Reason statement bug
So, I was looking in the changelog of a person I just restored, and I saw this:
And here's a bigger picture of the reason statement, so it's easier to read:
As it says, I restored a person today, less than thirty minutes ago (As of writing this).
The problem? I only wrote the last line of the reason statement: "These two people don't have the same name or relations." I have absolutely no idea where the rest of it came from.
What is happening here? Is there an AI that adds to it? Is it being pulled from somewhere else? The years were not vastly different, and there were not two sets of parents attached, so I really doubt that I wrote it and forgot about it.
The PID is here: K42T-P5W
Answers
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It might be worth noting that I'm not using my own computer, I'm at a FamilySearch Center. Could that cause issues?
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I just recreated the situation, and got this nonsense:
@Maile L Any chance this could be sent to the engineers to investigate?
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A couple weird things I noticed:
In both instances, the computer's insert and my reason statement were separated by a comma. I have no idea what what might imply, coding wise, but I thought it may help track the issue down.
I was unable to replicate the issue when attempting it with his son. For some reason, it only worked with the person I first had the issue with.
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So, I think I thought of one possible explanation. If the reason statements are ever stored in a list together, then what should look like this:
["Reason0","Reason1","Reason2"]
Might look more like this:
["Reason0,Reason1","Reason2"]
(With the quotation marks between 0 and 1 missing)
While that would explain both the comma and why it only happened sometimes, it does rely on assumptions on how the system works, so I can't be completely confident that I got that right.
It also doesn't explain how the semi-correct reason statement would have been retrieved again. (I would expect it to retrieve Reason2 instead of Reason1.)
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Wild guess - something's not been cleared out from a transaction made somewhere else entirely, so you get the uncleared message, with yours afterwards.
I wonder if this has something to do with those bits of pro forma reasons that are in a totally different language? We had reports of that some months ago - I got one or two like that the other day but couldn't face reporting it. If the language setting was also left over from the previous transaction, wouldn't that cause those previous issues with the pro forma text?
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I hope that I am asking this in the right place. The process for getting help is very confusing to me; apologies if I am doing this incorrectly.
I unmerged two individuals and gave my reasoning. After the process completed, there is additional wording added before my reasoning which has nothing to do with the people I was working with (and I've never seen these people before - in other words, this is not an artifact from any work that I have done):
"If Elizabeth Jane Bawtree married Enos Redknap as per the note entered by n/bawtree/2749405 where does this Ann Portsmouth come from? According to the tree, an Ann Portsmouth married 'another' Enos Redknap L2RN-J46 (no Source)who appears as a sibling of the Spouse of Elizabeth Jane Bawtree. Either they are the same person Enos Redknap or one of the does not belong in the tree as son of John Redknap and Susanna Coleman. Either way Ann Portsmouth does not 'fit' in the tree as daughter in the Bawtree Family.,"
It is on this page: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/changelog/LT4C-78V
How can this be removed? I see no way to edit my reasoning once the process completed.
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I'm seeing this kind of thing sometimes when performing merges. The first sentence of this was the one I added when I unmerged the profile, but the rest of it definitely seems like it's for completely different people.
Here's another one I just tried -- "Testing something" was my Restore comment, but none of the profiles involved have had anything to do with the name "Sarah Pepper".
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@RTorchia There has been another report of this today: https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/158574/artifact-reasoning-added-during-unmerge-process ; I seem to recall at least one other similar report in the last month or so, but I am unable to locate it.
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Oh, yeah, I see in the edit history now. And a previous restore where I didn't enter a comment had something I didn't write. So the bug must happen when the Restore reason is added, not during the re-merge.
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Oy. I think this is going to need an engineer's or at least admin-type's intercession, and I'm not sure how best to get such a person's attention, because there are no Feedback tabs on person pages and change logs.
Another report of what appears to be the same bug: https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/158575/merge-warnings-include-reasons-for-way-more-people-than-just-the-current-profile#latest.
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I believe this is the third report I have read recently of this type of behaviour. It seems very weird that these unconnected names are appearing in reason statements, so it seems to relate to a bug which, hopefully, one of the moderators will escalate.
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@Maile L Can you please take a look and escalate as needed? As Paul W says, this is at least the 3rd report I've seen of this extra verbiage finding its way into reason statements.
Thanks.
