Is merging supposed to create duplicate (same URL) sources?
Yesterday another user correctly merged G6LF-BX2 (Janice J Purcell) with GNV8-RP6 (Janice "Jean" Purcell). The latter is the resulting profile.
Before merging, both profiles had an attached 1940 census - URL https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VBQX-J4D
After merging the two, the resulting profile ( GNV8-RP6 ) has two attachments of the 1940 census 'J4D (as of 14:35 UTC on 9 Oct 2024)
One attachment has the full citation:
"United States Census, 1940", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VBQX-J4C : Thu Mar 07 22:51:40 UTC 2024), Entry for William Purcell and Pauline Purcell, 1940.
The other has the full citation:
"United States Census, 1940", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VBQX-J4C : Thu Mar 07 22:51:40 UTC 2024), Entry for William Purcell and Pauline Purcell, 1940.
Q1 They look identical citations to me, so why has the merge resulted in duplicate citations (with duplicate URLs, I emphasise)?
Q2 Come to that, how did the same 1940 persona end up attached to two profiles in the first place? (In case it matters, I think the 1940 persona was attached to G6LF-BX2 before the profile was declared as deceased since I had no proof about whether she was deceased or not)
This is not the first instance of duplicate (at the URL level) citations I have seen recently in this family - however, I can't remember whether some of the attachments might have originally been to living, private profiles. (I don't know if that matters but just in case…)
Answers
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Before I got that far, your Q2 was my immediate thought. Any chance one of those profiles was created by a treehelper, treebuilding, or census project? I've seen the same URL/source attached to multiple profiles when one of those projects is involved.
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So far as I could tell (because I had the same thought and did check!) the profiles were all created by normal human beings, not any of those projects.
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I've come across this several times now, where I've had a 'living' profile for someone with a source attached and then come across a 'deceased' profile, with either proof of death, or enough information to allow me to confirm they really are deceased, and with the same source attached. As you have found, after merging they now had a duplicate source.
It took me a while to work out the way to avoid this is to not move the duplicate source from the left side of the source linker to the right, or if it has moved automatically, return it to the left side.
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