NEW MERGE PROCESS is NOT GOOD

LegacyUser

Bonnie Weech Stanger said: Please restore the PREVIOUS merge feature, to merge from right INTO the record on the LEFT, with the RECORD ON THE RIGHT being deleted; and the RECORD ON THE LEFT remaining the prominent record. Changing the pattern of a merge, which was already well established, is very confusing and will create more problems. Please put it back as it was. It was, previously, well designed and effective. It now lacks quality, and throwing data back an forth is confusing. Don't fix what isn't broken!!

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Welcome back to the community support forum for FamilySearch. FamilySearch personnel read every discussion thread and may or may not respond as their time permits. We all share an active interest in using the resources of this site and as users, we have various levels of knowledge and experience and do our best to help each other with concerns, issues, and/or questions.

The direction of the new merge matches the source linker direction and was intentional. A FamilySearch representative (Ron Tanner, if I remember correctly) talked about the decision to do it this way so that more consistency could be had when working with records (historical or another family) being merged into an existing record.

Because of the similarity of the two means to add material to an existing record that now exists, I believe that most people will adjust quickly to the new layout and eventually come to appreciate the decision that was made.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: This also makes the behavior more consistent with the mobil apps. So moving from a mobil app to a desktop will no longer be different.

LegacyUser

Heather McPhie said: I have to confess that the new merge process has rendered me far LESS cautious in doing merges. I come to the first screen, and I hit the button at the TOP of the screen. I go to the second screen, and I hit the button at the TOP of the screen (and I've now caught on that the process will automatically bring over all relationships and missing data). I go to the third screen and leave a lame-o reason statement. Voila! I've finished a merge without EVER ONCE scrolling down to look at the data.

In the old process, I had no choice but to scroll down to the bottom of the screen to hit the merge button. That was a GOOD THING because in my scrolling, I at least had to subconsciously view the data as it went by. Currently, I'm able to just blindly merge without ever being required to scroll down the page.

The solution?

MOVE THE BUTTONS TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE SO WE ARE FORCED TO SCROLL DOWN PAST ALL THAT LOVELY DATA! Maybe we aren't going to read it, but at least we've been forced to scroll past it.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Yes, and if a person accidentally double or triple clicks on the button, the intermediate pages will be SKIPPED and you will never notice since all 3 pages basically look the same (happened to me already)

LegacyUser

Leroy Roberts said: The new merge process is very confusing. On the first two pages, the surviving person is on the right. Then on the third page, the surviving person is on the left. The previous merge had only one page, now there are three.

On page one, some of the data doesn't line up.

LegacyUser

Peter Williams3 said: I couldn't agree more.

LegacyUser

Lenor Krahn said: I can deal with the merge into the right side, if it were consistent and the third page also showed both sides. Make it consistent.

I can deal with the first page being a summary, if the matching data were lined up for easy viewing. But it does not so spouses and parents and siblings and children are all over the place and I have to scroll around to see if anything actually matches. This impacts usability and clarity. Line up matching data.

I DO like that we now see the siblings. That's good. Haven't run into an incident where they are half-siblings so don't know how that would be displayed. Line up matching data.

I do have a problem in the third page not showing both the records being merged. When giving a good explanation on why I think a merge is correct I have always pulled various matching pieces of data from both records, but now to do so I have to use paper and pencil here at home to note it all down. This will lead me to give a less complete description of why I merged records. Display the proposed merged record and the record being merged.

Having buttons on the TOP of the page, means people will be lazy and not bother to scroll through the data at times. Easier yes, but not safer for the data as those who are less inclined to review data will just click, click, click without even pretending to look at the information. Remove the top buttons.

Overall, the drawbacks make it less effective than the previous version.

LegacyUser

Kellie Sue said: "if the matching data were lined up for easy viewing. But it does not so spouses and parents and siblings and children are all over the place and I have to scroll around to see if anything actually matches. This impacts usability and clarity. Line up matching data."

THIS is what I am struggling with. Some of these families have many children & there is no lining up of same individuals with the same PID. Occasionally everybody lines up on both sides, but that is not usually the case. Unless both sides have the same family members, the parents on one side are not lined up with the parents on the other side & the same is true for spouse & children. This means I must scroll up and down checking names, PIDs & dates, making it much more work & more prone to error.

I know FS thinks everybody will just have to get used to it, but lets face it, if it's not broken it's best to leave things alone, yet, I know FS disagrees. Making it "pretty" with the colors is distracting. Making so many changes to a process is not, in my opinion, prudent & I agree, the drawbacks make it a less effective tool than the previous tool was.

LegacyUser

Kellie Sue said: This is the biggest problem for me as well.

LegacyUser

Kellie Sue said: "...if the matching data were lined up for easy viewing. But it does not so spouses and parents and siblings and children are all over the place and I have to scroll around to see if anything actually matches. This impacts usability and clarity. Line up matching data."