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Oh no... I found a similar problem not too long ago (https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/158095/were-there-changes-to-the-restore-person-reason-statement-functionality#latest) but I hadn't seen any other reports of the behavior.
Searching from the information here, I was able to find the original message that it stole from here: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/changelog/M3PX-6WL
Curiously, they didn't get your message as part of theirs. It seems to be a one way thing. They wrote their message on the same day you wrote yours, possibly even at the same time. Both of you were restoring a person. A comma that wasn't in their statement separates it from yours, for some reason. This is consistent with what I found while investigating my instance of this.
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I found this a few weeks ago, but I never put it here, so here's the reason statement that mine pulled from: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/changelog/LR3Z-868
It was on the same day, possibly at the same time. We were performing the same action (Person Restored) and they didn't get my statement. (That last bit disproves my theory about how it happened, but as I pointed out then, that theory had major holes anyway.)
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This is good info you're providing, Brayden. Hopefully your observations will help them solve the problem.
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Hi guys. Thanks for the bug report with great examples. I will get this escalated. For your information, I merged three discussions and changed the title.
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I just completed restoring MF9C-SR2 after a wrong merge. I hand typed the reason statement (I did not copy and paste). All that was shown in the reason statement box was what I had typed in. When the reason statement was published, it included reason statements for a completely different person with a completely different style of writing from my own. My reason statement started about 1/2 way through beginning with, "There were two separate Charles Gosneys..."
I am requesting that the first 1/2 of the reason statement be removed. It does not even apply to this individual and the writing is confusing and makes it difficult to see the correct reason statement that would explain why the merge was undone and why they should not be merged in the future.
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I had this happen again yesterday when I was receiving help at the FHC. Both times it has happened to me, I was taking some time forming my reason statement. I mention that because I've noticed the 'save draft' button is very active - without any input from me - whenever I am composing a post (even here) and wonder if that could have something to do with it.
Will someone be able to go in and fix the problematic reason statements after the bug is fixed? (I hope so) If that is possible, the person is MT8Y-4K1, and the incorrect portion precedes the portion that I wrote:
"two different people,This John G Conner was born about 1821 and the man he was merged with was born about 1765 so the birthdates aren't even close and no records for Rev John Conner ever even mention a middle initial of G.,on 2nd look some information does not match,A Thomas Caleb Luker MLQB-ZDX, who appears to have had one daughter with last name Luken, was merged with Caleb Luker KWZ7-RM (without the name Thomas) who had many children, including a daughter with the last name Luker. This mis-spelling of a daughter's name does not justify changing the known name of the father of all the children. The merge that changed his name should be reversed.,"0 -
@Maile L It's gotten worse:
The above example comes from at least two different places
The first comes from K89F-9KZ
The second is explained in the reason statement itself, so I won't bother putting the ID here. Strangely, the second person got the same bug, snatching from the first person, but didn't get whatever vjdavis wrote.
I said earlier that it came from at least two places because there is evidence of a third: the section "on 2nd look some information does not match" is surrounded by two commas with no spacing, indicative of the phantom comma that separates the different people's statements for some reason.
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This is the gift that keeps on giving!
I have just had to restore a person who had been merged with a cousin. In light of this software fault, I started my "Reason" with a line of "-----------" then a note to readers to ignore anything preceding that line. My restore was for G4GJ-2SC. Sure, enough, when I looked at the reason that was stored there, it was preceded by a pile of stuff. Interestingly, it started with "This John G Conner...a middle initial of G." which is what @vjdavis has reported above. The texts diverged after that. In my case there were obviously distinct concatenated partial restore reasons (language detection courtesy of Google Translate):
- John G Conner in English;
- A message in Korean;
- A trenchant comment in English about a user who had done a merge;
- A message in Portuguese;
- A reason in English;
- A message in Spanish;
- A restore of a Swedish individual in English.
Any advance on 7?
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@JulianBrown38, you almost tempt me to go and restore a profile just to see what I get. (Or to add Hungarian to the mix. Or a nice mix of Hunglish/Mangol, just to give Google Translate a proper workout. Except I wouldn't want such, um, atrocities preserved for all time in a change log. But if the engineers need test data, and they promise to make it disappear once they're done, I volunteer. 😁)
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Just noticed that the very first portion "two different people," is a fourth one.
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