Help:HowTo/Discover duplicates

Quick reference

While the basis of a wiki such as WeRelate is to have only one page per person or family, there are times when duplicates are created either by mistake or because, at the time of creation, insufficient information was available to determine whether a person found in one record was the same as a person found in another record.

To improve the quality of data at WeRelate, it is desirable to discover situations where there is more than one page for the same person, and to merge those pages. It is equally important to determine when pages that appear that they might be duplicates are actually for different people, or to note when the documentation is insufficient to make a determination one way or the other.

WeRelate provides a few ways to help you find and compare potentially duplicate pages so that they can be merged or documented.

Finding potential duplicates

Finding potential duplicates related to your work

WeRelate automation creates a list of pages that are possible duplicates based on a number of criteria (e.g., Family page titles have the same names, a person has more than one set of parents, a couple has more than 2 people), ignoring situations already marked as not being duplicates. When one of these possible duplicates involves a page you are watching, it will be listed when you select "Show duplicates" from the "My Relate" menu (at the top of the page).

Noting potential duplicates when viewing a page

If you find a Person page with more than one set of parents, you will see a note in red saying "Duplicate parents". This is to bring your attention to the possibility that the sets of parents might be duplicates with each other. Sometimes the parents are duplicates (usually resulting from a recent merge of the child's page), but often the parents represent different speculations on who the parents were.

A Family page with more than 2 husbands or more than 2 wives is also a possible situation of duplicates, although, again, it could just be 2 different people who have been speculated to be the husband or wife in this family.

You might note that a Person page has multiple marriages that appear to be duplicates (similar names of spouse and/or children).

In each case, selecting to compare the pages will show you whether or not someone has already determined that they are not duplicates. In the case of potentially duplicate parents, the "compare" link is beside the "Duplicate parents" message. In the case of the potentially duplicate husbands or wives, the "compare" link is under "more" on the menu on the left side of the page.

If you select the "compare" link and see under the title of one of the pages the message Do not merge with the other page, then someone has already determined that the pages are not duplicates.

Searching for potential duplicates

Since WeRelate's automated tools for identifying duplicates are limited, there may be times when it is appropriate to search for potential duplicates. The Person and Family pages have a menu item "Find duplicates" under "more" on the menu on the left side of the page. This feature executes a search for pages similar to the one you are looking at.

This feature is particularly advisable after a GEDCOM upload, since the GEDCOM upload only looks for possible duplicate Family pages. A person linked to their parents in your GEDCOM upload might match the spouse of a family someone else has created. At present, a manual search is the only way to find such potential duplicates.

Duplicate pages patrol

There is a volunteer opportunity to be part of the "duplicate pages patrol", which monitors the master list of all potential duplicates identified by WeRelate automation. If you would like to participate, please leave a message on the duplicate pages patrol talk page. If you would like to look at the master list, it can be found here.

Assessing potential duplicates

Before determining what to do with potentially duplicate pages, it is necessary to determine whether they are actually duplicates.

Using the compare function

The first step is to use WeRelate's "compare" function. This is accessed as follows:

• From "Show duplicates" (My Relate menu), click on the page link or "open in new window".
• From the master Family duplicates report (duplicate pages patrol), click on the link that groups potential duplicates.
• When duplicate parents are highlighted, select the "compare" link beside it.
• From a Person or Family page, select "Compare spouses", "Compare husbands", or "Compare wives" from the "more" menu.

In the resulting "Compare pages" screen, you can compare vital information from each of the pages in side-by-side columns.

• Green boxes mean the information is specific and matches exactly.
• Yellow boxes mean the information is missing some pieces (e.g., a date that is a year only or a place that is just a country or a US state) or the information is a partial match (e.g., names that sound similar but are spelled differently, or places where one is a county and the other is a town in the county).
• Red boxes mean the information differs.

Sometimes this comparison provides sufficient information to determine that the pages are definitely duplicates or definitely not duplicates.

• If they are definitely duplicates, they should be merged or tagged for a merge.
• If they are definitely not duplicates, they should be selected (checked) at the top of the screen and marked as "Not a match" using the button at the bottom. This will add the nomerge template to the Talk page of one of the pages.

Sometimes the comparison screen doesn't provide enough information to make a determination. If so, each page can be opened and examined to see if there is further information to make the determination.

Tagging potential duplicates

Tagging for future resolution

If you cannot determine whether 2 or more pages are duplicates of each other, you can add the dup template to identify them as potential duplicates for possible future resolution.

Note: It is perfectly reasonable to tag potential duplicates as uncertain without doing any additional research, since it is common to note things while in the midst of pursuing other goals. Tagging the potential duplicates saves others (or yourself) the time of finding them (again), and may prompt someone else to do the necessary research.

Regardless of your reason for tagging potential duplicates as currently unresolved, please give sufficient information in the status comments for the next person to know whether this appears to be unresolvable at this time, or is worth them doing more research.

Notifying users of a pending merge

If you believe the pages are duplicates, but would like to give watchers of the duplicate pages a chance to review your conclusion before merging the pages, or if you want a more experienced user to review your assessment and/or carry out the merge, you can use the dup template with an appropriate comment.

Making a special note of possible confusion

Sometimes people have so much of their known vital information in common that genealogists have either conflated them or assigned facts to the wrong person. In other cases, professional genealogists might not be so confused, but one incorrect speculation or conflation has been picked up and propagated so widely that it is common to see information (including spouses and children) assigned to the wrong person.

In these cases, it is worth noting not only that the Person (or Family) pages are not duplicates, but that future contributors should take extra care to avoid assigning relationships and other information to the wrong person or family.

To do this, add the NotToBeConfusedWith template to both pages. This doesn't take the place of the nomerge template (which is used by automation to ignore pages when reporting potential duplicates, and by the merge function to prevent a merge) but supplements it with an extra caution for human readers.