I'm going to cry
I saw one of my ancestors, my 4th g-grandfather, had been duplicated. so I went to merge the new profile.
Then I noticed his wife was … and so were all their children … and their siblings … and parents. I'm not sure how many generations but it appears to be several. (No, it wasn't one of the census projects; it was a random user, who appears to have no connection to my family.)
But the kicker is that not ONE of these profiles has a single source attached. Why were they created? Who knows!?
Answers
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I'm sorry for your upset. If it helps, the same has happened to many/most of us over the years.
On the new profiles, do you see "GEDCOM" as a reason statement? If so, the profiles were created when another contributor uploaded a GEDCOM to the tree. The contributor may well have many sources, but such an upload does not attach the sources.
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Hi - Typically when I see a situation like this is stems from someone loading a GEDCOM file. Loading a GEDCOM file is a tedious task and requires attention to detail. It is very easy to create duplicate profiles and often extends for generations. And there are no sources loaded from a GEDCOM file. You can often go to the latest changes of one of the duplicated profiles and see the date it was created, the creating user's contact name and often indicates in the reason, a GEDCCOM file.
Unfortunately, this is a pretty common occurrence. And there are better alternatives to loading a GEDCOM.
And also unfortunately, it takes a lot of work to correct. All those duplicates you see need to be reviewed and merged if appropriate. Hopefully the person who loaded the GEDCOM will take care of it but often this is not the case. Leaving the task to someone such as yourself.
As I said at the beginning, this is typically what I see. Your situation may be different but since you didn't provide any way to look at the profiles you are talking about, I can only speculate. Good luck it getting it cleaned up.
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PS, You can try to contact the person who created all the duplicates.
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I had no idea that gedcom import ignored the sources .... yet another reason why the risks of allowing it seem to me to far outweigh any possible benefit.
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@MandyShaw1 GEDCOM is a file format developed many years ago for the exchange of genealogical data between various applications. The format has been updated periodically but still has limitations on sources and memories.
To your point, I would never recommend loading a GEDCOM to Family Search without extensive research to see that what you are loading is not already in Family Search. And even with that, there are far better alternatives to using a GEDCOM. The fact that Family Search only wants one profile per person dedicates that regardless of how you import data, it has to be reviewed at the individual profile level for duplicates. For example, say you add a new person (profile) by manual entry. In the process, your manual entry is reviewed for possible duplicates. If any are found, you must deal appropriately with the possible duplicates. The same process goes on when you load a GEDCOM or have other programs which directly interface with Family Search. But there are limitations to this process. The parameters for identifying possible duplicates are rather narrow. Meaning if names, dates etc. are different by certain amounts, there will be no possible duplicates found and suggests a new profile be created.
Bottom line, adding new profiles to Family Search needs to be done carefully and with attention to details. It needs to be done, profile by profile. Unfortunately, GEDCOM files seems to obscure much of the review and makes it easy to create duplicates. Not recommended in my book.
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No, that’s the part that confused me! I have seen that in reason statements before, but there wasn’t a single “Gedcom” note in any of the profiles.
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IMHO - creating a duplicate is the lesser of the evils of uploading a GEDCOM. It's also possible for profiles that are not duplicates to be merged, conflating similarly-named people.
That doesn't mean I recommend uploading a GEDCOM; I just mean that the duplicates aren't the worst of it.
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I see this often.
What I do
- look at the date of the duplicate. If it is last year or earlier, don't bother to contact the person who uploaded the duplicates. Proceed to merge the duplicates even the big multi-generations ( I am very aggravated with the big ones and the gedcoms.)
- If recent, send a very polite and pointed message. I use this message every time "Please do not create duplicates. Please do due diligence to ensure no duplicates. I merged this record" to those users.
Export sources known to create duplicates: Ancestry and gedcoms created from various programs.
Those who used gedcoms, get my message pointing the way to "Genealogies" section for their gedcoms.
Some users do not realize there are variants of name spellings.
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