PIDs Deleted via Merge Retain Useless Information and Remove Useful Information

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: The changes to the view of a deleted PID record has thrown away useful information but retained useless information. In the following example the "★ Following" control button has been removed. This was a useful function from from this view of a record.

There are times that continuing to follow a deleted record is useful to see if someone is trying to undo merges that you have performed. It is also a convenient place to unfollow a PID that has been merged into another.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Yup. Still a major problem, in my opinion. We can't view the sources (Not available - try again later), We really need to view the entire record, not just part of it. I've said this before, but nothing has come of it.

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: Yes. I have often wished that I could see the full record with relationships of deleted PID record so that I could verify the reasoning behind a merge and un-merge if warranted.

LegacyUser

Paul said: I have not found it too much trouble to restore the record for a short period and to "re-merge" (if appropriate) after examining the detail (against the deleted ID) prior to the merge. I add a reason statement to explain my action, in case why the reason the ID has been merged, restored, then merged again should confuse another user.

What is disturbing - from the outward appearance of the deleted record - is that sources still appear to be attached to it - whereas, presumably, those sources have been moved over to the "live" ID during the original merge, and are not just attached to a "dead" record.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: An interesting point about the sources. It's not something that I'd noticed, suggesting that I automatically assumed that stuff had been moved over. But if it was an old merge - why should I assume that? And even if I am right to assume that stuff had been moved over, I can imagine that many people wouldn't think that and would start to worry and detach them....

LegacyUser

Paul said: Yes, surely it would be better if Sources on the deleted record showed (in Jeff's example) as "0" instead of "2"? That is, assuming the two sources were carried across in the merge. I wonder if Memories and Collaborate figures are treated in the same way?

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: Well, I just tried accessing a recently merge-deleted PID (while still deleted) - it says that it has 2 sources attached but when I go to the Sources tab, it says "Sorry the sources feature is currently unavailable. Please try again later."

So what does that mean? Is it the usual "Sources isn't working" mesage that pops up every so often before a miracle happens and it works again? (I suspect not as I tried 2 PIDs).

Or is it "Sources feature is working but we never programmed sources for merge-deleted profiles properly and this is the best you're going to see because we know no-one ever looks at merge-deleted profiles"?

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Adrian, my guess is that it is the latter.

Since it must be possible to Restore a "Deleted" PID, everything that was in it and attached to it needs to somehow be retained so that a Restore on it will fully function correctly. So everything from the vital values, relationships, and change history down to the sources and temple ordinance statuses needs to be kept with the archived record.

However, I do remember being told specifically by a FS employee in one of the topics several months ago that even though they keep that information, they do not display all of it on the deleted record since it was "unnecessary work".

My issue is that in addition to the fact that this useful information (i.e., the follow/unfollow star) was originally maintained on the deleted records, it has been removed, even though the buttons for more useless information is still being maintained.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: Indeed. I would certainly expect everything to be there behind the scenes but the ambiguous nature of the attached source number disturbs me.

As for the loss of the Follow/Unfollow - a thought occurs to me - have you checked to see if you are actually still following a merge deleted profile? Or does the system remove the Follow, on merge deletion now?

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: No, if you were following a PID that was deleted via a merge, you are still following it. I.e., it would still be in your "Following" list, but marked as "Deleted".

Well...at least it USED to do that until the Following list was broken. See:
https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

So when you merge a person you are following into a PID that you are NOT following, the new surviving PID is automatically added to your Following list. So where you were following one PID before, you are now following two (with one of them being a deleted PID).

This is useful. If someone does a restore on the PID that was deleted, you will see it. Or if you don't want to follow the old deleted PID because you know that you merged it correctly, you can then unfollow the deleted PID.

(except of course for the nuisance identified in my original post here)

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Also, the attached source number should be no problem as long as FS is updating their persistent URLs correctly. If it is an old URL that has been replaced, the library services of FS will always redirect it to the original records (at least in theory. I'm still running into many source citations that have had their URL information corrupted by something that FS did a couple of months ago)