THIS is what I am struggling with. Some of these families have many children & there is no lining up of same individuals with the same PID. Occasionally everybody lines up on both sides, but that is not usually the case. Unless both sides have the same family members, the parents on one side are not lined up with the parents on the other side & the same is true for spouse & children. This means I must scroll up and down checking names, PIDs & dates, making it much more work & more prone to error.

I know FS thinks everybody will just have to get used to it, but lets face it, if it's not broken it's best to leave things alone, yet, I know FS disagrees. Making it "pretty" with the colors is distracting. Making so many changes to a process is not, in my opinion, prudent & I agree, the drawbacks make it a less effective tool than the previous tool was.

LegacyUser

m said: Yes, well said.

LegacyUser

Peter Williams3 said: I totally agree with everything you have said. It's like you have used my own words. EVERYTHING you said is spot on. Thank you.

LegacyUser

m said: At the end of a merge there were people that I thought I had removed during the merge still attached.

LegacyUser

Paul said: It doesn't seem to be a good idea if there is still the option to reject / not carry over relatives during the merging process.

I thought one really good idea about this enhancement was that we HAD to carry everyone across, and detach incorrect relationships, as appropriate, from the Person page.

True I have had little time to work on it, but suggestions there is a "workaround" for rejecting relatives are rather worrying to me.

LegacyUser

m said: Lots of empty profiles with just names to merge, few profiles with someone else attached to merge, so it's gonna take some time to figure out.

LegacyUser

Gord Hamilton said: I will add 2 more comments to the points that everybody is making.

1) In additon to not lining up, the information displayed for an individual is not consistently presented. It should be Birth, Christening, Death, Burial yet I see instances of the death or christening being listed first followed be the other vital stats. I suspect that this is due to trying to match to available information from the other person but nevertheless it is confusing.

2) It used to be that when you clicked on the source you got the information that was in the source. Now all you get is the source citation which is no help at all.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Those PIDs need to be merged so that they are not floating around in the Ether, messing up the search engines and robbing hints from PIDs that they belong to. Those attached relatives need to remain attached during the merge and them dealt with afterwards. If you find that they don't belong with the new PID, then you have likely merged a PID in that already had been incorrectly merged.

I would prefer forcing the merge to take on the other relationships. After all, if they really ARE the same person, then all of the existing relationships apply to the final PID.

Also, it forces you to look at one thing at a time. If it really doesn't belong, then it didn't belong to the previous PID either, And as I just mentioned, if you really have this situation, it would have to have come from a PREVIOUS bad merge.

It is really rare that a relationship should ever be removed during the merge.

LegacyUser

Paul said: I have raised a separate topic on this specific issue at https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea.... I'm seriously worried at not only parents being lost if an inexperience user decides to "Undo" the default position of the parents being carried across, but the individual potentially losing (in my example) several more generations of ancestors, too.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Yes. You have to ask, "If a person has one set of parents and another has a different set of parents, are those two persons REALLY the same person and should they REALLY be merged.?"

The answer is either Yes or NO, and in BOTH cases, the relationships should remain.

Again, why would you be removing relationships from someone during a merge?

LegacyUser

Heather McPhie said: I'm going to add that the marriage dates do not show up during the merge, which then makes it more difficult to identify that relationships.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: "On the first two pages, the surviving person is on the right. Then on the third page, the surviving person is on the left. "
I got very worried when I read this so went back to try it. Yes, on the 1st 2 screen, the surviving person is on the right. But on the 3rd screen there is only one person to look at, so it's not as if there's a possibility of confusion. I guess that yes, the eye does need to switch so maybe it would have been more sensible to have flipped the reason and survivor as well. But it's a bit of a marginal call.

"The previous merge had only one page, now there are three. "
That's because the previous system combined multiple steps into one screen - you had to make some sort of decision about whether these were the same person, then decide which bits to move over - and during that process there was every chance of getting confused over whether you were looking at the initial or a partly moved over screen. The new set-up does have more screens but I believe - and I suspect the designers did - that having only one task per screen rather than two - is more robust, and easier to understand for newcomers.

LegacyUser

Brett A Zabel said: New merge screen problems: 1. The Persons parents, even if identical ID numbers, no longer line up horizontally if spouse info is different. Makes comparisons so much harder. Scrolling up and down. Also, a person's children don't follow the horizontal comparison rule anymore. Two different kids should not be in the same horizontal space. The old way of horizontal comparisons much better 2. Can no longer open sources at bottom of merge page. 3. Counter productive to put a merge button at top of page. We used to have to scroll through ALL info AND make a decision on each piece of info before we could merge at the bottom of page. By putting merge button at top, the uninitiated can simply merge without checking things. Will increase user error. 4. General look of page more confusing. The little bubbles of info used to stand out better than a small arrow embedded in a block of color.