Replacing just the birth (or death) place or just the birth (or death) date in a merge.

LegacyUser

Rachel Esther Allen said: When merging two people, sometimes I wish to keep the more detailed birth-place from one person, while retaining the specific birth date from the second person. (For example, one person may list only an approximate year, but an exact birth place, while the other person lists an exact-to-the-day birth date, but only a general birth place like "United States" or "California.") Currently, the birth date and birth place, or death date and place, are grouped together as one item. Thus, in a merge, I have to pick between Duplicate Person 1's birth date/place and Duplicate Person 2's birth date/place. (The same goes for death dates). If I could keep the death date from Person 1, but the death place from Person 2, all while on the merge page, it would make merging easier. Then, we do not have to write down the correct date/place and go edit the surviving person's information after the merge is completed.

LegacyUser

Paul said: I guess that would mean a little jiggling with the code, but I believe many of us would find that ability handy, too, as this situation is encountered fairly regularly. As you realise, FamilySearch lumps the vitals inputs (respective dates & places for each) together for these purposes, but they frequently have no connection (definitely the same person, but one input totally wrong) - or have the "little/more" detail you describe. I hope your request will be given consideration.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: There must certainly be occasions when this arises, so I can sympathise with the requirement.

On the other hand, given that the merge screens have recently increased in number and that caused enough ructions, I am not sure that there'll be much appetite in the technical teams for this. There are, in essence, two aspects -
1. Designing an interface that allows separation of the sub-values for a single event - while still allowing the event as a whole to be moved over or ignored. I can't bring the possible visual design to mind but I suspect that it will be getting busy - too busy, perhaps.

2. Designing a merge interface that, measured overall, isn't harder work than the current one for people who don't want to separate sub-values. As I said, many users thought the extra steps in the last change were an imposition.

So yes, it's a sensible requirement - but I'm dubious that FS can create a decent design.

(I think that in a case like this I would probably bring up a 2nd tab in my browser for the "other" profile, then, although I still have to do the extra step of the edit after the completion of the merge, I could just copy and paste the values.)