© 2013 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.

Merging People in

FamilySearch Family TreeBYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy

July 31, 2013

Riverton FamilySearch Library Saturday Seminar

October 19, 2013

Family History Support Missionary Training

November 13, 2013

Sandy Crescent Stake Family History Training

February 20, 2014

Ben Baker

bakerb@familysearch.org

Background

• Over 5 years as a Software Engineer at FamilySearch

• Currently work primarily on Family Tree with

responsibilities over merge-related features

• Try to do my own genealogy and help others

• I’m here to learn from real users of our services

• Hope I’ll be able to help you today

• E-mail me (bakerb@familysearch.org) to get a copy of

this presentation or for specific merge-related problems

• Click here for the related printed handout materials

Why Merging is Necessary

Lots of Inputs + Imperfect Patrons +

Imperfect Algorithms ≈ Lots of Duplication

Ancestral File

Record Extraction

Family Tree

More …

What Merge Is

• Removal of a

duplicate copy of the

same real person

• A way to choose the

best conclusions to

improve the data on

the resulting merged

person

What Merge Is Not

• An all-purpose clean

up tool to get rid of

data you don’t like

• The same as a

new.familysearch

combine

• The same as deleting

a person

new.familysearch

CombineFamily Tree Merge

A B

A

B

A B

A’ B

Merging B into A will delete

(archive/tombstone) B,

potentially changing A with

some of B’s data.

Combining B into A will result

in A with B as an “inner

person” of A. Data from both

persons is preserved and can

be selected as viewable

values.

Delete Person Deleting a person will delete all relationships that person was in, orphan any LDS temple ordinances and won’t keep a link to the real person.

Use with care!

Only recommend using when you’re sure the person is fictitious (Ex. wrong gender)

Often, a relationship should be deleted or a merge should be done.

Man Wife

WifeMan

Merge Process Overview

Review the persons in the list and take an appropriate action:

1. If there are people in the list that look like they may be the

same real person, click on the Review Merge button to see

more details

2. If you’re pretty sure a possible duplicate is not the same real

person, click on the Not a Match link and enter a reason

why you believe this is not the same real person.

3. If a person shows up in the “Can’t Be Merged at This Time”

list, a constraint is preventing the merge.

Star Ranking Levels

Possible Duplicates Screen• Shows 3-star and above matches

• Estimate 92% of persons presented are real matches

• Estimate 97.4% of all real matches are being presented

Temple Reservation Check• Will flag if there are any 4-star and above matches

• Estimate 99% of persons presented are matches

• Estimate 89.5% of all real matches are being presented

• Doesn’t show unmergeable persons (including IOUS)

Star Ranking Levels cont.

5-star – Estimate 99.76% are real matches

4-star – Estimate 93.25% are real matches

3-star – Estimate 51.13% are real matches

2-star – Estimate 2.73% are real matches

1-star – Estimate 0.24% are real matches

Saw huge drop in Not a Match declarations

when 2-star matches were eliminated

Star Ranking Insider’s Tips

If you really want to see all of the possible duplicates a person has, including those below

3-stars, you can get them by going to the following URL after logging in. Substitute the

person ID of the person you’d like to see the possible duplicates for. You can vary the

matchThreshold if you really want too.

https://familysearch.org/tree-data/match/by-id/personId?matchThreshold=1.0

If you want to see more information about how well two persons match, their match score

in both directions (which may be different), merge constraints, and not a match

declarations, enter the following URL after logging in. Substitute the person IDs of the

two persons you are interested in.

https://familysearch.org/tree-data/match/score/personId1/personId2

** WARNING**

Both of these will give you back data in a “ugly” computer format called JSON. To make

it a bit more human readable, Google for a JSON formatter which you can paste the

result in to make it more readable. The one I usually use is http://jsonviewer.stack.hu/.

Top 10 constraints preventing merges

1. Locked relationship

2. Too many inner persons

3. Forwarded person (Usually just merged)

4. Gender mismatch

5. Multiple membership records (CMIS)

6. Other order only – Must preserve membership

7. Merging would cause loop

8. Locked person

9. Non-Unique IDs

10. Parent and child

Individuals of Unusual Size (IOUS)

If the resulting record in

new.familysearch.org would have

more than 250 combined records,

persons cannot be merged. This is

sometimes called an Individual of

Unusual Size (IOUS). There isn’t

anything that can be done to merge

these persons until synchronization

with new.familysearch is turned off.

Merge Constraint Insider’s Tip

A couple of the merge constraints will give you an indication of what is wrong with a message. For example,

When you see two persons that cannot be merged and you’re not sure why, you can get a semi-understandable reason by going to the following URL after logging in, substituting the person IDs of the persons you want to merge.

https://familysearch.org/ct/persons/personId1/merge/personId2/constraint

Terminology for Persons in Merges

• Surviving person

• Resulting person

• Person merged into

• Left hand side of merge page

• This is the person that will

remain when the merge is

completed and whose data is

changed as specified with data

from the second person in the

merge.

• Duplicate person

• Deleted person

• Archived person

• Person merged away

• Right hand side of merge page

• This person will be deleted (or

archived or tombstoned if you

prefer those terms) during the

merge.

• There will be a pointer or

forwarding ID that points to

person 1 so you will know

where the "real" copy of the

person is, but this second

person will no longer be active

in the system.

What is automatically copied

during a merge?

