Merging Enhancements

Our latest release included the following enhancements designed to improve merging on Geni:

1. Send merge requests to your collaborators – When you don't have permission to merge a profile, you can send a request to any of the profile's managers to complete the merge. Now, on public profiles, you can also send the merge request to any collaborators that you have in common with a manager. This will help you direct merge requests to the user most likely to act on it. Bonus: The "to:" list is sorted by last login, so the most active users will be at the top of the list.
2. View nearby merge issues – Use the new "View Merge Issues" link in the more menu on the profile or in the tree to view a list of merge issues focused on that person. Use this to focus your work on one particular branch of the tree.
3. Better way to determine head profile – When two profiles are merged, one profile is chosen as the "head" profile. The determines things such as the primary manager and which data is displayed until conflicts are resolved. Now the profile that had the most managers before the merge will be selected as the head. In most cases the profile with the most managers will be more complete and compelling. If the profiles have the same number of managers we will use existing criteria, such as profile completeness.
4. New merge warnings – On the side-by-side merging page, we now warn you if there are significant differences, such as one living profile and one deceased profile, or large differences in birth or death dates. This should help prevent some bad merges.
5. Removed Matches tab – The removed matches tab is back on lists of similar profiles. You can check this occasionally in case a match was removed erroneously.