Moving across parents should be compulsory under new merging procedure

LegacyUser

Paul said: I do not feel there should be an option not to carry across parents / relatives under the new process.

I'm sure, like many other users, it was my expectation / hope that any enhancement would provide for other family members to be automatically carried across and any incorrect relationships could then be corrected / detached from the person page(s).

I do not think it is a good idea to be able to reject (at this stage) what are possibly / probably a correct set of parents. In the example shown, if Ralph & Elizabeth were not Robert's parents, would it not be better to sort this from the person pages? The correct family could be found for them - and the correct parents for Robert - much easier, using this method.

I admit I have possibly not considered any counter argument so would be pleased to hear other users' opinions.



(Please ignore any changes I have / have not made as this family is still a "work in progress" for me.)

LegacyUser

Jordi Kloosterboer said: I mean it is easy to just go to the duplicate's profile and remove to the parents before the merge (I've done something similar so I don't feel the need to say anything about it in the merge lol). But anyway, I disagree because there may be situations where there is a duplicate person who has the right spouse and such but actually has the wrong parents, so you you merge the person and get rid of the false parent relationships in one good ole swoop. I don't think that this should be restricted.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: There are MANY reason that allowing relationship removals during merge is a bad idea. I've describe a couple. From another topic here recently:

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, but in BOTH cases, the relationships should remain.

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

If you have to remove parents attached to a record before merging it into another record, there is an excellent chance that there are many other things wrong with that record that should be fixed FIRST.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Jordi

My point arises from the fact that, over the years on this forum, the general consensus among experienced users has been against making major decisions whilst using the source linker procedure.

Your wish to "get rid of the false parent relationships in one good ole swoop" shocks me. Two questions arise if this procedure is used:
(1) Who were the individual's parents if not as shown?
(2) Who were the children of the couple you have detached?

In "one good ole swoop" you have left a child without its parents and brought into question the whole identity of that couple - including whether the other children shown beneath them really were theirs, or if they too belonged to other parents.

The only way to properly examine / reposition any incorrect relationships is surely a place from where they can be put right (the person pages) - as this is certainly not possible from the source linker pages.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Jordi

One other point about why you should carry out any work on incorrect relationships from the person page. Assuming another user - possibly carelessly, but probably in good faith - had added the wrong parents, would you not want to message them with the reason you have detached the relationships?

If you did not have the time to fully correct all relationships affected, at least you need to give them the opportunity to put things right.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The only counter argument that I can think of is when I am merging an entire family that has been duplicated -- Same parents, same kids, same dates, same places, same names...

I have merged the parents and then am in the process of merging the duplicate kids. When I merge a kid, I do not necessarily want the parents to be moved because they have already been merged and now carry the same PIDs.

And yes, I have run into that situation more than once.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: One of the things that used to show up in the old merge was when the parents of the same PIDs show up on both sides, sometimes one side would have the relationship type (e.g. step, foster, etc.) and the other side would have a different value. By being able to select which of the "Same PID" records you use, you can pick which of the parent-child relationships to keep.

Since everything is assumed to be "Biological" by default, and since people frequently don't enter relationship types (especially when pulling step children records off of censuses), having the ability to select the actual relationship during this merge is important.

Has that also been removed in the new Merge?