Teaching the merging mess makers

LegacyUser

Hancock said: Have a link for when there has been multiple bad merges. Then look into who did the merging, and teach them how to do it correctly so that it does not get worse and perpetuate.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Unfortunately, FamilySearch does not have the resources to "police" the site in this way. It is left to individual users to send a message to the "offender" pointing out their errors and politely asking them to take care when undertaking work on merges in future.

I was hoping the new merge procedure would be a help in reducing the number of careless merges I encounter, but found a particularly "bad" one just after its introduction.

Some users just want to get rid of possible duplicates regardless of the consequences. I often wonder how many individuals of separate identity are disappearing from Family Tree every week. Okay, far less than the amount of valid merges, but still very troubling.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: This problem plagues duplicates as well as hints.

I think, but do not know, that many of the guilty parties are not taking the time to make sure the "possible" duplicate is for the same person as the existing profile. The same is true of hints -- they don't bother to look at the existing record to see that a christening record in England cannot possibly for the person, because that family never living in England.

FamilySearch has gone a long way with the merge process, but those who ignore the purpose of the process are going to continue to do the same thing over and over until someone (another user) contacts them and lets them know what they did incorrectly.