Best course of action for a mistaken ID
Ref ID MB3W-219 for a Christian Friedrich Bartling. Although originated as a son of Carl Friedrich Bartling and Anna Marie Schwenker, born June 23, 1831, the ID was hijacked in February 2024 by a contributor who changed the birthdate to July 25, 1821 and then linked the ID with a wife and child. Is the best course of action to unlink the new identity from the parents and then create a new CF Bartling born in 1831 or to back out the incorrect change?
Answers
-
Turns out there was another ID for this individual, LHL1-DWD that did not have a birth date, but was associated with the correct spouse and their children. So that ID has now been linked to his parents and the person born in 1821 will be unlinked.
0 -
Almost always best to revert a profile to its original identity then create a new profile for the person the highjacking produced and put the information added by the highjacker on the new profile.
2 -
@Gordon Collett - me being me, if I followed your advice about reverting a profile to its original identity, I'd also put a note (or discussion for permanence?) on the Collaborate tab saying that "X was temporarily altered to look like Y. That change has now been reverted and Y is now on profile AAAA-BBB"
Personal view: Having said that, I get the distinct impression from whenever I've put explanatory comments on profiles in the past that there is almost never any reaction because the hijacker, the mistaken merger, the attacher of names-the-same sources, has moved on and doesn't care about the profiles they've left in such a state. Hence, I admit that I care less and less about helping such people by adding such notes.
(For clarity - mistakes are fine, I've made enough to hang my own head in shame about some. It's unprofessional failures to consider basic rules of process and evidence that I have a problem with)
3 -
A follow up to your perspective. It turns out that in this case, there was a source attached to the hijacked ID that correctly identified the parents of the person that the hijacker was adding. I created a new ID with the contributors information and attached it to the correct parents and then merged the hijacked ID into the one that I had found that was the same individual as the hijacked ID. The hijacker had completely ignored available information that would have helped them make the correct association. I get really frustrated with how much this happens in the shared tree - people are quick to merge individuals with the same names without making sure the information is available to justify the merge. Incorrect merges seem to create the biggest messes.
1
