Same source attached to two PIDs simultaneously...
Has anyone ever come across this? I've not seen it before today.
I'm currently untangling a very messy knot of a family that has been conflated with at least two (and possibly more) other families across continents. I've just begun the process of detaching wrongly attributed sources and noticed one for the 1871 England Census has been attached to two individuals simultaneously.
To be clear, I don't mean multiple family members to different entries on the one source as per usually occurs, but two individual PIDs have both been attached to the same entry (eg head of household.
It doesn't appear to be a duplicate source. The citations are identical.
Example 1 attached to William Harlow Pearce (1843–1910) - LD52-FKT (correctly attributed)
"England and Wales Census, 1871", database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VF6Y-PDN : 26 June 2022), William H Pearce, 1871.
Example 2 attached to William Henry Pearce (1836–1899) - 274B-HFB (incorrectly attributed, currently untangling this one)
"England and Wales Census, 1871", database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VF6Y-PDN : 26 June 2022), William H Pearce, 1871.
I've crosschecked the 1881 and 1891 records attached to both PIDs and the issue appears there also.
I didn't even know this was possible. My experience is one PID has to be detached before another can be attached. I'm going to go ahead and detach the incorrect attachment but it seems like a glitch, so I thought it was worth flagging...
Answers
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Sources can be linked to 2 different PIDs with the same name if you use your Source Box to do it.
In fact, when you have a source where source linker doesn't recognize all the participants in the document (possibly because they weren't all indexed) and won't let you link to everyone, you HAVE to use your source box to connect it to the rest.
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As Gail says, there is an intentional "loophole" for the one-to-one connection between profiles and index entries, using your Source Box.
There was also until recently another, unintentional method by which (usually clueless) users could attach the same entry to any number of profiles, using the app. I suspect that you're probably dealing with the effects of this. The good news is, this hole has since been plugged; the bad news is, if someone hasn't updated the app, then it's still there -- and of course, getting rid of the bug doesn't do anything to its prior effects.
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