Reason statements

Teresa Winterton

Prior to updates a year or so ago, when you clicked on Merge individuals, you could see the reason statement for the person's name. I learned at Roots Tech several years ago that if you were having trouble with people merging your people to add a reason statement. I had 2 distance cousins who's names were close, born in the same place about 4 years apart and both married women with the same first name. At the time we did not know the maiden name of one of the wives. These 2 couple kept getting merged. After learning about reason statements, I entered details into all 4 people involved. Then when someone went to merge them they could see my reason statement and they never got merged again. An update took place and now you can no longer see the reason statements. I would really like to see that feature return.

Thanks, Teresa Winterton

maxaz

I, for one, would like to see the standardized Reason Statements be taken down. It seems it is often far too easy for the one making a change to simply click on the statement and let it go at that.

The problem is this often doesn't give the real reason for the change and another user doesn't have any confidence the change is correct.

dontiknowyou

Hi @Teresa Winterton ,

I put that clarifying information in a Note. There it will be seen. Some people recommend putting it in a Life Sketch but I find that distasteful. Here is a recent example:

Two men with similar names, both farmers born in New York in 1815:

Cyrus S. Ingraham

1815 – 2 April 1897

9689-RZ1

Married Abigail, died in Michigan.

Cyrus S. Ingrum

1815 – 12 May 1889

G8SM-Z7D

Married Mary and Malvina, died in Iowa.

I put this in Notes on each page. The first 3 lines of each capsule description are just cut&paste from the person page titles.