Search for content in message boards

Fact Merge & Preferred Fact

Fact Merge & Preferred Fact

Posted: 30 Jul 2015 9:59PM GMT
Classification: Query
Could someone pass this along to the FTM developers.

Currently, when you merge facts there is a high probability that the “Preferred Fact” will be changed, even when not involved in the merge. It would be preferred that the Preferred Fact remains fixed (i.e. remain the same) after the merge.

Also, it would be nice if the fact choices to be selected for the merge were in some order, preferably alphabetical. It was in the very early stages for FTM 2012.

Thanks.
Bud

Re: Fact Merge & Preferred Fact

Posted: 31 Jul 2015 2:21AM GMT
Classification: Query
Edited: 31 Jul 2015 2:24AM GMT
I have done merges for tens of thousands of people in the last several years and have never had a problem with designating whether to keep the old preferred as preferred, or to use the "new" merge data to replace the "old" preferred fact and make it an alternative one, or just add the current entry as an additional source for the preferred fact I already have. You might want to re-evaluate how you are merging - you have complete choice of what to make preferred in every instance I have found. If not, which database are you merging where you experience this?

I don't follow what you mean by fact "sort order"? All databases in ancestry are different and have different data to be merged. Census entries, for example, follow a natural order of Name, Sex, birth and residence. I don't see how making these facts merge in alpha order improves anything.


Re: Fact Merge & Preferred Fact

Posted: 31 Jul 2015 11:50PM GMT
Classification: Query
Let me try and clarify my points. If you can’t reproduce them, then I got a bad copy of FTM.

You are totally in FTM. Don’t even think about Ancestry. You pull up a person. Let’s say you have 10 birth date/place facts for that person. You have selected a Preferred Fact birth date and place. You decide you want to merge 5 of the birth date/place possibilities. You execute the merge of those five in FTM.

What happens to your chosen Preferred Fact? In my version of FTM 2014, 50 to 60% of the time, the Preferred Fact will be changed by the merge. I don’t see any pattern on how the merge chooses the new Preferred Fact. I just have to remember to re-choose it back to the original. I am not sure that would be your intent.

Second, the “Merge Fact Choice” screen; it is where you choose the facts to be merged. In FTM 2012, the original choice screen was sorted by date and then by alpha within date. This changed after some FTM 2012 changes and continues in FTM 2014. The bottom line was I thought you wanted to go back to the original intent; that is, whenever the Merge Fact Choice screen pops up, you want the choices to be sorted by date and then alpha within date.

Doing some work tonight, it appears it is close the preferred sort the first time you bring it up within a person. But subsequent times within that person, it is way out of order.

Hopefully, this is clearer.
Thanks
Bud

Re: Fact Merge & Preferred Fact

Posted: 1 Aug 2015 1:56AM GMT
Classification: Query
Oh, I'm sorry - When you said "merge", I assumed you were talking about when merging an ancestry database entry into your database. I forgot about the other meaning for "merge" in FTM.

When merging multiple instances of a fact in FTM: If the Preferred instance is among the facts that you are merging, the resulting merged fact will become the preferred fact. If the preferred fact is not among the facts that you wish to merge, it continues on as the preferred fact, and the merged fact will continue as an alternative fact, just as the instances you wish to merge are all alternative.

As for the order the instances of a fact are in when looking at the Merge Facts Screen, I've not paid much attention to the order. There are seldom more than 3 or 4 instances of a fact that I want to merge. I simply check the box for the instances of that fact I want to merge and march on.


Re: Fact Merge & Preferred Fact

Posted: 1 Aug 2015 4:06PM GMT
Classification: Query
“If the preferred fact is not among the facts that you wish to merge, it continues on as the preferred fact, and the merged fact will continue as an alternative fact, just as the instances you wish to merge are all alternative.”

This is only true “sometimes”. A good chunk of the time the merge chooses a new Preferred Fact for you.


Re: Fact Merge & Preferred Fact

Posted: 1 Aug 2015 4:20PM GMT
Classification: Query
I've never had that happen after thousands of these type merges. What fact is it that you are usually merging? Most of mine are name and birth and, occasionally, death.

Re: Fact Merge & Preferred Fact

Posted: 2 Aug 2015 4:10PM GMT
Classification: Query
All facts. Daily use. Over 40,000 merges. Oh yeah, today it even occurred when the merge included the Preferred Fact.

It hurts the most when Name, Birth, and Death get changed and I don't catch it.

It was such an obvious problem (to me) in FTM 2012, that I thought for sure it would have been caught a long time ago! It has been constant.



per page

Find a board about a specific topic