Where are these suggestions appearing?
I have been engaging with a person who is working on the same profiles as me and she has been including these pieces in her Chat messages. She has given me the idea they might be connected to Ancestry, to which I do not have a subscription so cannot confirm.
Regardless, the suggestions seem to be prompting her into remaking errors that I have already corrected / discounted. In this example, I have already adjusted relationships to make clear Martha Ashton and Martha Ibbotson are definitely not the same individual.
Would be grateful if someone could explain what is happening here, as I am definitely not receiving these Possible Duplicate suggestions when working in Family Tree.
And here's a similar one that I am not familiar with: where is she finding these?
I can understand an obvious response would be to "ask her", but our communications have been very difficult, with her accusing me of making merges the change logs bear out have been down to her work!
Answers
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The screenshots look like they may be from the FS App, @Paul W.
I have the App installed on my tablet, just to see what it contains, but I don't use it regularly.
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Thank you for your suggestion. If that's true, there certainly appears to be a different algorithm being used, compared to the PC version. The latter has certainly seen the presentation of hints / suggestions tightened up in recent years, but if lots of users are now using the app (and take these suggestions as reliable, as we know many do) I fear for the mess I'm / we're going to encounter in future.
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I've suggested a couple of times that the Community add a category for the App. I think that is becoming necessary, as more people do genealogy on their phones.
Maybe someone who uses the App more can be of more assistance. I think @Alan E. Brown has made some useful comments about the App in the past.2 -
Normal Ancestry via a browser doesn't do merge suggestions. There is a newish paid-for add-on which, I think, does checks for duplicates so might come up with something like that but I have no intention of paying up to find out. So I don't think we're looking at Ancestry screens here.
My reason for commenting here is a sinking feeling of recognition. I have just finished unraveling a merge of 2 relatives with the same birth name in FSFT. The two had been merged with the usual cut and paste reason of "X contains little information but..." If you looked at the events on each profile, this was nearly true. If you closed your eyes and squinted. Both had a baptism but the dates were something like 5 years apart. And both had a full set of parents, with totally different names. Little information? Not really. And what there was, was a massive contradiction to a possible merge.
I had dismissed this from my memory - until reading this thread where the second screen shot appears to show a potential merge with 2 totally different sets of parents - just like my problem merge today. I am now fearing that my problem merge was also the result of a stupid suggestion in the FS App. If so, as @Paul W suggests, are we in for more mistakes? Dreadful ones if people are accepting different sets of parents as being no barrier to a merge.
I think we need to be told if there is a different algorithm for merge suggestions in the app - or the same algorithm but different trigger parameters?
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@Adrian Bruce1 I do have the Pro Tools add-on for Ancestry, but it doesn't look anything like those screens
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When I go to Martha Ashton in the app, I do not see that possible duplicate and I do not see it on the web version or under dismissed Research Helps. But that first screen shot is definitely from the app.
I wonder if that other user has the expanded hinting turned on in her account settings?
If so, she needs to turn it off because she is not heeding the warning and if she cannot interpret the Change Log correctly in that she is blaming you, Paul, for merges she made, I would not consider her an experienced researcher.
No, apparently that is not the answer. If I turn this function on, I do not get a possible duplicate in either the app or on the web. All I get in both is:
My only other thought is that she took the screen shot when there was incorrect information on one or both of these Marthas that suggested they were duplicates. Possible Duplicates can come and go in a matter of seconds as information is added to or removed from a profile.
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@Paul W and @Adrian Bruce1 and @Gordon Collett
That screen shot is what is seen in the app after someone has chosen the Merge by ID option. Unlike the website, where possible duplicates are shown in one place in the UI, and the Merge by ID is in an entirely different place, in the app, the Merge by ID option is within the Possible Duplicates feature. That "ID Number” field near the top of the first screen shot only appears when the user chooses Merge by ID; it never appears on the screen for possible duplicates suggested by the app.
So you need have no fear that the app is suggesting dissimilar profiles as possible duplicates. The user chose these two people when they initiated the Merge by ID. I could go to Agatha Christie's profile and begin a Merge by ID with Jane Austen; whether I do that on the app or website, that doesn't mean that FamilySearch thinks they are similar. It's just that within the app, the heading ”Possible Duplicates” might lead people unfamiliar with the app to draw that conclusion, when all it means is that the user is within the Possible Duplicates feature.
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Thank you all for your contributions and particular thanks to @Alan E. Brown for the concise answer to the process which leads to these screens appearing (when using the app).
I was very concerned about the possibility that the suggestions might be appearing on the profile pages. In this instance, I had spent days in separating one George Sanderson from the other, then sorting their respective children in relationships of one individual with Martha Ashton and the other with Martha Ibbotson. Additionally, I had to move around 50 sources across to the new profile I'd created for the individual who married Martha Ibbotson. Imagine my exasperation when I then discovered another user had merged the two George Sandersons - which I had incorrectly believed (from her Chat screenshots) was due to a Possible Duplicate suggestion on a profile page. I then not only had to undo the merge, but detach all the sources that had been incorrectly carried across in the merge process!
Obviously, it is a relief to know the "app algorithm" is not at odds with the one used in the PC version. The latter still makes some strange "possible duplicate" suggestions at times, but has improved beyond recognition from a few years back, when some of the hints / suggestions could be quite bizarre.
Especial thanks also to @Gordon Collett for highlighting the "Expand Record Hints…" function, of which I had been completely unaware.
Oh dear, now for my next actions: (1) to open my latest "Chat" messages from the user concerned, and (2) to check out any changes in my "Following" list: both in a hope of seeing that activity on these profiles has been curtailed, so I won't have to waste several more hours unravelling further incorrect work!
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Good morning @Paul W
If your accidental collaborator is working only from a phone screen, it is very possible she cannot easily see that the changes are of her making rather than yours. I use 2 large monitors to keep track when I am teasing apart incorrect merges. I can't imagine trying to do that on my 10-inch tablet, much less my 3-inch phone screen.
Good luck!
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