Untangling records
Last week I decided to start trying to correct a massive tangle, one of the biggest I ever saw. I created several new identities and started moving sources and relationships to these new identities. Of course this is a lot of work and of course it was not finished. But then I see today that someone else merged all of these new identities back into the tangled identities. I don't have any reason to think this was malicious. I made some bad merges in the past and I still make mistakes.
Maybe this is more of a rant than I question. I'm just feeling a bit discouraged at the moment. But I would also be happy to hear tips about fixing tangles.
Answers
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This is a great question, though, because it is a common situation. I do volunteer lineage research for a lineage society, and one woman I serviced was convinced her line when through a certain person born in the 1830s. I found no evidence separating her 1830s ancestor from 2 others with the same exact name who were cousins. I decided to set aside the assumption that he was her ancestor and started re-proving the line from the 20th century. I found in the 1900 census where a "wrong turn" had been made with her lineage that led into the big mix up with these 1830s cousins and then their 1870-80s children. The children of these cousins also shared the same first names. After I got her lineage corrected, I went back to FamilySearch to try and untangle the mess, but found it so deeply messed up for 2 generations that I just gave up. The woman is now a member of the lineage society but has a lineage that contradicts FamilySearch. I, too, felt discouraged leaving FamilySearch a mess, and abandoning the mess really isn't a good tip. [sheepish grin]
In my own lineage I also have 3 cousins with the same problem, and one cousin with the CORRECT sources is currently attached to the wrong parents. The other 2 cousins don't exist in the proper locations either, but are also a hodge podge of conflicting sources. Because I have not yet sorted them out, I have made no corrections in FamilySearch. I am slowly wading through the tangle in my Ancestry tree, and when I get them fixed there, I will update FS. I have firm proof of 3 deaths and 3 wives, and am having to work backwards.
Why don't you try using a separate platform (such as Ancestry) to work out the details, and then you can update FamilySearch again with the proper sources and add alerts to not merge. That's what I plan to do.
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@JonNJ - Hi, these can be really tricky situations. As you have experienced, others will reverse your actions if you can't complete everything at the same or near same time. I agree with @Gail Swihart Watson that it might be better to use a separate platform to get everything worked out. When doing so, I think it is important to clean up all the lines, not just your own. If you leave hanging lines, you are just inviting others to come back and fix it like it was. There are several programs which will interface directly with Family Search. Some of these have free versions as well as paid versions. Here is a link from Family Search to a list of programs that can both read information from Family Search and update information into Family Search.
Good luck in getting things worked out.
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If the merge tangle is due to bad hints (or what we faithfully believe are bad hints), then it is important to persuade the system immediately that the two (or more) profiles are "Not A Match".
To do this, create the new profile (I'll call it ABCD-XYZ) and do a "Merge By Id" from the old tangled profile, citing ABCD-XYZ as the Possible Duplicate ID. You will get Step 1 of the Merge process - at the top or bottom, select "Not A Match" and follow that through with some explanation (not sure how visible that becomes afterwards).
This should stop the system from hinting that ABCD-XYZ is a duplicate of the tangled profile and, if someone works really hard and sets up a manual "Merge By Id", then as I understand and remember it, a message will come up saying that they are not the same person. If they still merge them, then you can suspect either maliciousness or stupidity. (Though I'm never clear how it looks from an interfacing PC program outside FS).
Do this as soon as you can - don't wait to see if merge hints come up.
So - to stop further merge hints, you have to, counter-intuitively, start the merge process.
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What I have been doing is adding a note then checking the alert box. It then shows up at the top on red. Example. Do not merge this john doe with John doe2. Then give an explanation.
I also agree you need to fix and add sources to all the extraneous people. Then make sure you are following the people to get alerts when there are changes.
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