Showing attached to multiple people but are the same person. Might be a bug?

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Don M Thomas said:

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Tom Huber said: FamilySearch personnel (and us users) will need to know which record has this problem. Also, which application -- mobile or PC and if PC, which OS and browser.

Thanks

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Don M Thomas said: Windows 10 - Chrome - PC

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Brian Jensen said: Don,
Thanks for reporting this issue. Can you post details on how you got to this screen? I'd like to duplicate the problem and then pass on the details to the correct team.

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Chas Howell said: Looks like the same url for the 1920USCensus somehow got attached twice on the same day to K84Q-2JR ??? Maybe detaching one of those sources may solve the issue. No idea how the same url was allowed to be attached twice.

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Jeff Wiseman said: Don this is a situation that can occur, usually a race condition between multiple browser windows. In the past it was usually accompanied by a hint that is also the same exact citation (resulting in additional copies of that same citation being attached.)

Yours are in fact the same exact soure citation:
https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MDF1-Z8H

It appears that FS may have improved things regarding the extra hints showing up, but it is still possible to accidentally attach a hint multiple times to the same person. It usually occurs under unusual circumstances, but it can be intentionally reproduced if you know the innards of what is happening.

Just detach one of the source citations from your person record.

Note that if that source then shows up again as a hint for William Albert Roberts (even though it is already attached), then a different bug that was around for quite a while has not been fixed yet so if that occurs, post here and I'll describe how to eliminate it.

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Don M Thomas said: Pull up William Alvin Roberts K84Q-2JR - hit on his sources, and then hit on 1920 Census. Hit on Tools, Review Attachments, and it should pull up the Multiple People pop-up.

Here is a link to William Alvin Roberts K84Q-2JR
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...

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Amy Archibald said: I have had this happen before - under 2 different circumstances.

* The most frequent is when my login times out in the middle of using the SourceLinker. Then I find the record attached twice and I delete one of the attachments and move on.

* The second circumstance I've run into is when I've attached a source to a living person and another person has attached the source to a living person. Then the person dies and we mark each of our records as deceased and then merge the duplicates. The surviving record often will have this problem when each of the sources look like they are attached to the person twice. We have just deleted one of the attachments and move on.

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Tom Huber said: I have verified this issue on my laptop -- Windows 10, using Chrome.

Needs to be addressed by FamilySearch to automatically take care of the second (duplicate) attachment, regardless of how the duplicate attachment was created.

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Tom Huber said: Verified with the information provided - Chrome on Windows 10 laptop

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Jacob Reid said: To fix this issue you just need to detach one of the copies of the source, I went ahead and did that for you. It should be fixed now.

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Paul said: It happens to me occasionally during the source linking process. I'm sure the source still shows as needing to be attached after I click on the Back arrow. If I've been distracted, I think I haven't yet attached the source, so it gets attached again.

From Jacob's comments, this does not seem to be considered as being a bug and, sure enough, the copy can be easily detached. I believe the problem must be intermittent and guess this makes a permanent solution problem more difficult.. As a "user fix" (detaching one copy) is so straightforward, I doubt it will be considered a priority matter.

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David Wynn said: Its still demonstrably very easy to attach a source multiple times to the same person. I'm of the understanding that when this happens, the fix is not just detaching the record once, but to detach all attachments of the record to the person, refresh, then attach the source just once.

How easy is it to attach a source twice? As you go to open up any source that you're ready to attach, open it in a new tab. Now, before attaching, open it in another tab. So, now you have two tabs open, with the source not attached in either one. You're now free to attach on each of the tabs. The system does not check whether the source is already attached as it saves the record. It evidently only checks as it opens the record for review.

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joe martel said: By design a Source can be attached to multiple people. The common scenario is a Source or Memory Source that has multiple people in the image. 

The Sourcelinker model makes this impossible. It's model is one "persona" Source of a record is attached to only only person - so to get around that you have to make a copy of that Source, put it in your Sourcebox and attach that one copy to multiple people. 

Having the same Source attached multiple times to one Person can be caused by the different systems getting out of sync. That is a minor problem and as suggested by Jacob the user can delete one of the duplicate attaches. Every once in a while a cleanup routine can be run by engineering to clear out a dup. The only gotcha there is the tags for one Source attach may be different than the tags for the other attach. Also, the changelog on the Person may have different attribution and Reason for the Detach.

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Paul said: Joe

The problem being reported here is what you mention in your last paragraph. It is the "error message" that READS, "Record is attached to multiple people", whereas the situation does NOT involve multiple people at all - just the one: William Alvin Roberts K84Q-2JR.

Okay, the problem is minor, but the message does not reflect the true situation.

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Jeff Wiseman said: David

I'm not sure, but the bug that kept re-issuing the same hint when two or more copies had already been attached to a source list MAY have finally been fixed. This was the situation that required you to remove ALL copies of a particular citation in order to "reset" the hint system for that particular source. Otherwise, the same hint would keep showing up on the person record and people would just keep attaching it again and again--potentially until the person record had dozens of that same hint all attached to the same person.

Although the example that Don gave was a true duplicate attachment, a hint for that citation was NOT showing in the research helps. Normally when the old bug was active, the presence of the redundant hint would have been a clue that it was already attached multiple times.

Again, it sort of looks like the bug was squashed (Hooray for FS!), so the totally removal of ALL of the redundant citations is likely no longer necessary.

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Jeff Wiseman said: True, but a given source file should NEVER be attached multiple times to the same person's record.

And if it is referenced in more than one place in the person's record, that multiplicity should be handled with tags and not the redundant presence of the same source showing up in multiple places (e.g. couple relationship sources that also show up in the person's source list)

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Don M Thomas said: Just now, found another record where it is attached multiple times to the same person. 1900 Census for William Thomas Gipson. Chrome - Windows - 10, desktop.
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...

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Jeff Wiseman said: Don,

Both of those source attachments were made by the same person on 1 Nov 2016. This was 'way back when we had the bug where a source was being given as a hint even though it had already been attached. I was lured into this scenario several times back then.

Again, since the duplicate hints issue seems to have been corrected, all you need to do is detach one of the redundant sources.

As was mentioned earlier, the only thing that could be adversely affected is if one of the Citations was tagged to a vital and the other had not. If you remove the Citation that had been tagged to the vital, then that tag is lost and a new one would need to be created to the other Citation.

However, although it is quite possible, this is highly unlikely to occur--especially with a census source. This is due to the fact that whenever such a source is initially attached, it is also automatically tagged to almost every other vital in the profile (except of course Residences where you have to manually document the fact that it was taken from a particular census)

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Don M Thomas said: Thanks Jeff.