When merging default to merge the newer record into the older record
When merging default to merge the newer record into the older record to preserve the history and provenance of the research and record.
Right now, when merging, the contributor needs to consciously think about which record should be updated and thus be preserved, and which record will be removed. When I do this, I intentionally place the original or older record on the right, and the newer record on the left. However anyone new to the site may not even notice this behavior. And the newer contributors are still learning and more apt to enter well-intentioned mistakes. Help them and us out by defaulting the behavior to preserve the history and the age of the record.
In addition to preserving the age of the record, the history will keep the original contributor's credits, and only adds the changes from the newer record. This only adds to the provenance.
Last, for personal reasons, I'd like to think this will help keep my name affiliated with family members that I have spent hundreds of hours researching, instead of showing up only in the change history with one line related to a merge where my original entry was removed.
Comments
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Agreed.
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There are times when this does not apply. Sometimes you want to keep the better researched and resourced profile, even if created later. Yes I usually keep the older one, I like to preserve the change log and I dislike when a new gedcom created profile is kept. But often many profiles were created in the 2012 year of FamilySearch but later profiles are created and better researched. I think training those who merge is the best answer not creating a default. Sometimes human eyes and brain are better than a computer system standard.
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I cast my vote with @Cindy Hecker. I look at both the create date and the quality of the research and sources attached. Sometimes the older profile has no sources at all because it was created on the older system that did not allow for the attachment of sources.
And, regulars among us know that automating defaults on FamilySearch often does not have a happy result.
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No, please don't try to be smarter than me. The profile on the "surviving" side should always start as the one I started the merge from, without question or doubt or shenanigans. Anything else is a recipe for frustration and errors, because the whole point of merging is that the profiles are for the same person, so they're definitionally highly similar and hard to tell apart.
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There are times, already, when there is a system message that 2 profiles can only be merged in one direction. I've read that message is shown because one already has ordinances. Since I'm not LDS, I can't see that.
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This is an ongoing problem. That includes not moving more complete data.
Whenever I find a merge reported on my watch list, I follow through and undo merge if necessary and reverse the order of merge to recover the good data.
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