1. Photos

2. Stories

3. Documents

4. Notes

5. Watches

6. Not a match declarations

7. Discussions

8. LDS Temple ordinances

Insider Tip

Use beta.familysearch.org to test hypotheses regarding what does/doesn’t occur during a merge. There is an out of date copy of data

on production (familysearch.org) there.

Note: Dismissed research suggestions are cleared on the resulting person after a merge.

Merge by ID

How to Undo Incorrect Merges

Two Ways to Restore After a Merge

1. Unmerge • Undoes all merge changes, restoring both persons to the pre-

merge state

• Can currently only be done if no changes have taken place on either person since the merge

• To unmerge, click on the Show All link in the Latest Changes box to the right of a person who was merged into. Then click on the Unmerge button and enter a reason for the unmerge.

2. Restore Person• Restores the person who was deleted to the pre-merge state,

but leaves the merged person alone

• Is only option if changes have taken place since the original merge

• To restore a person, bring up the deleted person page and click on the Restore Person link.

Merging vs. Combining Undo Rates

Between Mar – Oct 2012

1 in every 4 combines was undone by a separate

Since Nov 2012 (when merge was turned on)

Only 1 in every 30 merges was undone by an

unmerge or restore

Seems to be greatly reducing churn

As of June 2015, ~42,000 merges occur daily

Best Practices

Merge the person with less data

into the person with more data

• Will result in less changes in the change history

• Copying data from the deleted person won’t

result in many changes attributed to you

• Is more likely to execute quickly and less likely

to have an error because there are fewer

operations being performed

Resist the impulse to remove data you

don’t like (during merge and otherwise)

• Completely different alternate names and additional spouses, parents and children that don’t seem to belong are usually indicators of an improperly combined person in new.familysearch.

• Support is no longer performing separates, so trying to clean up data to represent a single real person is the best course of action. Making these changes outside of a merge allows for better documentation of the reasons for the changes.

• Features are coming to help address LDS temple ordinances being attached to the correct person.

Coming Soon-ish

• Ability to view all of the LDS temple ordinances

attached to a person

• Request that LDS temple ordinances that don’t

belong be moved elsewhere

• Removal of synchronization with new.familysearch –

will allow more merges, including IOUS

Copy all data unique to the right hand

side, unless you know it is not correct

• My opinion is that relationships and sources should always be added (copied) on a merge

• Not copying data will result in it no longer being active in the tree

• Not bringing relationships over can make holes in other patron’s trees and reduce the likelihood of true matches showing in Possible Duplicates.

• I believe if you really don’t want a relationship or source on the resulting merged person, you should delete it before or after the merge with its own justification.

Collaborate with other users

• If you see people doing merges that don’t make sense, help them understand what they did wrong in a kind way

• Call support if there are problems with “merge wars”

• Another feature coming really soon is reporting abuse of data

Specific Examples and

Frequently Asked Questions

The core question to always ask is:

“Are these two persons the same

real person?”

Common Scenarios

1. I see some children belonging to two parents and others belonging to a single parent with the same ID as one of the coupled parents• This is actually not a case for merging

• The first thing to do is make sure all of the correct children appear under the couple. If any don’t, you need to add a relationship from the child to both parents.

• Then go and delete the single parent relationships to each child

2. The same spouse, child or parents a person already has appears on the right on a different line of the merge page when I’m choosing what to Add/Replace/Reject. • Make sure you add (copy) the relationship to the merged

person

• This is likely another duplicate that also needs to be merged

3. See Additional References in syllabus for additional scenarios

Question

Why can’t you give an indicator as to whether there are any possible duplicates on a person?

Answer

The call to check for possible duplicates uses a fair amount of system resources, so we don’t want to do this every time a person page is opened. We are looking into ways to speed this up and/or provide better mechanisms to let patrons know when possible duplicates exist.

Question

Should I mark a person as Not a Match if I’m not sure they are the same person or not?

Answer

It depends. If you’re worried about other people merging them and want to do more research it may be a good option, but remember Not a Matches will not appear as Possible Duplicates.

Question

What if I know a person matches, but doesn’t show up in the possible duplicates list?

Answer

After clicking the Possible Duplicates link from the person page, click on the Merge by ID tab. Copy the ID you would like to merge into the text box and proceed with the merge as usual.

Question

What happened if I went through all the steps to merge, clicked Finish Merge and I get a pink message that these persons can’t be merged?

Answer

Most likely you have encountered a bug. Please call support to report it or send an e-mail to bakerb@familysearch.org. The only legitimate reason this message should appear after initiating a merge is that it took more than 5 minutes. This is another constraint of the system that will be resolved when synchronization with new.familysearch.org is off and merging will be much quicker.

Question

What if I get a pink message after trying to

unmerge or restore a person? Is that an error too?

Answer

Yes, most likely. Please follow the same steps as

listed in the previous question.

Question

What happens to LDS temple ordinances during a merge?

Answer

Any ordinances on the person deleted by the merge are automatically copied to the resulting person

Question

What happens to photos and stories attached to a person during a merge?

Answer

Any photos and stories on the person deleted during the merge will be copied to the resulting merged person.

Question

Why don’t merges show up in the watch list even though they do show up in the watch e-mails?

Answer

They do now. Significant changes to the watch list have been made recently to improve the watch list and changes to people you are watching.

Additional References to

Learn More

User’s Guide

http://broadcast.lds.org/eLearning/fhd/Community/en/FamilySearch/FamilyTree/pdf/familyTreeUserGuide.pdf

https://familysearch.org/learningcenter/lesson/family-tree-curriculum/818

https://familysearch.org/treetraining

Additional Q & A