Merges Change Data - w/No Hint they Changed It! - at least for Burial Data

This is totally unacceptable. I can't believe, given the huge investment to develop an application like Geni, and given so many wonderful features of Geni that work so well, that this one feature--merging--such a fondamental function, would be botched so badly.

This is a major turn off. Now, why would one spend so much time researching and posting information in profiles, when all that work can vanish in a merge.

Geni Team, now, you've got to come out of your dungeon and talk to us. You've got to tell us what you are actually doing to fix this. This is better be a top priority for your developers, or you know what, I may be out of here.

I also have found another problem. Merged profiles where I had S-- as deceased - and had included in Documents two of her obits, both tied to her Death Event. The other person had her as living.

Do not know if the problem was the other Profile was chosen as Primary, OR ?? BUT -
after the merge - it accepted my info of Death - which if one goes to "Revisions" tab it does show as change there --
(as opposed to Data Conflict - but change is recorded) -- BUT THE DOCUMENTS attached to her death no longer show in the Death Event!! They do, fortunately, still show in her Media Tab under documents, since I tagged her in the Documents, not just the the Doc. to the Event - ADDING TO THE PROBLEM - they still show as being attached to the Event -"Death of S--" -- even tho no longer attached. Plan to reattach, but now even more items I need to check after merges (and that I have not been checking).

AH - Problem Was - they kept and used the Death Data from my (non-primary) Profile - but not any of the Info I had entered in the Death Event's Description Box, nor the Documents I had attached to the Event!!

The poor events were still attached to a Death event with the Description as I had entered it -- but which showed nowhere in Timeline of the S--, were not part of apparently "new" Death event created by the merge, etc.

Private User,

Report that as a possible bug.

Kevin

For a profile, there are two types of Timeline Event – the six defined events (birth, baptism, marriage, divorce, death and burial), and any number of user-defined events.

During any merge there is a severe data loss in defined events. The notes of the event (the 'About this Event') are not retained from either profile and are lost forever, as events do not have revisions. The photos and documents (or rather, the links to them) also disappear during the merge.

For both types of events there are no advisory messages. If the data is changed, or even if the event is removed completely, nobody will be advised. There is no recovery from these situations.

We have the misfortune to have used Timeline Events extensively, to the point of never using the 'About Me' section of a profile. As nearly all of the information was contained in the six defined events, we can now watch as our profiles steadily disintegrate with each forthcoming merge.

This situation appears to be a design fault, rather than a bug, as it has existed since Geni's inception. If we had been alerted to the problem we would never have used Events.

Private User - it is not true that the info in About of Defined Event always is/has been lost when there is a merge. If that were the case, it probably would have been easy for the Programmers to fix - but when they read a generalization such as yours, and then test it - it is usually one of the times when info is not lost, so then they stop trying to fix it. The more you can define when it happens, the better our chances of getting it fixed!

And I'll be darned if I remember whether I reported the issue with Death Event (see my last comment from 8/16 above) as a bug.

Of the 22 known merges with known data, no data has survived. The data was known to exist as it has been held in Notepad. Birth, marriage, death and burial notes have vanished from each profile. Therefore - it happens every time.

I agree that divorce data disappearing is a presumption. You are possibly suggesting the the data disappears only when all Events are populated.

This is more of a warning to members to be aware of using Events, rather than a bug fix request. It's a design fault of many years standing, and therefore unlikely to be fixed - it would require the same appending logic used when merging the 'About Me' section, for each of the six defined types.

We have more merges with problems, but can't be 100% sure that they had data as we didn't keep a copy on Notepad.

User-defined events don't cause a problem - both are kept if same date etc.

I have definitely seen instances where merges did not cause any loss of the Data in the Timeline Event. On several occasions, I have recorded all data in Profiles I was about to merge (sets of Profiles, that would all have to be merged) - and the above was the ONLY instance where the info in the Timeline was not preserved.

Have briefly checked - and found "Description of Event" data preserved for Birth, Marriage, and Death events. Think I have seen Burial Data preserved as well - but quick check has not revealed any proof of that.

Do know - only the Birth Event can be counted on existing for a given Profile. For married Profiles - sometimes I see Marriage Event with "???" for date - but also sometimes I do not see the Marriage Event until/unless I add a date for the Marriage. Same for Burial. Have marked folks as Divorced, but do not think have given a date -- and do not think saw an Event created for the Divorce. Have never created a Baptism event, and any time Geni created them (long ago, for short while - for profiles that should not have had them), I deleted them.

Elaine - 1) are you sure you have seen Info in the Birth Event Disappear? and if so -- 2) any idea - was it the Profile that became the Primary one that had had the info, or the other Profile?

I am almost certain that when 2 Profiles are merged, and both had a Given Timeline Event before the merge, that the info for that Event in the Profile that becomes the Primary Profile will be preserved. "almost certain" because have not tried for all permutations / combinations of Public, Private - and none at all with Master Profiles.

I'm not sure what is meant by Primary Profile, but you are intimating that the 'About This Event' data from one profile might be lost in the merge.

That's the way I see it. If there is no Geni logic to append the text of one birth event (say) to the other birth event, then the text of the second must be being discarded. We have never seen an 'About This Event' containing the merged text of two merged profiles.

If your prognosis is correct, then we're continually the non-Primary Profile

Simplest way to see which is "Primary Profile" - look in Data Conflict Table, where it is labelled "Main Profile". -- If you understand the term "Main Profile" and I am confusing things by using the term "Primary Profile", I apologise!! Someplace I picked up that terminology - if most people use/prefer "Main Profile" let me know and I will try to switch my usage.

As I see it, in a merge there are three major differences between the Primary and non-Primary Profile:

1] When two Profiles are merged, the "Revision History" for only one of them is kept - only the Revision History of the Primary Profile is kept.
2] When two Profiles are merged, and they have different data in some of the Fields - the merged profile will show the data from the Primary Profile [the Data Conflict Table will show all the choices that had existed, in case someone wants to make a different choice - until a choice is made]
3] When two Profiles are merged which had different managers, or even just different Primary Managers - the Primary Manager of the Primary Profile is the Primary Manager of the merged Profile.

Mike has discussed several times how they decide which Profile will be the Primary Profile.
I consider which is Primary important.

Am not sure - if there is a merge of two Profiles, and both have data in the Event's Description Field, if it is concatenated, or two events created, or if only the Primary's Event Description is preserved.

Am not sure what happens if two Profiles are merged and both have the Event but only the non-Primary has info in the Timeline event - think that has happened for us and the info been preserved, but not sure. I know "mine" has not always been Primary, and I have never seen the info disappear until that in the Death Event above - at this point in time, cannot swear info I see in the Timeline Event for such merges really pre-dates the merge - but am pretty sure it has happened and been preserved. Also that info from a non-Primary Profile became info in the merged Profile where "mine" was Primary [but, again, cannot swear nor prove it was not added after the merge - just pretty darn sure it came from the merge]

I know for sure - for the Defined Event (auto-created by Geni):
1] IF the Primary Profile did not have the Timeline Event, and the non-Primary had it with info in its Description/About - that ""About" info was lost in the merge [at least in the case of Death Event as mentioned above]
2] IF both Profiles had the Timeline Event, and the Primary Profile had it with info in the Event's Description/About - then the "About" info was Preserved [at least in the case of Birth, Death, and Marriage Events]

----lots of other combinations are possible, and those I do not know for certain.

OK - Found one set of merges (done a goodly while ago by a Curator at the request of someone outside Family - aaargh!!) where "my" Profile often did not end up Primary - and those Profiles also preserved the info I had in the Events' "Description".