What about 'Data Conflicts'??

Angus Ralph George Wood-Salomon's Merge Center

* Tree Matches (0)
* Requested Merges (5356)
* Tree Conflicts (45998)
* Data Conflicts (51176)

We did a fantastic job in reducing the 'Requested Merges' ...
The Tree Conflicts are another matter but look at how many 'Data Conflicts' showing of all my Collaborators..

Shouldn't we be fixing those with a concerted effort?

Mike Stangel
Noah Tutak
Bjørn P. Brox
Shmuel-Aharon Kam (Kahn) / (שמואל אהרן קם (קאן
Private User
Private User

Data conflicts need manager help. I suggest managers who are familiar with their family lines work on those FIRST.

Congratulations Angus. This is what I said at http://www.geni.com/discussions/86443

Bjorn, you said in David's discussion "For most people being able to see the tree is the most important, so in the current phase of getting rid of most duplicates I usually leave the data conflicts to the managers and continue with the merges since they probably don't have access to that themselves."

Erica you said " Data conflicts need manager help. I suggest managers who are familiar with their family lines work on those FIRST."

Pretty well the same thing how can that message be sent to the respective managers..

The problem is that I as a curator cannot send a suggestion of resolved data conflicts to the managers(s) .

When I select something it will simply be stored and not sent as a suggestion, in the same way as profiles just will be merged directly instead of being sent as a merge request.

Bjørn: as a curator do you always have to operate in curator mode, or can you "switch off" curator privileges and act like a normal user for specific operations?

Angus,

Data conflicts are in the manager's merge centers.

The more we curators clean up the trees, the more the managers can get to work documenting their lines correctly.

Step ONE of documenting correctly is "resolving data conflicts."

David,

It's in your own merge center. Is that not obvious enough? It kind of is to me. :)

I have always started my own merge center resolves with "data conflicts" figuring, I manage the profile, I know the best, I should resolve. Plus often it's fast and easy work instead of a tangle.

Nope.

It seem that a lot of users do not know about conflicting data. When I do a merge, I always look for conflicting data and tree conflicts.
My merge center shows
Tree matches 993 Requested Merges 0 Tree Conflicts 3 Conflicting Data 0
With include collaborators checked
Tree Matches 993 Requested Merges 4144 Tree Conflicts 41895 Conflicting Data 46208
We need a concerted effort to resolve conflicting data and tree conflicts. Conflicting data is a real pain as you have to go back to the merge center (two clicks) after every one. There should be a check box to select a page of conflicts at once like there is in other matches

I never touch data conflicts until I have a source to back up my choice. Until then I want to see both pieces of data available.

That is what drives me to work on Tree Conflicts because sometimes those can be very apparent what the issue is and how to fix.

Jonathan, a lot of data conflicts are obvious, names in the wrong place, suffixes, maiden names, locations etc. That is why I always check them after a merge. Once the merges are finished, you can always edit data when you get new sources

Jonathan,

Isn't it clever how the tree is getting better documented this way?

I do agree with Eldon that a lot of data conflicts are obvious -- and as a general rule of thumb, the data furthest to the left (the most merged and detailed) should also be the most validated and correct.

I don't disagree with either of you. However assuming that the piece of data repeated most often is the most correct piece of data is not the method I choose to validate.

Jonathan, resolving conflicts is not validating data unless you know the correct data. It is just a step that should be taken. Once the known conflicts are resolved the it is time to validate the data in the profile. If we don't resolve the profiles, the data can change anyway.

Erica wrote: "David, It's in your own merge center. Is that not obvious enough? It kind of is to me. :)"

I take it that comment was aimed at readers generally. Clearly I know where to find data conflicts in the merge centre, as do all the contributors to this discussion.

But the fact borne out by my observation and other statistics brought here is that data conflict resolution is not happening. It is a fact that in many cases curators are busily merging profiles, but not all managers are coming in behind them to resolve the resultant data conflict.

Unless this discussion, changes anything, requested merges are reducing, while conflicting data issues are increasing.

Yes Erica it's easy to find your data conflicts. That's step 1. Getting people to do something about them is step 2.

Angus and Eldon: perhaps you can repeat report those numbers here from time to time?