the "?" that way, but there's absolutely NO way to get rid of my baby uncle's non-existent spouse.
More generally, is there some way to flag a record to let the experts at FS know that something is wrong with it? A flag to get your attention, and then a text box that MUST contain an explanation of the problem? Eventually, you might switch to a drop-down menu for the most common problems, and only use the text box when someone chooses "other".
One other thing FYI--a screenshot of what happened when I tried the "feedback" link at the left of the page....
Answers
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None of your images are coming through, but it sounds like you're talking about an indexed record that added a nonsensical "unknown" spouse to an infant.
You don't need to do anything with that "unknown". You can simply ignore it, or if the "unfinished attachments" notice bugs you, you can dismiss it. Or, if you're worried about clueless contributors creating a profile to go with the indexed (non-)person, you could just attach that index entry to the infant, too, and write an explanation/complaint in the Notes/Description field of the resulting source.
Merges only come into the picture if someone has created tree profiles to go with the index. If that is the case, then I think the logical solution is to remove the spousal relationship and then merge the "unknown" into the infant's profile, effectively deleting it.
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And, for what it's worth, this is not a "data entry people" issue. This is most likely a processing algorithm, after volunteer indexing. And, in the vein of nature abhors a vacuum, the algorithm filled the space even when the original record did not record the names of parents.
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