You simplified it too much.
This process is much simpler (so maybe less intimidating for the beginner), but it is much less helpful for the experienced user. Not having choices on what to save and what to keep is annoying!
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@CherylMillerBlack can you give an example of some of the choices you are missing?
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I liked the chance to look at the two profiles side-by-side and choose whether to go ahead with the merge [Yes, Continue]. I can make a preliminary decision BEFORE anything is moved. I think this is valuable to make sure you really want to Merge.
What if there is no birth info (for example) on the right, but I don't agree with what's on the left? There is no choice to NOT move information in that case (as far as I can tell—I don't see any way to undo it).
I've been working with African American records recently. They have many versions of race—Black, African-American, Black, Colored, Neg, etc. They would all move to the right unless they were duplicates. I like to just keep one so there aren't multiple entries for race.
This isn't something a beginning user would do, but I do it all the time: When the person on the left has children but no spouse (which happens frequently), Merge moves those children to the right. If they are duplicates of the children WITH the spouse, I Undo that move. It saves steps later.
In many census records, there is Residence info for the Head of household. I want to move the Residence info to the right, but not the duplicate.
That's what I can think of at the moment. I'm sure other situations will come up on another day!
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I should add that I REALLY like the warnings about inconsistencies. It's my understanding that these "quality scores" are the reason you are making additional changes.
Why not just keep the existing Merge function (which was already changed not too long ago!) and add these warnings about inconsistencies?
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@CherylMillerBlack How do you like the three-column layout?
We are encouraging people to make edits before or after a merge. If we allow changes during merges, it makes it a lot harder to go back and understand what happened in the merge.0 -
I like the three-column layout for the Merge Analysis, because it helps to understand what happened (as you said).
However, I think three columns for the Merge function itself is too much. It is already very obvious with two columns that what slides to the right is what you keep. That's also consistent with the format of Source Linker. I think three columns means more print on the screen and more confusion. Keep it simple!
I'm not sure what you mean by making edits during merges. You can only keep what was in one profile or in the other. No additional edits can be made until after the merge.
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Part of what I refer to by edit is picking to lose information as part of the merge, like your example of birth.
We are attempting to reduce the difficulty of understanding what happened in a merge when people choose to leave out information. A merge ideally isn't used for cleanup.
This thread here might have some more information0 -
I read the thread above, but I'm still not sure I agree.
It seems that being able to look at the Merge Analysis and see that correct information was merged while incorrect information was "lost" would be an easy way to understand what happened.
IMHO, it's much easier than looking at a series of "Relationship deleted" steps—in the above example of a single parent being deleted while that parent with a spouse is kept. (I hope my explanation was enough that we are even talking about the same situation!)
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@CherylMillerBlack Thanks for your comments. We'll continue monitoring how merge is used and attempt to make the best choice. Thanks again for your feedback, we appreciate all your help making merge better.
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I agree that the information needs to be editable. Another example is when both entries have some of the information but neither has it all; for example, one may have a complete birth date but incomplete place while the other has a complete place but incomplete date.
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I just tried the "Improved" Merge again to see what I thought after this discussion.
It's my opinion that we will actually get MORE errors in the tree because there is no way to save information from the person being deleted. It's my guess that few users will go back to the resulting person and add those details in manually. (Just like the fact that rarely happened before Source Linker allowed editing.)
We really need to be able to choose.
Meanwhile, I have turned off the "Improved" merge again because it is just not usable.
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