Not a duplicate details

LegacyUser

David Epperson Marshall said: When merging on occasion it may say another person has marked these people as not a match. Is it possible to include a reason listing the reason if given on why the other person thought they weren't a match and who did it? Much like any change on a person is tracked by user id, this will allow you to get further details if needed.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: It is up to the person who declared the two profiles were not a match. The option is there when I declare two profiles to be not a match and I always indicate why they are not a match.

Not everyone feels they need to state a reason for their conclusion, not matter what it is or entails. That extends to declaring "Not a match" for both possible duplicates as well as hints.

LegacyUser

David Epperson Marshall said: I know you can say why 2 people aren't a match. What I'm saying is say some person says person A and B aren't a match for some reason. Later I come along and find more evidence/sources saying they are. When I go to merge the persons it currently says something like someone has said these people aren't a match, but that's it, no details or explanations or even who said it wasn't. I want it to say the reason if given or No reason given and the person who marked it not a duplicate.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Okay. Now I understand what you said. I haven’t encountered this situation so I didn’t have that problem.

It is something that needs to be addressed.

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: You're right. All you get at this time is:



If declared not a match through the Possible Duplicates routine, can you click on either name on the above screen, click on Show All under research helps, then Dismissed Hints to see the reason statement if the person put one.



It doesn't show here who made the determination but the new change log filters makes that pretty easy to find:



In fact, since the reason statement shows there, you don't need to go to Research Helps at all, just go directly to the Change Log for either of them.

Now back to your point, I agree it would be very handy to see (photoshopped mock up):



Maybe some day they will be able to include this.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I'm going to add a couple of comments here.

First, if a reason was given, it needs to be displayed with the display name of the person who provided their reasoning.

Second, if no reason was given, the display name of the person who made the declaration needs to be present along with some standard text that says, "No reason given."

In other words, we need to see this on the first page of the new merge interface so we don't have to go looking for it. Did it appear in one, the other, or both change logs? We don't know when we are starting a merge.

It is my opinion that FamilySearch needs to address this now, not "some day". I consider it an incomplete implementation of the new process.

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: "Not a Match" declarations always appear in the change logs of both people. So you can immediately go to either one to check the change log.

Of course this is "an incomplete implementation of the new process." You've said so yourself many times that the entire website is.

I do hope they get the additional information added to that top banner but would view it as a lower priority than the other improvement that Ron Tanner has mentioned several times in his video presentations which is to have distance warnings ("These two individuals have birth places more than ten miles apart") in addition to the current date warnings ("These two individuals have birth dates more than three years apart).

What I really hope, because it would prevent a lot of incorrect merges, are warnings about children such as "These two individuals have children born less than nine months apart" or "These two individuals have children born more than ten miles apart." And to warn against the most incomprehensible incorrect merges of all: "These two individuals have children born the same day and more than five hundred miles apart."

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: '... warnings about children such as "These two individuals have children born less than nine months apart" ...'
Thinking about it, wouldn't the 2nd(?) screen of the merge process now facilitate such checks because all the children are in one "stack", whereas before they weren't... Interesting...

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: The arrangement should make it easier to see, if people look. Maybe the warnings should also have a check box labeled "I have seen this warning and considered it" that has to be checked before the merge can proceed.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: Quite possibly Gordon. Though I would worry that the screen might get too busy. The new Merge screen, eg, seems like every new screen from FS - with all the headings, bolding, white space around each line and each column.... It does feel to me that the information payload on each screen is rapidly diminishing and maybe this leads to the all too frequent "It looks terrible" protests. Not from me, not this time.

Though I suspect that the screen could carry more information such as those warnings if the typefaces and layout were simpler. Easy to put forward a suspicion, of course!