How easy would it be to make a change to Research Help
At the moment, when a possible duplicate person appears in Research Help, the person data shows a minimal summary as name and PID. To be able to review that person in detail to verify whether they are the same, the user has to click on the name in Bold to open the side panel which then only shows the same data, name and PID, and the Review Merge button. However! the significant difference is that the name in the side panel is a hyperlink to the person record from which the user can investigate the potential duplicate.
Elsewhere in FS there are examples where the side panel opens a data view of a record showing the content.
How difficult would it be to do either of these:
- change the name presented in Research Help to a hyperlink
- change the side panel view to show the person details
The intention is to make it a lot easier for people to investigate potential duplicates, which will bring the benefit that we will see a (hopefully significant) reduction in the number of incorrect merges.
Answers
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Hi I think we would all appreciate more accurate merges. Your suggestions might make it easier in some cases. I find that when a possible duplicate is identified by family search, the probability of that being an actual duplicate is fairly high, but certainly not 100%. Most of the merges I do are using merge by ID. When entering an ID, you are taken directly to step 1 of 3 of "Are these people a possible match?". This is the same place you end up when selecting review merge from the side panel of possible duplicate. On these pages the two profiles are shown side-by-side. I immediately move to step 2 and then compare the 2 profiles. Many times it is fairly evident that these 2 profiles should be merged. But if more looking is required, I use the hyperlinks for each profile on these pages and open in a new tab. This gives me both profiles on separate tabs to study. Whether looking at the profiles side-by-side, or on individual person pages, the keys are to review the relationships as well as the vital information. It is a real red flag if there are new and/or different relationships on the two profiles. Bottom line, I find it a good process to follow either the possible duplicate or merge by ID to the side-by-side pages. Cases where more looking is needed, I use the hyperlinks on the side-by-side pages. Hope this helps.
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This sounds like a clear, beneficial, and uncontroversial Suggest an Idea candidate, though suggest you keep a copy as the Idea moderation queue currently appears to go back to April (certainly to September).
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Basically, I never embark on the 3-step merge process, without opening the profile of the suggested merger(?). So anything that gets me to that profile quicker in a new browser tab is to be welcomed. (Note - new tab, please, certain sites are liable to use the same tab again, and replace the current record by the new one. Which is hardly helpful)
I guess that the only times I wouldn't want the mergee in a new tab are when I've just created it myself explicitly for later merging (not sure how often I need to do that these days) or when I've already got it open.
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I agree wholeheartedly with this suggestion. That basically-blank sidebar on Possible Duplicates just adds a completely-pointless extra step, but we can't skip it, because the otherwise-identical name-and-ID in the Research Help box isn't right-clickable, for some unfathomable reason.
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I think I can understand the intent of the programmers to make the initial step of clicking anything under Research Help be the same for all types of helps. I can't think of any exceptions to the rule that clicking a research help opens a side panel. That consistency of action does seem like a good design practice. However, I agree that having nothing in the side panel of use and needing to repeat the action just taken for the sake of that consistency is not very helpful.
It does seem that those side panels can be used for all sorts of things, so maybe they just didn't finish the one for merges? Or maybe ran into some technical difficulties in having page 1 of the merge process be the side panel? Or maybe their test groups didn't like how including full information about the duplicate in the side panel looked or found it too clumsy to work with?
To test out to see if putting more information in the side panel would be helpful I found a recent merge I did, reversed all the people involved, then grabbed some screen shots to put this together:
In this case, the possible duplicate didn't have much information because it was based on the child having a duplicate. But many duplicates can have this little of information. Or it could be the other extreme of the duplicate having full vitals, a lot of Other Information, a couple of spouses, a large number of children, and dozens of sources, which would result in needing to scroll the side panel for a couple of miles to see it all. Would that be OK for an initial evaluation? Would that ever be sufficient to click on Not A Match here? Or would it be better to just dispense with consistency and jump directly to Page 1 where all the information is nicely lined up side by side?
(I assume FamilySearch can track all sorts of metrics on the web pages. I wonder how often, if ever, the Not A Match link is clicked in the side panel? I don't think I've ever used it.)
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(I'm not at my PC right now so I'll say in time honoured fashion that I could be wrong in my description of what happens...)
If there is a need for consistency's sake for a straight click to open the side panel, fine, but making the PID right clickable, with the result of opening the profile in a new tab, would surely not break the consistency of the direct click.
As it is, consistency is lacking because I have absolutely no feeling for whether a click on a PID will open the profile in the current tab, in another tab or what. Equally, I have no idea whether the right click is even activated...
It may be that FS is completely consistent and my confusion is all down to other systems being inconsistent, but I'm not convinced.
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"... . I wonder how often, if ever, the Not A Match link is clicked in the side panel? I don't think I've ever used it."
As I said, I "always" go to the full profile of the proposed Match. The only possible exception to that is when I already knew the answer before the Research Help suggested the possible duplicate. That would typically be when I'm reverting a bad merge and have just restored the merge deleted profile and visually confirmed to myself, at some point, that the two profiles are not the same.
In many cases (though not all?) I restore the merge deleted profile because it's not the same person and the system immediately suggests it as a match again. Slightly infuriating to find FS suggesting I reverse my course of action done seconds earlier, but the system can't be expected to read my mind. In that case, I will be able to go to Not A Match immediately in the Side Panel.
That's about the only possibility that I can think of but without stepping through reality, I can't be certain it's the only one.
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A sidebar summary already exists for every profile: it's what results from clicking a name in any chart view.
It would not be perfect for a merge comparison, but neither is the merge comparison page itself. (The one doesn't list family members, the other lists them misleadingly side-by-side but not actually matched up in any way. And, unlike the first merge screen, the sidebar shows the sources/memories/collaborate counts.) Yes, it'd add a bit of scrolling, but putting a version of the Family Members section at the bottom of that sidebar view would enable mostly-complete comparison of two profiles on one tab. It'd certainly be enough to make the Review Merge and Not a Match buttons actually useful, and it'd give a reason for clicking the research help item.
(In the current setup, after I get the suggestions to cough up a right-clickable link and open every profile in its own tab, I end up doing "Merge by ID" to initiate each merge, because that way I have some clue of which one I'm doing next. It also helps keep track of the ones that the hinting system erroneously changes its mind about.)
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